Here’s part two of  the Carnation Family Food Trip, hosted in cooperation with Appetite magazine. We visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Caysasay (which means kingfisher) and the miraculous Sta. Lucia Well.

We said hello to the penguin that stands outside the shrine (What the statue of an Antarctic bird is doing in a tropical country, I don’t know. It’s cute, though).

Visited the Basilica of San Martin…

And had lunch at the Escuela Pia Cultural Center.

Where we were greeted by awesome Batanguenas,

And treated to lunch, which consisted of:

Adobo sa Luyang Dilaw (Adobo with yellow ginger, here quite milky because of the added milk (this is a Carnation trip, after all), though they had the original, milkless version too), Tapang Taal, Inihaw na Tilapia (grilled tilapia) and Bulanlang, a vegetable salad called Dinengdeng in the North

And various desserts, including minatamis na saba (sweetened bananas) my personal favorite being the champorado (chocolate rice porridge) served with ice cream and Carnation evaporated milk. I was fortunate to get the very last bowl. The champorado was thick, its sweetness provided by the accompanying ice cream while its texture was thinned by the milk. The rice was soft, but not gooey. I want to know who made it so I can kidnap him or hr and make her my official champorado cook.

But the best part of the meal was the coffee. Never have I tasted coffee so fragrant, good, you didn’t have to put sugar in it because it was naturally sweet. When I asked the servers where I could get beans, they looked at me as if I was crazy and said, “the market.” Now I know what really good coffee tastes like.