Siomai (Cebu Must-Try Street Food #4)
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4. Siomai
Siomai — another Cebuano favorite with Chinese culinary roots. It’s made of chopped pork, some spices, and then wrapped with a dumpling wrapper. This popular steamed dumpling is usually served with a spicy garlic oil, soy sauce, and some fresh lemons. It also has other variations wherein other delectable ingredients come to join the wagon and they party inside the dumpling wrapper producing a very palatable, flavorful piece of culinary masterpiece. This is the kind that has shrimp, quail egg, mushroom, bacon, and more aromatic spices.
There are many siomai street vendors in Cebu but one has risen among its peers to be called the best tasting street siomai by Cebuanos. This is the very famous “Siomai sa Tisa”. A taste of the this original siomai will make you clearly distinguish why it is a cut above the rest. To find it, you simply need to go to the food district in Tisa, as its name suggests. There you will find plenty of food vendors selling the best tasting siomais in town. You will also notice that they serve other delicious items that go well with it like pancit canton, noodles, chicharon, lumpia, etc. It’s also very cheap there like around 6-7 pesos so you can gobble and sink your teeth to as many as you can. The best time to go there is when the sun has set and the stars are visible in the sky.
Why try it? Many fancy restaurants also sell very delicious variations of it. The thing is that they don’t come cheap and you might be limited to eating just a few pieces. But with the original Siomai sa Tisa, you can spoil your taste buds with as many as you can and with the same mouth-watering goodness and all that within your budget.