Bounty of the Sea: Crabs and Alavar Sauce - Chef’s Take

CHEF’S TAKE

Alavar Soft Shell Crab

When I thought about this dish, I kept coming back to how some of the best food concepts are built around a single standout element. For example, Raising Cane’s is famous not just for the chicken, it’s really about the sauce. The whole menu was designed around that one flavor.

We had a similar experience with this sauce we brought in from Zamboanga. It was so distinct and memorable that it became the anchor. The question was: what’s the best way to showcase it? After testing a few options, we found that the soft-shell crab paired with it beautifully. It brought the sauce to life in a way that felt both true to its origins and exciting for our menu.

- Chef Dio

On The Map: An Iconic Restaurant in Zamboanga City

The Philippines holds immense potential for regional culinary tourism. Over the last decade I’ve worked on product development for some of the world’s most innovative travel brands, and one truth rings clear - there is a rapidly growing number of tourists who plan their vacations around places they want to eat. People will travel, if they can, for food!

Zamboanga City’s Alavar Seafood Restaurant has drawn people from across the country into “Asia’s Latin City” for decades. My uncle once came back from a business trip to Zamboanga and brought back a dry ice-packed styrofoam cooler filled with flash-frozen curacha crabs and jars of the restaurant’s signature sauce. Everyone was hella excited about this orange sauce that had the consistency of slow-cooked coconut latik, curdled with crab fat. Clearly a beloved pasalubong.

Further watching:

• "Mga ipinagmamalaking putahe ng mga Zamboangueño" from the GMA Public Affairs show Pinas Sarap (mostly in Tagalog with some Chabacano), featuring the story of Miguel and Maria Teresa Alavar, who started the business as an eatery. Their daughters demonstrate how the family’s heirloom Curacha con Alavar recipe is made with local spanner crabs, a rather heart-shaped crustacean, the family’s “alavar sauce” in itself an emblem of the city’s foodways borne from centuries of Indigenous, Moro, Spanish and other foreign occupation of the lands.

• Food vloggers from the Philippines attract millions on social and streaming apps for a reason. We love to eat and it shows! As Chui from The Chui Show says, it’s a well-known fact that you can’t leave Zamboanga without eating at Alavar Seafood Restaurant. He brought Mark Weins over recently and in just 6 months their Zamboanga food tour video reached a million views. The third generation of the Alavar family continues to welcome guests from across the world into their restaurant, every day of the week. Visiting this restaurant has been on my bucket list since grade 5.

- Nastasha