Dampa sa DM

Dampa Alley

April 29, 2007. During one of those nights when one of our brotherhood or sisterhood felt like eating, someone suggested Dampa. I think it was Rondic and Rodney who did the inviting so with a family that never says no to eating invitations, we all braved the distance from Quezon City to Diosdado Macapagal Avenue to go to the dampa. As such, we had to leave early and various cell phone calls were made to one vehicle to another to make sure none of us lost our way.

our 'boy' or shopping assistant

So, finally we arrive at the dampa, or wet market and chose Master Cook of Hong Kong as our dining place. The procedure in dampa is to choose a restaurant. From there, they'll ask a 'boy' or a helper to bring you to the wet market where you're supposed to buy your main ingredients for your meal. He brings with him a pail where you dump all the stuff you've bought for cooking at the resto. The marketing is the most exciting part. The wet market is relatively clean and odorless.

sea grapes or 'lato' as we call it in Cebu
great with vinegar, tomato, ginger, onion and salt

mussels or 'tahong'
yummy baked with butter, cheese, mayo and garlic
cousin Val has a delish recipe for this!

aphrodisiacs abound in dampa... hehehe....

It is fun to see all the seafood available. Walking deeper will get you to the meat department and then the fruits area. I just am not quite sure if the prices here are cheaper than in Farmer's or in other wet markets. I do know for a fact that some stall owners here supply oysters and other fresh seafood to restaurants and houses. But it's already with 'patong' because they are also just the middle men. Oysters, for instance, come from Capiz.

not exactly alive, but fresh, nonetheless

mini lobsters - catch for the day
now these are live!!!

After choosing our fresh and live ingredients, these are brought to the receiving area of the restaurant where they check what you've marketed and tell them how you want to have it cooked/prepared. Then, it's waiting time til they serve the food.

All in all, I wasn't very impressed with the way Master Cook cooked our food. I was happy with the giant shrimp (more like prawns!) tempura but all the rest were nothing great. We had crabs, oyster cake, fish sinigang (wrong choice of fish, though), steamed shrimps (oh, this was good also!), fried rice, liempo, among others.

Whether or not the dampa was worth the long ride depends on what mood I'm in. Being a shallow person who enjoys trips to the market, I'd still go back and would even bring guests there if only for the experience and the fun of actually doing the marketing myself. We just need to look for a better restaurant the next time around.

Damage: If I remember correctly, we spent around P14k for the ingredients and the cooking. Not bad considering we were 21 adults and 10 kids!