There’s a new gourmet experience in town. Bacolod, known for its good food, has a new dining adventure to offer to both locals and visitors alike. It’s an open-air-dining-beneath-the-stars kind of night that makes eating more fun and alive.
Metro Manila has many Mercato-type dining places. Even when I stayed overnight at MNL Hostel, there was a food fair kind of set-up at a nearby parking area.
SM City Bacolod has introduced this kind of experience as it transforms its N4 Parking into a food ground where music, laughter, and the whiff of great food fill the air. The Negros Gourmet Experience, which runs from June 12 to 14, 2015 at 5 pm to 11 pm, is something that SM is hoping to organize on a regular basis. And from 12 gourmet superstars, it is looking at expanding its number of exhibitors to offer more food choices to diners.
As soon as we got there at 6 pm, we got a table for our group while the sun was setting at the horizon. People started pouring in — families, group of friends, officemates — all came to this portion of the North Parking lot.
At one area, stalls of food outlets were lined up – Sbarro, Yellow Cab, Cafe Bob’s, Bob’s, Homegrown Bar, Gorka, Txacho, Chifa, Sage, Timeout, C’s, and Chicken Deli, plus the Bacolod Sorbetes at the far corner.
These exhibitors brought us food samples for our group to feast on. Gorka has delectable dimsum (Wantan) and noodle meals, with the fine, firm Chinese noodles surprisingly yummy even without the veggies and meat that came with it.
Chifa, known for its Peruvian Asian cuisine, brought us Churros a la Chalaca (steamed muscles with veggie mix), Cubano pork, Polla Saltado (chicken in bread), and Lomo Saltado (beef or lamb in bread).
Txacho, on the other hand, which has been carving a name in Bacolod because of its Spanish tapas, served their signature paella mixta and paella negra and txistorra (Basque chorizo) with roasted garlic. They even gave each of us a glass of Sangria!
Cafe Bob’s let us tried their Saddam’s Shawarma varieties of beef wrap, beef chorizo, and all beef. It was tasty as people lined up for a piece of their shawarmas.
My favorite was the grilled pork chop from Timeout Resto. The server brought vinegar and soy sauce where we can dip the pork but we ate their specialty without the condiments, the pork was still very tasty and delicious (and easy to chew on, too!)
Sbarro also brought us their various pizza slices. I wished there were baked zittis and pasta but the pizza alone could make one go full.
Homegrown Bar gave us bottles of their Negros Pale Ale (NPA), a local concoction and an interesting one, at that.
As the first Negros Gourmet Experience, it was a great start to something big. I hope to see this continue and grow. I’m especially excited to be in the grand food festival in October in celebration of the Masskara Festival.