A recent trip took me and a couple of chefs to Dagupan, Pangasinan. The businesses and entrepreneurs in this trading hub at the Northern Luzon area seems to be at pace with their highway developments such as the improved NLEX and the new SCTEX. New restaurants and franchises seem to have their eyes focused on this area with the mushrooming of so many new choices to dine in.

Although an urban center, Dagupan has still maintained a lot of its rustic flavors, even in its surrounding areas. A visit to nearby Calasiao, had us popping the smooth, lightly chewy and snow-white puto sold in that market lane by pretty and rather smartly clad girls tending to their rice cake stalls. (I’ve been wondering if looks are an overt marketing tool for puto.). On another route, we went to Mangaldan Market and bought coolers of freshly slaughtered (still warm) carabao meat, cured carabao tapa, old-style limes (dalayap) and some excellent dried fish from the seaside areas.

As we had observed, the Dagupeño and probably the Pangasinan resident has this particular preference for fresh meat. This seems to be an antithesis to all the procedures on aging and tenderizing meat.

In Dagupan, fresh meat rules and is evident in the proliferation of pigar pigar stalls. This is a stall where a piece of freshly slaughtered meat is hung and displayed in front. The fresh meat can either be beef or the darker carabao and is immersed in a mix of simmering oil and suet with a huge batch of sliced onions. One can extend this dish by asking them to put cauliflower or whatever vegetable they have. Sometimes, liver is used instead of lean meat.

What‘s phenomenal though is that pigar pigar is all around Dagupan. The most profitable open-air joints are on Galvan St. beside an old condemned cinema. The flavors are simple; in fact, there is hardly any difference between the stalls. The profit basically boils down to the stalls’ suki.

When an order of pigar pigar arrives, one sees slivers of meat piled and mixed with lightly limped onions fried in the beefy-tasting oil. Naturally, we went more exotic and had the leaner, darker carabao meat that was not tough at all. (I guess we got a good cut, it could be hit and miss.) The onions were wonderfully sweet with a light crunch and bursting with its own and absorbed juices. In the custom of Dagupan, dips of either soy or fish sauce mixed with calamansi and chili are large and very deep. The flavors become cumulative and the richness of the buffalo flesh is felt after the third bite with the crunch, texture and sweet juiciness of the onion mixing with the meat.

Another favorite evening pastime in Dagupan is eating kaleskesan. These stalls selling braised beef and beef offal on wood-fired stoves truly have a provincial flavor and feel (even though the kaleskesan area, which is beside the fire station, is done in pink as the motif of cleanliness by the politician who sponsored it.) The gentle wood-fire cooking and flavors are imbibed by the long simmered parts. The sellers are quick to show the parts of their “stew” for the evening and you can choose from brisket, belly, liver, and big intestine to tripe, among others. When unsure, they would even slice off a part for you to sample.

In this place, you can have all the flavorful soup you want. Some of my buddies were amazed by my two rounds. I first had librillo or the fine tripe with sliced tito. But the best bowl I had for the evening was one which had a combination of tender beef hearts with the thick aorta braised to crunchy tenderness. I was just a little sad that our dip or sawsawan was not local or homemade patis. It was a commercial label. (I do miss our trips from Baguio where we would stop at every province. The Dagupan stopover was for bagoong and patis.) It was a rather rare texture I had encountered and the soothing yet hearty soup was another wonderful nightcap to a week of hard heavy rains.