Pig with X factor
Ihave often heard my aunt Tita Blitte proclaim something as que rico. At first I thought she was saying, “Kay Rico” or something belongs to Rico, because we do have a friend named Rico. She laughed when I told her this. “Ay, OK, it means in Spanish that something is delicious. In some usages, it can even mean something or someone is adorable or sexy or really good. Rico in Spanish means rich.”
My little lesson in Spanish came in handy when relatives from Pampanga came to Cebu a week before classes opened this year. They wanted to experience the richness of Cebu and so who were we to complain about showing off our beautiful island province.
We had day travels around city tourist spots and other points of interest in the outskirts of Cebu. Food was the next essential that we “instant tourist guides” welcomed.
One place we took them to was Larsian, which serves puso, or raw rice boiled inside a casing made of woven coconut leaves, shaped like a diamond. “It’s uniquely Cebuano,” they said.
After visiting some common friends the next day, we decided to dine at STK Ta Bay. We ordered the specialy of the house, grilled tuna panga ( jaw) and utan Bisaya, since they wanted something very Cebuano.
I feared that the panga would not be enough, but it was meaty enough to fill six hungry tummies. Our guests admired the vegetable soup, saying, “It’s like dinengdeng, only it’s more soupy. We’ll replicate this once we get home to Pampanga.”
One day before their trip back to Pampanga, the question was where to get tasty lechon as they wanted something that would remind them of Cebu’s richness. It’s not that they hadn’t tried the other lechon types in Cebu, but I think they wanted pig with X factor.
We took them to Rico’s Lechon. They were impressed by the SRO lunch crowd but didn’t mind waiting five minutes to get seated.
The restaurant is named after owner Enrico “Rico” Dionson, and borrowing from that name was not a misnomer. The food, in simple words, is rico and filling, the serving size ample.
We ordered a bowl of monggos (mung bean soup), which had lechon bits and the aromatic green onions used to stuff the lechon belly. I whispered to Krystalle, my niece: “Will this be enough for the six of us?” No worry. All of us had second servings of the muy rico ( lit. very rich) or very delicious soup, according to my aunt, Tita Blitte.
The star dish didn’t disappoint, a kilo of it that we estimated to be honestly a kilo of lechon because all of us ate with gusto but at the end of the meal we still had leftovers.
“This is lechon with X factor. The meat tastes clean, and is so tender, the rind crisp but not oily. We gotta take home some of it,” our relatives said. “Thanks. We had a rich experience.”