Heavy rains of Typhoon Pepeng prevented us from planned visit to Baguio City a couple of weeks ago. After hearing from the news that the water in Pangasinan especially in San Fabian where we were staying started to rise and due to the black out with no water supply during that day, we were forced to seek for a safer place to stay along San Fabian and Dagupan area.

We were on our way to Dagupan from San Fabian when I spotted the Leisure Coast Resort along the Bonouan Binloc road in Dagupan City. It’s been three to four years already that I have been passing through this place during our yearly religious activity in San Fabian but I never had a chance to drop or inquire about the place. We didn’t have any information about the resort until that night. We discovered that it is a nicest place to stay in Dagupan Pangasinan area.

We discovered that the place had a lot of beautiful family amenities like their water parks, restaurant, function rooms, Cabana hotel rooms and affordable standard rooms.

Our overnight planned stay extended to 4 days and 3 nights stay and now we are having a problem on how to lose belly fat since its Sabina restaurant offers best local and other Pangasinense delicacies too.

Luckily we, we found the place to be stranded in for a couple of days since Dagupan and the road to San Fabian were submerged in flood water around this time.

I love to eat “Kaldereta” (Goat meat stew) and last year it made me like Goat Kilawin or Kinilaw, too. But what matter most is that I really started to like it more than Adobong kambing and Kaldereta. That’s why I will be needing diet pills every time we were in Pangasinan.

It’s hard to stop me from sneaking and have an order of Goat Kilawin where there’s a lot of “kambingan” restaurant in Mangaldan Area. Sadly, due to typhoon flooding in the area, some of the restaurants closed but it didn’t stop me from traveling more distant places in Dagupan just to have it before coming back to Manila. Although my favorite carinderia here in Makati serves Goat Kilawin, it isn’t offered regularly. Hopefully I could find a restaurant that serves Goat Kilawin regularly.

My wife and I are discussing about who will choose for the furniture that we will buy if ever, Yahweh willing, we will be granted to have our new house. I told her that since I am always in the living room, then I should be the one to choose the living room furniture. I think I should also take care of deciding what will be put in the dining and kitchen room. On the other hand, she could do everything she wants for her office furniture.

When one of the programs on TV showcased the best bulaluhan restaurant in the Metro, I got curious about RJ Bulaluhan that was featured while my wife loves to visit the featured bulalohan found somewhere in Fareview since she loves it with vegetable while I love bulalo soup, marrows and bones fats. Hopefully RJ proves to be the perfect one for me. I would like to post my experience in RJ in the coming days because we are really keen on visiting the place.

Updates: R and J Bulaluhan

We were so lucky that we have been given a chance to attend my sister-in-law’s post wedding dinner in Belgium. The dinner was held in Gravenhof Castle located in Dworp, a small town in the municipality of Beersel, south of Brussels in Belgium.

This Castle was built for Baron Leroy in 1649. The castle was previously surrounded on all sides by water and access via a drawbridge. In the 19th century the four corner towers were added to the castle. This is now converted into a hotel, bar and restaurant. It is a famous place to hold events like wedding. The food was so great. I think I now need natural fat burners for all the foods I consumed that night.

The place is so beautiful. Having a formal dinner in a fine dining restaurant is not new to me but doing so the European way was a first experience. It was truly like having dinner with prominent royalties.

I saw the Josephine’s restaurant and resorts featured on TV four to five months ago. I even suggested it to my family before to give it a try and dine in the Department of Tourism winner of “Kalakbay” Award for restaurant of the year.

Josephine’s is one of the longest running restaurants in the country today that started way back December 22, 1966 when its first restaurant opened to the public. From eight hectares of fishpond business in Kawit, Cavite, it was converted to a restaurant and in May 1967 when it first opened the resort. Josephine’s has branches in some parts of Metro Manila but the most famous one is in Tagaytay.

Two weeks ago before my brother in-law went back to Belgium, we were searching for a place where we could have our lunch and stay for our while before going to airport. Josephine’s came first to our mind since we still have a lot of time left before his flight so we thought why not tour him first in some of the historical place in Kawit and have lunch at Josephine’s.

Although it was my first time to see the place also and didn’t have the idea of specific dishes they are serving but we know they are serving Filipino cuisine. My wife already tried its Tagaytay branch and even suggested before to have lunch there again. We ordered Pancit bihon, fried tilapia, ginataang tilapia which later captured my Belgian brother in-law taste buds, chopsuey, grilled panga ng tuna and bulalo. Imagine these dishes for five adults and one kid only. But we never went wrong as foods here are really great. We almost consumed all of it, I think I need Colonix for all the foods I ate especially those fats from the bulalo. Imagine a Belgian foreigner who is a meat and steak eater eating ginataang tilapia. He will never forget this place and soon we will visit it again.

This will be our most busy week of the entire year 2008. My sister in law fiance visited us from Belgium. To show how Filipino hospitality is we decided to let him fell the and experience how Filipino life could be. Try not only how beef steak are prepared here since he a meat person he also love to eat Filipino caldereta, beef mechado and Bulalo.

We also tour him to the most visited places in Tagaytay and some resort in Cavite aside from his baptism place which is a falls of Tanay Rizal. It is sound wedding invitations in his next visit?

There’s something about Pancake House that gravitates a lot of people with home-bound personalities like me and my family. My officemates who exude laidback personae and belong to closely-knit families also prefer Pancake House for lunch outs. If “family place” is the appeal that the owners would like generate out of Pancake House, I’d say it’s working.

In terms of taste, I’ve ordered its spaghetti like a broken record while my mother patronizes its burger steak. My husband loves its corned beef breakfast meal that comes with fresh fried eggs while my sister likes its salad. Price-wise, the food is rather expensive but you’ll want to forgive the high price tag for that homey ambiance you’re almost always about to experience when you are in Pancake House.