Western Visayas Food Trip: Visiting Alpas Restaurant and Guesthouse in Antique

With a few hours’ drive from Iloilo City, you can find yourself at Alpas Restaurant and Guesthouse in Tobias Fornier, Antique. En route, you’ll pass the stunning Miag-ao Church, the beautiful coastline of southern Panay Island, and occasional jeeps and buses that look way fuller than they should be :)

I love travelling to less-visited regions of the Philippines because I’m drawn to learning what makes up the “spirit of a place”, and I can’t seem to get enough of it. When you seriously begin to prepare for a trip to rural parts of the country, I like to think there are two things that help set your expectations:

Plan your trip with the mindset that lots of things can change
Accept that this mindset of just “going with the flow” is your best bet for experiencing things you’ll treasure for the rest of your life

Around here, inevitably, you have to be quick on your feet and forgiving of reality - whether that involves a bus that shows up four hours later, or the harsher reality that comes with travelling through the Philippine countryside, knowing the people who live here see very little in return for the work they put into their land.

Alpas, which means “to be free” in Tagalog, is a place where owners Ken Cazeñas and Kimberley Eng invite people to experience what it’s like to ‘be free’ in this little parcel of Antique.

For guests, free to enjoy the delicious fruits (and vegetables) of their garden and seafood from local fishermen. For staff, the freedom to think big, to learn what it takes to make your dream a reality, and to begin to understand that choosing to live in the country isn’t a losing game.

As I chatted with one of the staff, she told me about an office job she used to have in Manila, her commute between Taguig and Makati, what it was like to live in a crowded boarding house and why she chose to come back to her hometown. “May anak na kasi,” she smiled, mentioning her child.

At Alpas, I booked an overnight stay and cooking class with Ken, who worked as a professional chef in Los Angeles, Hollywood and Beverley Hills. Tobias Fornier, whose original name is Dao, is the town Ken’s parents are from. He met Kim while working in San Francisco, and after an exhausting year of “working more than living” (in their words) in Hong Kong, they both decided to move to Antique and open the kind of place that felt true to their soul.

I enjoyed dinner, breakfast, and lunch the next day, surrounded by the warmth of the restaurant’s hearth (fed with firewood), the building itself (made entirely of bamboo by local craftsmen), and the people around me.

How could you not fall in love with a Filipino meal like this?

Dinner at Alpas Restaurant and Guesthouse. Local by necessity and choice!

The night’s dinner menu included:

A salad of kulitis (amaranth) and camote (sweet potato) leaves, with cucumber, radish, tomato, onion
Some chilled spicy beef stomach (so good!)
Trio of roasted sweet potatoes with housemade aioli
Grilled eggplant with fried garlic and peanuts
Grilled sulig (silverfish) with fermented cabbage
Dessert of suman (steamed rice cake) with coconut cream, candied tisa (a starchy local vegetable) and banana
A gin-based cocktail garnished with blue ternate leaves

Seeing coconut trees out the window is basically my favourite way of waking up!

After breakfast, off to the market we go, before heading back to the restaurant for a cooking lesson.

The next day’s lunch (prepared by me!) included:

Steamed red rice
A deliciously layered salad, with (1) sweet potato leaves, cucumbers, and shallots; (2) roasted okra, winged beans, green peppers and eggplants, charred in all the right places; (3) a vinaigrette made with calamansi juice, coconut vinegar steeped with lemongrass and ginger, and locally-produced extra virgin coconut oil, so sweet and unlike anything I’ve tasted; (4) garnished with two methods of preparing sweet potatoes, first blanched then cut into bayonets, then crumbled and roasted to a crisp with their salty skins
Grilled sulig (silverfish) stuffed with garlic, ginger and shallots sautéed in pork lard, and wilted kangkong stems and leaves
A salsa of cucumbers, tomatoes, shallots, raw winged beans, young camote tops, and calamansi juice

Listen to my podcast episode about this visit to Alpas for more!