I’m living in vacation inception with a vacation in a vacation. We’re getting out of the city and heading to the beach. Coron is part of Palawan, a set of destination islands in the Philippines with beautiful beaches that make it a popular tourist attraction. We’re spending our days island hopping on tour boats and waiting up for firefly kayak tours at night. It’s a trek but it’s a beautiful place. Of course Islands and beaches mean seafood and Christel’s mom is set on some lobster from a restaurant she remembers from their previous travels here.
LOCATION: 5 Coron - Busuanga Rd, Coron Town Proper, Busuanga, Palawan, Philippines
We drive up and down the main streets of Coron and lucky for us its a small town set up for tourists so things are relatively easy to find. We circle around to this open air restaurant, all these places remind me of Vietnam. It’s too hot for closed off buildings so big open spaces with fans to circulate air are how things work in this part of the world. We walk in and make a beeline for the tanks of lobsters. It turns out lobsters look different here and of course that makes sense because we’re not in America so why would there be a Maine Lobster but for some reason this didn’t dawn on me until this very moment. A lobster is a lobster, right? Apparently not.
Tiger lobsters are the type that live in the Philippines so this guys is who we’re having for dinner. Well, maybe not THIS guy because he’s huge and that means he’s pricey. This guy is just the show stopper that brings people in and weighing in around 15kg he’s a sight to see. We calculate it an he’s gonna cost a few hundred dollars so we opt for one of his smaller brothers. Tiger lobsters are so cool to look at with their coloring like this and patterns on their legs and bodies but what struck me was that these guys don’t have pinchers. Instead they have long point-y front legs. I guess they just stab their prey. In any case, I think I’ll stick to the Maine Lobster for that extra claw meat.
We pick out a more modestly sized lobster and order a few more dishes like calamari but also some pork sisig to round out our dinner for four. Our lobster comes out with a garlic butter sauce and it tastes so good we’re excited. This food overall isn’t exceptional compared to everything we’ve been eating but it’s a good time and I’m pretty content with it all. We’re stuffed by the end because Christel’s mom tends to order one dish too many for us but these are not terrible problems to have. Tiger lobsters don’t taste too different from Maine Lobsters so don’t go all the way to Asia just to have one of these but if you’er in the area, there’s no better place for seafood than right by the sea.