07/07/2025
Our founder's legacy lives on in the food we proudly serve at our events and make available online at www.kusinanimariacatering.com
The previous post featured Doreen G. Fernandez's final In Good Taste column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer that saw print on July 4, 2002, ten days after she passed away in New York; this seems to have been the first-- published on September 23, 1986 in the then only 9-month-old broadsheet....................
The restaurants of Metro Manila are a varied, multi-cultural, changing landscape that reflect the current interests of the Philippine palate. This is a development of the last decade, before which "eating out" always meant American or Continental/Spanish food. Now, however, there are not only the older restaurants offering the best Spanish food in Asia and Chinese food of Fookien/Cantonese origin, but also the newer ones offering a proud range of native cuisine, and a whole galaxy of others purveying American, Japanese, Korean, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, Singaporean, Indonesian, etc. cooking-- reflective of the Filipino's developing tastes and international linkages.
KUSINA NI MARIA (108 Jupiter St., Bel Air, Tel. 853165) belongs to the middle category: the "new" Philippine restaurants. 20 years ago, the only public eating places offering native dishes were carinderias, pondohan, and a minority of restaurants like Aristocrat, Bulakeña, and Selecta. Today there is a proliferation, a big enough number to justify moving away from the old staples (adobo, bistek, tapa), and venturing into specialization.
Kusina's specialty is Zamboanga food of a native (indigenous, not colonial) persuasion. Not only are owners Bulak and Butch Bustalino from Zamboanga, but most of the food served (except for oysters bought at seaside, for example) are flown in regularly from there. The list starts with blue marlin which, to our knowledge, is only available from Zamboanga or Bicol. This is the large fish that is sought by deep-sea, game fishermen. The belly makes succulent fish steaks; the fins, charcoal grilled, are fleshy, and a gustatory experience. Kusina serves charcoal-broiled belly of marlin, which we found excellent even without the sauce accompanying.
The crabs served also fly in. These are small alimango, especially nurtured for the restaurant in Zamboanga fishponds, where male and female crabs are segregated, and the latter fattened to develop aligue. Most Filipinos like aligue better than the fat of the male crab, which has its own perfection a different flavor and texture. Those who have tasted the seasonal Shanghai crabs in Hong Kong know that the male crabs there are considered the greater delicacy.
The Kusina crabs have backs packed with aligue which one has to pry out. They are offered asado (cooked in oil, garlic, soy, and green onions) or-- a new dish-- tostado (dipped in batter and fried crisp, Chinese style).
Other dishes are kinunot na pagi (baby sting ray), pinalutong na kulitis (native spinach crackling), tapang usa and tapang baboy damo (when available). A unique Halo-halo Pampanga is served in a coconut shell instead of a glass, and the crushed ice is flavored by large chunks-- not bits-- of macapuno, ube, leche flan, carabao milk pastillas, langka, and kaong. It reminds one of the beginnings of halo-halo, when I speculate, the Filipino added his tastes to the Japanese crushed ice refresher sold by Japanese food vendors in turn-of-the-century Manila. Between that and the sleek homogenized version served in hotels lies Kusina's halo-halo. The charming Bulak Bustalino, whose voice and smile have a Southern lilt, continues to innovate, and is currently experimenting with sweetened guava shells, evolving a still-unnamed dessert. Kusina is definitely worth a visit.
Kusina ni Maria
By Doreen G. Fernandez
In Good Taste
Philippine Daily Inquirer
September 23, 1986
