Eat and Run Santiago City, Isabela

With the museum geek in him satiated, Tutubi, and his two companions proceeded to their destination just around the corner from Balay na Santiago, a quaint restaurant advertising bangus (milkfish) grill and bibingka.

Branding the name Genaro's bangus grill, the place is a late replacement for the earlier planned trip to Hose 48 Steakhouse for their steaks raved by other bloggers, that sports a simple homey ambiance. A freezer where you point to various ingredients, sort of a Sutukil, on display and cooked per your directions either sinigang (sour broth), nilaga (soupy), inihaw (grilled)



On Bangus, they Genaro's Grill, even with the name grill to the name, serves rellenong bangus, sisig na bangus, kilawin, paksiw and the usual daing na bangus. Typical grill fare of sizzling pork sisig, bangus belly and sizzling squid.



For the sinigang (Filipino style soup with sour broth) there are options for shrimp, prawns, pink salmon, cream dory (pangasius), pork, beef with price range of P180 to P360 (sinigang na sugpo)

Since they're only three and with limited budget, they just ordered sinigang na pink salmon plus the so-called Genaro's treat, a sampler of inihaw na talong (grilled eggplant), grilled milkfish and inihaw na liempo (grilled pork spareribs) with spicy dips.

Pink Salmon in sinigang broth

After the early heavy dinner, Tutubi proceeded to Monte Carlo Hotel for his well-deserved rest and slept soundly throughout the night...

At 7 in the morning, after taking his complimentary breakfast of daing na bangus, Tutubi checked out of the hotel and drove back to Manila. It's in Santiago City's center that they got caught inside heavy traffic due to an on-going parade that he realized that the city's celebrating the fiesta in honor of San Santiago (St. James whose feat day falls on July 25), the same patron saint of his hometown Paete in Laguna. Traffic was so heavy that even large trailer trucks were forced by the city government to traverse the labyrinthine alleys of the city with so little room for maneuvering.

The attempts to evade traffic and find a way out of the city bore positive results when Tutubi stumbled on an old house, bahay na bato architecture, said to be the ancestral house of the Abaya clan while out of an unknown street corner saw a Chinese temple.

Santiago Chinese Temple, no idea if Taoist temple or not since Tutubi just passed by the street where it's located
The ancestral home of the Abayas in Santiago City

From there Tutubi retraced the route back to Manila, stopping momentarily again at G&B in Bagabag, Nueva Vizcaya to buy buko pies as pasalubong, searched for the former POW concentration camp in Cabanatuan City and finally a last minute pasalubong shopping at Sevilla Sweets in San Miguel, Bulacan for the famous pastillas.