banquets in Bacolod

Coming back to the homestead means spending time with family and friends whom we dearly missed, relaxing and recalibrating for our more hectic lives abroad.

It also means food. All our favourite, native food, that we crave and dream about when we're in our adopted countries and away from Filipino kitchens.

The food we love most when we're home is definitely seafood. Giant prawns, sushi, shellfish, squid, grilled fish...everything fresh, full of omega-3, and incredibly inexpensive. This means we can eat our favourite Japanese food at a restaurant for a fraction of the price charged in Western countries.

Special sashimi plate from Inaka

We couldn't resist using our newly-acquired macro lenses to take a closer look at the textures in our servings.

Tobiko (flying fish roe)

Uni (sea urchin)

Saba (mackerel) and maguro (tuna)

Spicy tuna salad (our favourite!) and the house green tea

We also had to visit our favourite Filipino restaurants - like Aboy's, featuring dishes such as squid stewed in its own ink, the traditional adobo, and banana hearts in coconut milk.

photo courtesy of Nicolo Torre

But when it comes to food, as in many other things, there's no place like home. The combined kitchens of our family's three households rolled out holiday feasts that were perfect for sharing.

photos courtesy of Nicolo Torre

Our tables groaned with lamb stew, grilled steak, squid ink paella, kaldereta, prawns thermidor, and loads of other dishes...all accompanied by rice of different kinds. Without hesitation we devoured even the stranger seafood - this trilobite-like freshwater crayfish, for example, called pitik-pitik, was as good as lobster for us.

photo courtesy of Nicolo Torre

So with typical Filipino humour, we take our food with laughter, conversation and the pleasure of good company. Our hometown cuisine may not be grammatically correct or aesthetically perfect, but it's certainly...