Ivatan Salted Pork, Puttanesca With Yuyuno Fish: Catch Batanes Specials at Grace Park This Month

(SPOT.ph) All around the globe, we see countless food traditions arise from a need to cope with the state of its surroundings. In the Philippines, for example, there's Ivatan cuisine—a cuisine born out of survival, according to Patsy Abad of Café du Tukon at Basco’s Fundacion Pacita. After all, Batanes’ location on the northernmost tip of the Philippines makes it highly susceptible to typhoons, but this has birthed a spirit of adaptability in its people; and with it, a fascinating food culture centered on preservation.

The cuisine can be hard to come by in Manila, but it’s now the subject of exploration over at Grace Park. The restaurant is spotlighting uved, luñes, yuyuno, and other Ivatan delicacies through a special menu you don’t want to miss, available only this month.

Also read: Amado Forés Continues Chef Margarita's Legacy, Leads the Way at Cibo

Grace Park has partnered up with Fundacion Pacita, the cultural landmark in Basco, Batanes that Pacita Abad once called home. Fundacion Pacita first collaborated with Chef Margarita Forés in 2015, with Margarita visiting Batanes herself and teaching the Fundacion Pacita team the art of cooking perfectly al-dente pasta. At the time, they came up with a special menu that year that was available for about a week. 10 years later, we see the rightful continuation of that partnership, in the form of a new menu available for a whole month—that is, until September 30. Grace Park is bringing over cooks from Fundacion Pacita to work alongside their team, using ingredients brought in by Patsy herself. (Patsy also happens to be Pacita’s niece!)

“[The food of Batanes] was born out of… really, survival. The ingredients that we use, it's all like fermented or dried [or preserved in some way],” Patsy tells SPOT.ph. “We’re always thinking about… what happens during rainy season. So [we value] preparedness in terms of the way we live.” Though she acknowledges that it’s not necessarily as in-your-face flavorful compared to other Filipino cuisines, e.g. Kapampangan food, it is flavorful in its own right and “very nutritious.” “I think the fact that the raw ingredients are so fresh makes it really, really good. Even if it's just a little bit of sangkap, even if it's so simple, the fact that it's fresh and it's direct from the source makes it really good.”

Some of the dishes on the lineup are Grace Park’s versions of Ivatan classics; others are dishes with a more Grace Park-fied backbone, but done using Ivatan ingredients and delicacies. For one, there’s the Uved Soup (P270), a ginger-tinged soup with uved—essentially meatballs with fish, pork, and banana corm. The corm, ICYDK, is a part of the banana plant found at the base of its trunk, which the Ivatans cleverly make use of (it lends a slightly fibrous texture to the meatballs) to minimize wastage.

There are decidedly filling rice dishes on the lineup highlighting sun-drying and salting, two common Ivatan methods of preservation. The Day-Old Hahay (P560) stars cured local needlefish, which Grace Park fries ‘til golden-brown (its meaty, subtly salty flesh can't be beat) and serves with crab fat rice and an egg. Don’t miss the Luñis (P530), a dish of salted pork slow-cooked in its own fat that happens to be one of Batanes’ best-known, most well-loved specialties. “Each household would have a jar of luñis in their kitchen… [usually they come] in M.Y. San tins. You would see [the jars covered with] fingerprints of lard.” Going by tradition, Grace Park serves it with rice tinged golden by turmeric, and ensaladang talong that's as punchy as it is creamy.

Batanes’ fish delicacies also work beautifully with the Italian-Mediterranean flavor profile, as Grace Park demonstrates in the Yuyuno Puttanesca (P530), which gets its characteristic umami from olive oil infused with yuyuno (Ivatan fermented fish) in place of traditional anchovies. On the richer end of the spectrum is the Arayu Pinpin Penne Cream Pasta (P590), where arayu (dried mahi-mahi) lends subtle seafood-y depth to a fish cream sauce, before the dish is finished with ducban (Batanes lemon) zest.

Whatever your order, you’ll want to quench your thirst with the Tubho Iced Tea (P189)—an iced version of a very typical tea consumed by Ivatans in the morning, made by brewing the dried leaves of the tubho fern. By itself the tea is a touch earthy and nutty, but Grace Park adds in calamansi and sugar syrup to brighten the mix and sweeten it just a touch. For dessert, there’s what’s called Diko Fritters (P290), whose golden-brown, powdered sugar-dusted exterior makes way to a tender interior of matchstick-cut sweet potatoes.

The best part about Grace Park’s Batanes menu? Every dish you order gets you a ticket to enter their raffle for a trip for two to Batanes, inclusive of round-trip flights from Clark via Philippine Airlines and a four-day, three-night stay at Fundacion Pacita. They’ll be choosing one  winner each from Grace Park One Rockwell and Grace Park Araneta, to be announced this October.

Grace Park is a homegrown restaurant by Chef Margarita Forés. It opened its first outpost at One Rockwell in 2013, followed by a second branch at Cubao’s Gateway 2 in 2023.