Coron Village Bar & Resto

I would like to applaud Coron Village for delicious foods rather than for its accommodation. But that's another story. Check Coron Village later at Ascertain Bliss. Coron Village Bar & Resto has a museum like ambiance.







The guests are in for an eye feast treat of the owner's souvenir collections, I assume from his/her extensive around the world trips.

The art collections are good diversion while waiting for your order to be served.

Prices are within the town's food cost range.

We had a late night snack here one time we came from a whole day tour.



The night weather was permissible of al fresco dining so we decided to be served at the garden.

Cocktails were good. A hint of good tasting dishes to come. We ordered common snacks such as calamares, pansit and clubhouse sandwich.

calamares- tasty and good quality squid inside the batter

pansit-very tasty. luv it!

club house sandwich - brother had it gone in a minute, must be good!



We were actually pleasantly surprise that we enjoyed the foods here. Nobody had endorsed this place to us and some of the popular dining places (in this town) we tried were disappointing even. so when you happen to visit Coron Town, Coron Village Bar & Resto is a safe and delicious place to fill up your ranting tummies.

Bistro Coron

Bistro Coron was a top listed resto from the word of mouth of the locals of Coron Town. Bloggers who had been in this side of Luzon, also overrated this Bistro as one of the must place to eat when in town.



We followed our appetite and took hold from trying out this resto up until our last night when we had enough of local delicacies and started to miss the city menu which Bistro Coron specializing on.

It was an odd, tiny structure in the center of the small town. I even saw some laundry clothes hanging on the 2nd floor, one night we passed by.

At this point, we were already craving for the usual city junks_ pizza, ice cream, burgers, pasta, etc. The menu was loaded with everything we were looking for, at a price as costly as the city prices.

I figured that Coron Town's restaurants were expensive, opposite from  their low profile structures they seemingly sported. Fairly enough, it was surprising to find good, sophisticated foods in a tiny town. Credit it to the rising popularity of the town's tourism industry.

I was not sure if it was an isolated case, but we had experienced  a very low quality customer relations, courtesy of the waitress who served us that short night at Bistro Coron. It was a very unbecoming experience in the town which until that particular server of B.C., I was so impressed how tourist friendly everyone was. From the owners of the establishments down the tricycle drivers . This one from B.C. was quite odd!

We might had tried other food from the menu but the ill-tempered server short listed our order down to one drink each and a namesake pizza.
The server must rubbed the ill mood to us and we lost appetite to stay and finished our pizza. Another thing that turned us off was the presentation of the pizza. It was served bare in an old, seemingly abused tray. While the cheeses were flowing down the dirty tray. eeeekk.
Now, I couldn't share how the pizza rated cos I hardly took a bite of it. We asked for it to be taken out and the server charged us for the to-go-cutlery (plastic) . Even when we asked for ketchup/hot sauce. the server charged us. Whew! We ran as fast as we could from the place and tried to find some place to compensate for the thumbed down Bistro Coron.

p.s. : we donated the left over pizza, which was still a whole lot, to the vendors we saw first in street.

Coron Harvest

The one and only authentic product that you can buy at Coron Town is cashew nut. This is the only one of the few harvests this province can produce cos of the limitation of planting soil. The province is laden with red soil which  mineral-ly contained manganese . There are also other  fruit bearing trees that can be  planted as potential commercial harvest for the place, but the locals choose to focus and work on the obvious gifts of nature to them which are fishing and tourism . This town is undoubtedly gifted with  marine wealth and is not yet at all interested to dig soil. 



When you ask Coron where to buy cashew nuts, there's only one name which echoes from blogosphere back to the origin town - Lita Escarda. Tourist could hardly miss the place cos it 's on the way to Maquinit Hot Spring which is one of the destinations included in Coron tour.

I'm sure there are many others in the town who produce the same caliber of L. Escarda's cashew nuts, but for some reason, yet to be heard in the future.



Aling Lita was obviously relax and very comfortable posing with her customers.

garlic cashew nuts

Why not?, she has been doing it everyday for the longest time. Her wall was loaded with celebrities' photo ops.

two different sugar coated cashew nuts

She had been interviewed by popular t.v. shows from major broadcasting such as channel 2 and 7 and lately was featured in Living Asia Channel. And ofcourse continually being blogged in the internet, obviously. Apart from Aling Lita's endearing public relations, which could be one of her secrets of popularity. . .



toasted cashew nuts
. . . her cashew nuts really walk the talk ! They are fresh and crunchy and good quality.

Balunsagin

Do you know what these are? Nah, they are not Christmas ornaments,but can be used as such why not? With their deep red color which speaks of a happy season., they would surely make a tree more christmasy.





They are called balunsagin , Edible fruits. some are sweet, some are sour.The seeds are not meant to eat thu' as usual . You just prick out the translucent flesh with seed in the middle, throw into your mouth, make sure you don't swallow the seed . It's like eating a fresh lychee.

We met a local gentleman in Coron, Palawan and introduced the fruit to us. He said the fruit was his childhood snack while playing in the wilds with his playmates. They would happily climbed balunsagin trees and got as plenty as they wanted. The trees look as the above photo and found in the midst of mountain forest.

Definitely a wild fruit.

Sea Dive Restaurant

In the mornings we hung out at Sea Dive Resort's restaurant for breakfast. No, we didn't stay at this overrated water front divers' hotel in Coron. It was just that somebody mentioned the good food of Sea Dive. We tried it one morning and got satisfied and went back each morning of our 5 days stay in the town. Well, first of all we hadn't found any resto there that served satisfying breakfast as Sea Dive, gastronomically speaking and economically as well.

So each day when we woke up, instead of grabbing the buffet breakfast downstairs our hotel room in Coron Gateway, we walked some blocks away, strolled the quaint bridge, pursued our favorite spot.

.. which was the only  table outside the roof. If not available, we didn't have choice but to get inside. The ambiance was so relax, so backpackers, soo sporty divers. . .

The market was definitely international. . .
One thing though, I hadn't tasted the rest of the menu outside breakfast dishes, so raves and rants are solely for bf foods only : 



Sea Dive breakfast special-ham omelet, bread, vegie slices, chutney and butter
*breads, sour cream and pineapple chutney were homemade-ly delicious



Cuzin'  on a- pretend- diet thought she'd walk away from meat that morning and ordered local dried fish plate. .



.. to her delightful surprise she got a twin sunrise eggs. .

Beef tapa of my brother was tapa-buluos!. .actually all plates had two eggs, I think even my ham omelet used two eggs. The chef might be considering those calories would be easily melt away in the course of an action full packed usual day at Coron. Secondly, Sea Dive cooked for divers anyway.

-bacon plate



-a repeat of beef  tapa plate the next morning
So the following mornings, we indicated that we were not interested with extra egg, gladly they reduced the number of our eggs.

Hey before I forget, coffee and teas were on them. Yess, free! There were even a choice of brewed or instant coffee. nice!
There were also some plates to rant about :



-fruit plate- the only sweet one was the mango



Sea Dive salad, thumbsdown for value of money. Quite pricey for cabbage, some slices of cucumber and tomatoes . Dressing was so-so. Unhappy with this!

Deceivingly delicious pancake but quite short in yummyness. Not happy with this plate.

But very happy with . . .ooppsss. .  you dirty minds :)))  the super-PR owner of the place who was really making butterfly rounds the place. His personal customer service was great.



look _ sweetness ever to everyone, even with my cousin whose arm was being pinch by Mr. Sea Dive while chanting yummy, yummy,yummy!!!! Which one, your food or cuzin'?

Coron Gateway Restaurant

After Mt. Tapyas, we rushed down to our hotel (Coron Gateway) famished and exhausted. We went straight to the hotel restaurant on the ground floor to take our early lunch. Although we could do room service, cuzin' and brother had no energy to get up to our room and too hungry to wait. I on the other hand felt too sweaty and smelly to enjoy a good lunch. So while they were waiting for our orders, I went up to our room for a quick shower.

When I got back foods weren't completely served yet. Fresh and ready for lunch, cuzin' regretted for not doing the same. We were supposedly took our lunch here the day before but we saw how crowded the place with guests so we made a pass. This time thu, it was empty cos it was an hour early to lunch.
The place is facing the ocean with a wonderful view of the islands. Dining here was actually a scenic experience.

grilled stuffed squid

sisig

chicken________

I was not sure if it was the ultra-hunger but everything was delicious!!! although again lacking in authenticity to represent a Coron dish .