Blackbeard's Seafood Island

We went to Robinson's Magnolia Mall with the Callars for the Halloween weekend sale.  By 6pm, we were already famished from all that walking, and we decided to have dinner at Blackbeard's Seafood Island, which is the popular-priced seafood restaurant of the Red Crab group.  It was good that we arrived earlier than the crowds; by 7pm, the waiting lines were already evident.  The interior motif of the restaurant reminds me of beach resorts (with some surfing twist), and the Blackbeard angle was downplayed with depiction of the pirate as you would in kiddie cartoons.  We started off with some hot bulalo soup, which was what Panizzi wanted.

The restaurant is known for the boodle-boodle style of food service, which feeds from 4-6 persons.  Food is served on a large banana leaf lined tray, and everyone just uses their hands and eats on the banana leaves.  Trays are named after dishes that you would normally find in different locations around the Philippines.  We chose the Magellan's Landing, which according the waiter was among the more popular choices--grilled tilapia, steamed alimango & shrimps, some fried danggit, grilled squid and grilled pork--true to the Cebuano feast!

The girls had the Davao Gulf, which, aside from the seafood and BBQ, had some pomelo salad, steamed tahong, green mango slivers, red eggs and pako (water fern), all of which are common fare in Davao.  This came with lots of rice, in three different variations--plain rice, java rice and bagoong rice.

The meals came with more rice than expected, and the viands were simply lacking, given  our appetite levels.  We wound up ordering 5 more sticks of pork BBQ, which the kids wolfed down in around 2 minutes!  All in all, we spent something like P400 per head for the meal.  While the cooking was not exactly special, the novelty of the boodle-boodle style was something that the kids enjoyed.  I remember that we used to enjoy eating on banana-leaves during fiesta time in the province (that was literally onshore, seaside).  Since I haven't been able to take the kids to a real fiesta experience, this is just one way to recreate the experience in the middle of the concrete jungle.