Isabela's Ramos Cafe

Finally I get to post my favorite restaurant in Isabela!

A little place in a residential neighborhood in quaint little Echague Isabela. A town which is small even by country/province standards. Surrounded by ricefields all over and serviced by (my observation) a gasoline station (that regularly has rice drying in its service bays), a school, a cemetery, a number of carabaos, a rice mill, one church that I know of and the best pizza place in Isabela.

Ramos Cafe aka Cafe By The Park

Introduced to me when I first started going to Isabela for work, it has been a favorite ever since.

Imagine being in the middle of a burning desert at high noon and suddenly bumping into a Fruitas stall or maybe finding a spa on top of Mt. Everest with a hot spring bath.
That is sort of the feeling.

At that time I was a stranger to the province and the only food options I had then were McDonald's, Jollibee, Chowking, Felicita's Pancit Cabagan and lechon manok in the evenings.


Situated in a residential neighborhood, this sign marks the spot.


Cozy interiors really make you feel that you're someplace unique to everything else in the immediate vicinity.

A menu of homemade stuffed crust pizzas, pastas and dishes like surf and turf, roastbeef, seafood thermidore and a lot of other stuff you'd never expect to find in well... Echague.

Fresh flowers on the tables.

Salad and iced tea. I love their waldorf for less than a hundred. Although tweaked to fit local taste, I love the nuts and apples which cleanse my palate and refresh my mind.

The Italian favorite has beef, italian sausage, mushrooms, basil, pomodoro sauce, soft cheese and mozarella I believe.

Chef's Choice (my favorite) has ham, onions, bell peppers, young corn, pineapples which I was able to take a picture of as it baked in their oven with the fire burning on top of the pizza.

Oh, and I always request for a special twist to my cheese stuffed crust pizza which isn't on the menu. Bacon.=)

Price would be around the Greewich Pizza range.

Other favorites of mine would be their canneloni and shawarma with super yummy garlic sauce.

The chef/owner I heard worked in Mandarin hotel and Paris before retiring to establish this wonderful manna from heaven.

If you're ever in the area, Cafe By The Park/Ramos' Cafe now has a branch along Villasis Highway in Santiago Isabela which is smaller and not as secluded but definitely more accessible. But, if you want to experience the real deal, the Echague branch (which is also the owner's house) is just around 20 mins away. Take the Cauayan Isabela bound highway until you reach a fork in the road. Take the right prong which veers off the main highway and leads into a small town. Go straight (around a kilometer) till you reach a small intersection with an equally small Shell gas station. Turn left and go straight a few meters till you see the sign.

Isabela Eating Places- Aling Amie's Barbecue

Everyone has their own favorite barbecue place. Be it along a busy sidewalk (or the sidewalk itself), under an old tree (kapre inhabited? probably) or some dangerous alley or eskinita. Whatever the case may be, no matter how far, sometimes even at a risk to personal safety (or maybe not, but you get my point), most of us have an allegiance to a particular barbecue place with the recipe that best suits our taste.


Street food being a favorite in the Philippines ranging from kwek-kwek to the newly popular fried humongous mutant calamari and of course the all time favorite barbecue stalls, they would easily number in the tens of thousands by my estimation (a good part of which would profess to be the "best" or "D' Best!").


So in the barbecue category which I believe to be the most popular, my favorite sadly is Aling Amie's. I say sadly because as much as Aling Amie's big hearty smile makes my day as soon as I walk up to her stall, and even before a chunk of her barbecue grazes my palate, the unfortunate fact of the matter is that ours is a long distance love affair (sorry Liv honey it's nothing personal. Its just barbecue). She's in Isabela.




Aling Amie operates a small stall in Santiago City's wet market. Her place is located in a narrow aisle in a far flung side of the market. Not many people who don't go marketing there have heard of her. Living in obscurity, hidden in a dingy nook, I thought that this was indeed the kind of place where legends gestate prior to their perfect moment with destiny. Like Obi Wan and Yoda who had to lose themselves in the deserts of Tatooine and the jungles of Dagobah before playing their most important roles in the universe.
Aling Amie is no Jedi (at least not that I've seen her wield any lightsabers) but if you would ask me, her sticks of barbecue are almost just as deadly (pardon the way I get carried away with my analogies).


So what's with these unassuming sticks of skewered pork?







Simply, Aling Amie's years of experience and mastery.

Grilled a bit well done, her barbecue remains tender enough to be chewed with a smile of delight. I wouldn't say it's the tenderest of all but its up there. The cut of the meat is chunky enough that each uling(coal) streaked extraction of the meat from the skewer rewards the eater with significant portions of meat to sink the teeth into. More than the texture however, its the flavor that I constantly crave. A flavor that reminds me of Aristocrat (one of my barbecue favorites in Metro Manila) I can't quite point a finger why exactly but it does. This taste according to aling Amie is achieved by marinating the pork for a long time in her special marinade. The rest is achieved through the Force.

Yep, for P20 I get a barbecue as tasty without the need for any sauce or dip and an urge as seductive as the dark side to pair it with her pancit palabok, her real specialty, which deserves a new post altogether.


Coming Soon: Aling Amie's Pancit Palabok "A Disturbance in the Force"