Dampa is starting to become a New Year’s Day staple for me and my family. The last time we were here was January 1, 2017 – and exactly two years later, we’re back. The food is as yummy as ever, but the prices…. The prices have increased drastically! It’s crazy – inflation is REAL

Anyway, if you’re interested to see 2017 prices, and to read my detailed guide on (1) how to get to Dampa; (2) how Dampa works (including the stall setups); and (3) what to watch out for when buying certain types of seafood (crab, shrimp, sea mantis, oyster, lapu-lapu); then… head on over to my 2017 Dampa guide first 😉

But if you’re more interested in the here and now, then without further ado, let’s dive in!

 

Step 1: Purchase your seafood

Dampa is filled with two long rows of seafood stalls. As with all shopping instances, the following tipid tips apply:

• Ask across multiple stalls first to get the best possible price. Even better, you can pit them against each other, e.g., “Bigay niya sa akin PHP 400 lang ah, bakit sa inyo PHP 450?”
• If you’re planning to buy multiple types of seafood, purchase from a stall that sells everything – that way, you can purchase everything from one stall and ask for a bigger discount

• Speak in Filipino and act like you know what you’re doing (even if you don’t). DO NOT go around saying stuff like “Wow! Ang mura!” <- this is the surefire way of NOT getting a discount
• Use the power of rounding off. Example: If the total bill comes out to PHP 1,050, ask if you can shave off the PHP 50, and just pay PHP 1,000. Sometimes, I just ask for an additional shrimp or crab pincer haha!

Likewise, to make sure you aren’t being cheated, the common palengke tips apply

• Check the weighing scale and make sure it’s pointed to 0 before the seller places your seafood item
• Count the important parts – e.g., for crabs – count the number of crabs and their equivalent pincers. Often, pincers fall off because of crab fights, so you want to make sure you’re not getting less pincers per crab!

I give a lot more seafood purchasing tips in my 2017 blog – so do check it out if it’s your first time buying seafood from a wet market. It includes stuff like “how to make sure it’s fresh,” “what size should you buy given your preferred cooking style,” and so on!

 

Step 2: Choose your restaurant

My family has always been loyal customers to Royal Kitchen Restaurant – and so, I also recommend them to you readers. The restaurant is clean, the food is tasty, and the cooking charge is fair – what more could you ask for? (Well, I’d ask for faster service, but I understand the restaurant’s pretty full so all we can do is wait patiently)

 

Step 3: Get a table queue number

For Royal Kitchen, their protocol is you have to have your seafood ready and weighed first BEFORE you can get a table queue number.

 

So once you’re done with your seafood haggling, time to head over and have those seafood weighed by the restaurant. Why weigh the seafood? That’s how they determine their cooking charge. Royal Kitchen’s minimum charge per seafood is 1kg, so don’t go around buying multiple seafood types that are <1 kg each, as you’ll end up paying more for the cooking charge. As much as possible, purchase ~1kg worth of each seafood type!

I like watching them weigh the seafood, and the ate will also tell you how heavy each seafood is, plus for crabs, how many pincers are included

 

Step 4: Enjoy the delicious meal!

For our group of 8, we had the following dishes:

Note: All the cooking styles were determined to be the “healthiest” possible option, as my grandparents were trying to avoid too sweet, too salty, fried food

 

Scallops

• Cooking style: Baked with cheese
• Cost: PHP 650 (1 kg)
• Thoughts: Order this if you love cheesy goodness. Don’t order this if you’re short on cash, coz scallops are pretty pricey and won’t really alleviate your hunger as they’re quite small

 

Oyster

• Cooking style: Steam garlic
• Cost: PHP 360 (2 kg) -> but we bargained for PHP 350
• Thoughts: Never realized steaming oysters would make them smaller (LOL they seem to have shrunk by ~50%). I really like this cooking style though – sarap ng garlic!

 

Crab

• Cooking style: Egg white
• Cost: PHP 1,425 (1.5kg) -> includes 4 crabs and 10 pincers (we got 2 extra pincers as part of our bargaining)
• Thoughts: There isn’t as much flavor since it’s egg white, but it certainly tastes healthy! The crabs were also extremely fresh, which you’ll know because it’s easy to pluck them from the shell and they’re not crumbly. I still wish we could’ve had it cooked chili crab style though (this is my unhealthy self speaking)

 

Shrimp (Sugpo)

• Cooking style: Tempura
• Cost: PHP 850 (1 kg)
• Thoughts: Remember to purchase medium to large sized shrimps (or just say sugpo) if you want them cooked tempura style. I love the tempura sauce! But I do think we overordered as we could barely finish the entire tempura dish, and there were 8 of us!

 

Live lapu-lapu

• Cooking style: Steamed with soy sauce (if you want an additional flavor, get tauso which is sweet!)
• Cost: PHP 1,000 (0.6 kg)
• Thoughts: Always a Chinese seafood staple – I found it a bit bland since it was just light soy sauce to keep it healthy. My taste buds must be dead by now haha!

 

Nylon shell

• Cooking style: Soup
• Cost: PHP 250 (1 kg)
• Thoughts: We got this as replacement for halaan, since those were out of stock (apparently they’re not readily available in the early January). I was super impressed by how much nylon shell you could get in 1 kg – their shells are super light!

 

Squid

• Cooking style: Calamares
• Cost: PHP 650 (1 kg)
• Thoughts: Too much fried stuff – don’t know why we ordered this cooking style as it certainly isn’t healthy! Should’ve requested for Grilled squid instead

 

Salted egg French beans

• Cost: PHP 480
• Thoughts: The salted egg French beans here are the best! It was so good, I actually enjoyed it more than the seafood and requested my mom learn how to cook it at home (apparently, it’s very work-intensive so I guess no home-cooked salted egg French beans for me…)

 

Polonchay

• Cost: PHP 480
• Thoughts: Another Chinese classic, ‘nuff said

 

Yangchow Fried Rice

• Cost: PHP 400
• Thoughts: Serving size is pretty big, taste is good, but I do find the price a bit steep!

 

Others

• Plain rice: PHP 40
• 7-up: PHP 150

 

Step 5: Time to pay!

Considering how much food we ate, ~ PHP 1,000 per person is certainly decent (BUT still pricier compared to when we ate there in 2017 – partly due to price inflation, but also because we seemed to have ordered the same amount as before, when we had 12 people LOL).

Having said that, I think we’d have been better off not ordering the calamares, cutting down on our tempura order, and getting only 1kg worth of crab – as we were really struggling to finish all of these! I’d imagine this would be better suited if there were 12 people, which would have brought down the cost per person to PHP 730 each!

 

Verdict

Dampa is still THE place to go if you want to have a yummy seafood meal without breaking the bank – highly highly recommended!!!