Quezon Adventure: Real Quezon’s Beach Side Seafood Market

The last time I was in Real was in the late 90’s and I’ve been totally dreaming of a place with a seafood market in close proximity to the beach such as this where you can have a barbeque while watching the waves crash and even, take a dip while waiting for your food to cook. Finally after so many years, I find a reason to go to Real. Yes, from our stop over at Lucban, we went all the way to the far side of Quezon that faces the Pacific ocean — Real. Mig drove and seemed to be exhausted after the trip, he says that Real’s zigzag road was way longer than the one everyone knows about — Kennon Road. There were definitely a lot of bikers on the way as well, and there were some potholes along the way.

When we got to our supposed resort, Ocean Blue, we were surprised to find that they didn’t reserve a room for us despite my confirmation call at the start of the week. So we looked around for a good looking resort and found, La Juliana. Where it’s owner, Tito Dan, quickly asked Mig to drink with him as they fixed our room. We were glad that we didn’t stay in Ocean Blue, plus they reserved a beach side cabana for us for our cook out later in the day.

So off we went to the seafood “talipapa” not far from La Juliana, it was about 400 meters away but we took the car since it was scorching hot outside and we were both nursing very bad sun burns.

Mig was very surprised with the variety of seafood…I was looking for one particular fish, the Papakol (it was a salt water fish with a horn), but we didn’t find it. We went for alternatives that was good for grilling.

Fish was pretty cheap, it could range from 80-150 per kilo depending on the fish. The large blue prawns with claws range from P350 – 400 per kilo. They also had live suahe or shrimp, about 3-5 kinds of squid (they had these thin squids called ballpen which has lots of good ink!). And of course they had shells at P20 per plastic bag. These shells were either baby clams, large clams and even these weird looking escargots.

This place is truly a great reminder of God’s wonderful creations…and the many dishes you can make out of them. There are many small stalls as well for provisions like vegetables, condiments, rice…we also enjoyed the local spirits like Lambanog and the home made vinegar from coconuts. Ice blocks and styro coolers are readily available for all the people who want to take some seafood home!