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"