In a country where rice is
life, it comes as no surprise that arguably the Philippines' favorite snack is
the suman, a hand-rolled sticky rice cake usually wrapped in banana and palm
leaves. Like most Filipinos, I’ve come across different varieties of suman all
over the archipelago. There’s the Tupig in Ilocos Norte and Pangasinan, Suman
Pinipig in Bulacan, Suman Moron and Budbod in Visayas, and Pintos in
Mindanao—just to state a few—all differing in preparations, sizes and certain
ingredients added.
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| Suman always goes well with a hot cup of Sikwate - a Filipino chocolate made from tablea (ground cacao beans) |
So, you might wonder what makes
the suman of Misamis Occidental—specifically the ones made by the Clarin House of Suman—different from all the others? That’s what we found out during
our side-trip to the town of Clarin.
The House that OTOP Built
Clarin House of Suman was founded in 2009 as
a creation of the one town, one product (OTOP) initiative of the Philippine
Government that aims to boost community-driven industries through locally made
and sourced products. To make their suman produce stand-out from the other
sticky rice cake in the country, the brains behind Clarin House of Suman
focused on concocting a fusion of diverse flavors. Initially starting with a
handful of savors, they now serve 20 flavors of suman. These comes in classic
suman, ube, langka, mango, pineapple, chocolate, cheese, yema, latik, buko and
even durian.
Admittedly, of all the suman I
tasted all over the Philippines, my favorite was the Chocolate budbod suman I
had in Dumaguete. But upon letting my tongue roll over the deliciousness of
Clarin's tablea-flavored suman, I found myself a new favorite suman—up there in
my suman chart with the budbod of Dumaguete.
Of course, there won’t be a House of Suman without the Suman
Factory. So, like a bunch of kids venturing inside Willy Wonka’s chocolate plant,
we giddily observed the suman-makers as they mix and batter various
ingredients, hand-roll sticky rice and wrapped em all in banana leaves.
Each day, the suman makers
numbering from 17 to 20 at any given day, can come up with 3,000 to 5,000 suman
pieces that are sold out before closing time. Certainly, a box-office hit if
you ever saw one.
Last-Minute Pasalubong Spree
Travelers passing by the
stretch of the Ozamis-Oroquietta National Highway are hard-pressed to ignore
the green colored Clarin House of Suman. True to it, aside from sampling
various flavors of suman and filling us up to the brim—carbo loaded to the
max—we also ended up hoarding pasalubongs for our family and friends back home.
I bought a dozen sumans like I would buy a dozen donuts of varied tastes plus I
also took home with me a couple of packs of Tablea.
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| They also sell other types of kakanin |
Achieving low-key but rock star
status among foodies in the country, Clarin House of Suman further expanded its
presence when they were invited at the Madrid Fusion event in Manila in 2017.
During the said gathering, chefs from all over the world took notice of the
rice cakes from Clarin's. Finally, when one think of sticky rice cake, one will
not only be reminded of the ones from Thailand as here in our own, we also have
a whole enchilada of flavorful sticky rice cakes—and we call them suman.
