VISITORS to Dagupan City in the province of Pangasinan located in the Northern Luzon region of the Philippines often ask the first question to themselves or to their hosts: “Where’s a good place to eat?”

These questions should be easy to answer for the native Dagupeno who knows nooks and crannies in this big,little city. But what if the visitors are asking each other and have no native resource person to ask around? Somehow, one among them should be able to provide the answer. And that’s probably him (or her) who has read this blog.

Pedrito’s Bakeshop and Restaurant, Matutina’s Seafoods Restaurant and Siapno’s Seafoods Restaurant still lord it over in terms of general clientele hereabouts. That is, ever since Dagupena Restaurant,the crown business of the couple Alex Castro and wife, Emma Bernal, relocated to nearby Calasiao town and left its primus inter pares position in restaurant row to the others.

Pedrito’s, managed by the Tordesillas; Matutina’s, by the Balingits of Mekeni country (Pampanga) roots and, not to forget, presidential intimates too and Siapno’s by the big Siapno clan, who else but, have conquered the fertile gourmet and gourmand sector, across class levels with their excellent cuisine and superb service they practically need no advertising. The name, not the fancy blurbs.

Rising probably closest to their pedestals are the likes of   pioneer Tsinoy restaurateur Joe So Kua’s De Luxe Restaurant that in recent years built its own sprawling all-in-one building in barangay Tapuac, Jam Sweet Jam, Cafe du Marc, Goring’s Pancit Malabon Restaurant, and Pinkie’s Bakeshop and Restaurant  owned by ex-village chairman Saturnino “Ninoy” Siapno of Pogo Grande; and Best Foods, Best Service (formerly a branch of Pedrito’s) on Arellano St.

All of them except Cafe du Marc, boast of wide floor areas for medium to big affair receptions, short of a grand ballroom accomodation. Those who go for the hotel ambience in restaurants however can of course always try the classy dining areas of Star Plaza Hotel, Regency (in Calasiao town), and Lenox for both local and international cuisines — with some videoke singing fun thrown in, as you wish.

The “new reliables” among fast food chains are there too for those who savor more or less chatty mass dining: Jollibee, Chowking, Kentucky Fried, Greenwich, Pizza Hut, Shakeys Pizza and even Red Ribbon and Kenny Rogers over at Nepo Mall. In semi-cosmopolitan Dagupan, they take a good chunk of the hungry hoi poloi into their cozy interiors, though, as some say, a gourmet or a diet watcher would never be caught dead picking food in there.

So there, more or less, is the city’s field of dining dens, some fine, some comfortable, some budget but all guaranteed to stop the pangs of hunger in anyone who decides to forego with good-old, home cooking once or twice.