Mang Inasal’s Crema de Leche: The Best Halo- halo in Town (Naga City Halo Halo Summer Series 1)

It’s summer time and it’s halo-halo time. Stay, Stray Play and Feast is running a series of food review on where to find the best halo- halo in Naga City. While we have gotten used to the traditional preparations of stuffing so many sweetened ingredients in a bowl of ice, as we always believe that the more the merrier, but the halo- halo loses its distinctive taste this way. It is a culinary fact that in preparing any dish- the lesser, the better and making the best halo- halo is not an exemption.

Mang Inasal’s Crema de Leche
The Best Halo- Halo in Town 
(Naga City Halo Halo Summer Series 1) 

The best Halo- halo is not the traditional halo- halo
that they serve as it had no gustatory identity, as
most  Pinoys have a penchant of putting so many
ingredients,  heaping up in a bowl of crushed ice.

The flavor overload confuses our taste buds 
we would never know what we are eating.



Since most of halo- halo ingredients are made 
of preserved candied fruits and sugary desserts,
and we have gotten used to this syrupy 
saccharine concoction we usually judge how good
it is according to the degree of sweetness.  



Most Filipino traditional Halo- halo lovers would disagree
or even hate me for this, but I want my Halo- halo to have 
the most basic ingredients where I could savor and still 
identify the kind flavor that was added in the concoction.  



I also don’t not want my Halo- Halo too sweet,
the ice should still be crunchy, not too milky-
that it should not have a smoothie- like texture.  



These are the reasons why I consider 
Mang Inasal's Crema de Leche, 
 as the best tasting Halo- halo ever.  

 

Taste it to believe it. 


Read the links below for other  
Naga City Halo Halo Summer Series   

Mang Inasal’s Crema de Leche
The Best Halo- Halo in Town
Naga City Halo Halo Summer Series 1 

  DJC Halo- Halo 

The Most Popular Halo Halo in Bicol
(Naga CityHalo Halo Summer Series 2)

Chow King’s Halo Halo
Philippines’ “Pambansang Halo- Halo”
Naga City Halo Halo Summer Series 3

Chili Peppers Iced Lycee 

Most Delicious Halo- Halo in Bicol 

Naga City Halo- Halo Summer Series 4

Dufan's Fruit Mix
Halo-Halo The Way it Should Be
Naga City Halo- Halo Series 5

  

Pizza, O Pizza. O Yellow Cab Pizza: The Best Pizza in Town

Pizza, O Pizza. O Yellow Cab Pizza.
The Best Pizza in Town 

While we are addicted to Sbarro, except for ordering food to go,
we never really get interested to dine there because of its detestable

location  at the overcrowded and raucous SM City Naga Foodcourt.

Good thing that Yellow Cab has a full store in Naga

and since their pizza is just as good, we get to enjoy a

variety excellent pizza, dining in a restaurant comfort.

Yellow Cab is the only restaurant where no one

disagrees whenever someone suggests dining there.

Who could ever resist the temptation of Four Seasons Pizza.

made of NY Classic, 4 Cheese, Anchovy Lovers, Roasted Garlic

and Shrimp, where they put in four great flavors in one pizza.

I immediately served myself a slice of the delectable

Roasted Garlic and Shrimp and it was very, yummy. 

While my wife ordered her all time

favorite of Chicken Alfredo Pasta,

I feasted on the very delicious and addicting Aglio Olio.

It is a light and tasty pasta recipe with garlic,

olive oil, basil and sun- dried tomatoes, which

surprisingly tastes like  a spiced fresh tomato.

The topping was teeming with
 fresh, plump and juicy shrimps,

…and was served with Garlic Bread.

My daughter got herself Garlic Parmesan Wings

which she got to share with us. and it was very delicious.

While my son wanted to eat something with rice,

so we ordered on at the nearby Bigg’s Diner,

…and delivered a Chicken and Kebab Meal just for him.

We concluded our hearty and satisfying dinner with

a delectable Strawberry Ice Cream for dessert.

Yellow Cab undeniably serves the best pizza in the city-

and definitely the best pizza restaurant in the Bicol Region.

Read the links below for related posts: 

Yellow Cab's Twisted Bread; Pretzels, Glorious Pretzels
Yellow Cab Tango.   
Yellow Cab 3 PM Breakfast 
Yellow Cab @ Bigg’s Fusion Cuisine 
Yellow Cab's Serendipity 
Yellow Cab's New York Pizza; Midnight Indulgence 
Yellow Cab’s Mrs Hudson Pizza 
 Yellow Cab Pizza 2/7 Delivery

 Twisted Bread by Yellow Cab.

Soledad at the Piazza: Filipino- Spanish Cuisine

Soledad at the Piazza 
Filipino- Spanish Cuisine

We had a chance to dine again in Soledad 
one of our favorite restaurants in Naga City,

…and it is the place to go when one is craving

for some of the best Filipino and Spanish dishes.

This time, we immediately browsed the Filipino and Bicolano

section of the menu as we wanted to dine on local Pinoy dishes.

We started our dinner with Sinigang na Hipon.

Although my family loves sinigang, but we are

always been particularly hypersensitive on the

degree of sourness of the dish, that it should not

be enough to wrinkle our faces on acerbic revulsion.

Soledad’s Sinigang na Hipon was perfect, passed our

“mukhasim taste test”, it wasn’t too sour, one could still

eat it smiling, the veggies are fresh and was very delicious.

We always order Boneless Crispy Pata whenever

we dine in Soledad. This is one of the best dishes

that one would ever taste in this restaurant. The

deboned pork thigh was friend to crispy perfection

and the flesh had a melt in the mouth tenderness.

Dinailan is the bagoong counterpart in Camarines Norte

and although it is very tasty, it is also repulsively smelly so

we never really developed fondness on this dish. But we

always order one in Soledad, as they miraculously eliminated

the hideous smell, it wasn’t salty and it tasted really good.

They also serve the best Sinanglay na Tilapia in Bicol.

While the traditional version uses whole fish stuffed with

vegetables like fresh tomatoes and ‘kamias’, wrapped with

pechay leaves and later slowly simmered in coconut milk,

Source: Undercoated

…this one is made of pan seared tilapia fillet, together

with the fresh vegetables simmered in coconut milk. The

fish was served bathed and lying in a pool of ‘gata’, topped

with the veggies instead of being stuffed inside the fish.

I was intrigued by the Inagunan Manok in the menu so we

ordered one. It is a native chicken cooked in smoked coconut

milk that tasted more like a creamy tinola. It was delicious.

We concluded our dinner with Turon topped with

a scoop of vanilla ice cream and chocolate syrup,

…and a serving of delicious

and creamy Leche Flan.

It has always been a pleasure to dine in Soledad-

as the food is good and the service is excellent.

Definitely, one of the best restaurants in the city.

Read on the links below for more: 

• Soledad; Filipino Spanish Cuisine at its Best
• Soledad, Filipino Spanish Restaurant

Chef Doy’s at Cereza: The Best Just Got Bigger

Chef Doy’s at Cereza 
The Best Just Got Bigger 


I met up at Chef Doy’s with a several colleagues in
preparation  for  the upcoming (TEPI) Thomasian
Endocrine Progress Inc., annual convention that would
be held in Naga City, which we would be hosting. 



Chef Doy’s, to my delight had recently undergone
renovation and made the dining area a lot bigger,



…they had a new lovely chopping board menu book,

 
…and the homey Filipino Colonial motif remained. 

 
 We started our dinner with Batang- Batang Pusit   
their bestseller appetizer. It is made of chewy yet
tender baby squid cooked in olive oil and spices.   

We also had Crispy Boneless Dilis for a second appetizer. 
The dried fish was perfectly crunchy, unlike ordinary dilis, 
this one wasn’t salty at all and was deliciously addicting.
It went well with the sweetish tangy mango salsa sides.   

Chef Doy’s virtuosity was once again proven
in  his unique creation of Cream of Tinola. 
It is a reinvented version of the native chicken
tinola, with the traditional green papaya, but this
version had malunggay leaves instead if the usual
sili leaves and the soup was thickened with cream.

This Chef Doy creative ingenuity of deliciously reinventing
a well loved Pinoy old time favorite to a  modern fusion dish    
is a work that only a gifted culinary genius like him can do.

I also had a chance to try the Tinolang Monok sa Melon with
my family in the past. Chef Doy brilliantly tinkered it by replacing
green papaya with ripe cantaloupes resulting to a deliciously   
sweetish version of dish. It was undeniably- a work of a genius.



We also had a crunchy and tasty Crispy Pata.
This may not be Chef Doy’s specialty dish but
his version is still superior compared to the ones
available among some of the restaurants in Naga City.

We also had a delicious Ginataang Puso ng Saging where the  
banana heart was shreded into thin strips, cooked with bits and
 pieces of pork and shrimps then simmered in creamy coconut milk.

The killer dinner dish came as Laing Embutido,
where the traditional Pinoy meat loaf was served
lying on a bed of Laing, another iconic Bicolano dish.

That was not all, it was also stuffed with Laing
and unexpectedly, these two dissimilar dishes put
fused together as a single dish tasted very good.

Interestingly, it is worth mentioning that I was amused that the rice were
 served in cones rather than the usual  rounded cup- shaped mounds. 

 Once more, the genius of Chef Doy 
was evident on this delicious dinner.  

Read the links below for related posts: 

 Chef Doy's; Naga City’s Culinary Gem  
Chef Doy’s, Cereza, Naga City