FRESHEST SEAFOOD FEAST! INSANE Seafood Meal at Dampa Market Manila Philippines

Hey guys, it's Mike Chen here in Manila. Really, really excited for what I'm about to eat tonight. I'm at the Dampa Seaside. This is a fresh seafood market. All the fish, all the seafood is caught locally. And what you do is, you go and you pick out the seafood you want, say a fish, crab, whatever it is. Then you take it to the restaurant of your choice and cook it the way you want it to. So basically just a super customizable seafood meal. Alright, let's go see what the catch of the day is. So from the outside, the market sells a lot of fruit, a lot of vegetables, a lot of toys. And then you just like pivot in. Just, just, let's go. I'm not very deep into the seafood market yet. But this area in the beginning, people seem to sell a lot of cuttlefish, tons of shrimp and lobster. Really, everything is as fresh as it can be. I mean, ooh, I can see that. It just jumped out of the bucket. And what's kind of interesting about this market is that it doesn't smell bad. There's not really not much of like a fishy smell to it. Everything is pretty good. Oh, look how colorful. What is that? Mahi-mahis? What is this? That looks like a rainbow fish to me. It's colorful. Look at that. I might have to eat one of those things later. Oh, it looks really, really good. Huh? You're taking? What are you taking? Which one did you get? Huh? You're from Saudi? Yes. Yeah? Yeah. What's your favorite fish? You cook it? Yeah. Where? At home? At your house? Oh. Go with me now. Go with you? Yeah. But I want to let you see what I cook. You're going to let me see what you cook? No problem. Okay. All staff. Yeah? No problem. Yo, we're going to go eat at his house. Yeah. Seriously? Yeah. Okay, let's go. We're going to eat at this guy's place. What fish did you get? Salmon and labo-labo. Salmon, labo-labo. Yeah. Labo-labo is a very Filipino fish, right? Yeah. That salmon looks beautiful, by the way. Salmon is going in, so tomato, garlic, chili, and shallots were in there. That fish just looks ridiculously beautiful. Tomato paste. He cooks like Chinese people, because we don't measure. You don't measure everything. You just kind of like, I know how much I should put in there. Oh, man. Toasted pine nuts is great, because all that fat is in the pine nuts. A lot of oil in there. All that is going into the rice. Look at that. That's the way to jazz up your rice. All right, the food is ready. Look at that. Wow. Oh, yes. That color is beautiful. Look how fluffy the rice is. Oh, man. I cannot wait to eat that. My mouth is watering right now. I just want to say thank you, Ali, for cooking this wonderful meal. Well, thank you guys for having me in your home. It was very coincidental. Well, of course, I don't believe in coincidences. But it's great meeting you at the market, at the fish market. So, seriously, these guys are the most friendliest people I've met. And I'm going to Saudi Arabia because of you guys. I get to go to your house and eat your home cooking, right? This guy is a master barbecuer as well. Tell me about this dish you made. So, the rice is... Kapsa. It's a very traditional Saudi Arabian dish. Is this spicy or not? Yeah, it's spicy. Not more. I like spicy. Let me try the rice, because you put a lot of ingredients in this rice. It's so fluffy and nice. Wow. Am I eating at a restaurant right now? Wow. This is so fragrant. You can taste the different spices, the raisins in this rice. You guys don't know. Usually, like, I'll eat that whole pot of fish in a whole pot of rice. But you're lucky today. I already ate. Otherwise, you won't have enough food here. But the salmon... Look at that. My friend, you should open a restaurant. Wow. And you can taste how fresh this fish is, too. This is fantastic. It's very aromatic. You can taste all the different spices that Ali put into the fish. I want to take a bite. Thank you for giving me this, by the way. No, I like it. I like it. I love the pine nuts that you put into this. It has, like, such a nice fatty flavor. I'm, like, eating every single grain of this. Because, seriously, it's some of the best rice. Yeah. No joke. So good. I want to thank you guys again for having me here. I mean, you guys have been more than hospitable. I mean, just the nicest gentlemen. And, you know, sharing a meal with you. It has been one of the most enjoyable experiences in all my travels. Guys, such a beautiful meal. Thank you. I am going to go back to the market and show you guys the entire process, everything. But this has been such a fantastic experience. As you guys can see, we're back at the fish market. This section is... Wow. A lot of different types of crab. Christina crabs. So after the crabs, you get a lot of clams, oysters... What else? Scallops. Some conch. Now let's pick out some seafood. Oh, sea grapes. That's delicious. I haven't seen those since Japan. Oh, a clam just spit at me. I'm definitely eating that. Can I get some... I'll take some clams. Yeah, this one. Yeah, the one that spit at me. Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you. Let's get a crab. Wow. How much? $8.50? How much... Same price? Can you do better? $7.50. $7.50? So jumbo for $8.50. Okay. So I got a jumbo crab for $8.50. So originally it was $1200. I'll give her $8.50. I don't know if that's a good deal. What do you want, fish? Do you want prawn? Lapu-lapu? I don't know. What's good? What kind of cook? Like half a kilo. What is that? Lapu-lapu. Lapu-lapu? How much, how much, how much? Hey, how are you? Hey. $2.50? How much is this? How much? Tell me. $2.50? Which one should I get? Him? Okay, I'll just get this. What's the biggest prawn? Biggest. This one's free, free, free. Okay, sounds good. So $500. He's going to give me a free prawn with the other two prawns that I got. Oh, don't worry. There you go. All right, thank you. What fish? Sunfish. Sunfish? Oh my goodness. Oh, dude. Wow. That is ugly, but I'm sure that's delicious. Oh, look at, what is that? Karacha. That's Karacha. That looks crazy as well. Spinal crab. I got some crab, I got some fish, I got some jumbo prawns, I got some clams, I got some seagrass. I think I'm ready to get this cooked. Let's go find a place. Give me five. All right, buddy. Thank you. So basically the rule of thumb is you find a restaurant that has a lot of people in there and that's probably a really good place. I heard about this place, Hong Kong Master Cook, and it's filled, packed with people. This is the first time I've ever brought seafood into a restaurant before. This place is packed. So I think you bring the seafood to this counter here, and then I guess some sort of cooking magic happens. That. I want whatever that is. Yeah. That looks crazy. That looks like it's just filled with chilies right there. He just weighed everything I brought, and as he's weighing it, he's asking me how I would like the fish prepared, or the seafood prepared. This one, how do you guys cook it? Salad. Salad, yeah. Is there different ways of cooking this? Only one way. Okay, okay, that's fine. Sea grapes you don't need to do much with. Can I do different types of crab? Yeah, so smaller one, Sichuan. Sichuan. Bigger one, sauteed. Thank you. This is an insane experience right now. I'm so like, I'm giddy, man. This is like, so cool. So we good? All right. Take this to a table. Okay, thank you, thank you. And that's it. You take this to your table, and wait for your seafood to swim to you. Ooh, the first item has arrived. Look at this little tiny crab. This is cooked Sichuan style. That smells glorious. Onions, green peppers, red peppers, chili peppers. And now, way to dig into this. I'm gonna take a claw right here, look at this thing. Look how nice that crab meat is. Dip it in some sauce. This is by far the freshest crab I've ever had. And this meat is just so ridiculously tender. As soon as you put it into your mouth, it just falls into like a million pieces. I never had crab meat melt on my tongue before. And the sauce, spicy, peppery. It's gonna go great with rice. Pour some of that on my rice. And here, you've got that beautiful tamale. Oh yeah, this is good eating, my friends. Oh yeah. Oh, that tamale was insane. This is one of my favorite parts of the crab right here. This meat is so silky. Literally just sucking the meat right out of its shell. That is some sort of beautiful, my friends. I really don't think I've ever had crab that tastes like this before. So lovely. Oh, sea grapes, thank you. My ocean salad has arrived. You know, this must be what Ariel used to say then. I don't know. Now, sea grapes, if you guys remember, was something I first had in Kyoto, Japan. And this thing, it just blew my mind with how delicious it is. These little balls, it's like a burst of seawater. You can literally taste the ocean in these. It's so crispy and briny and nice. Man, I actually miss these things. They really didn't do much with it. They just cleaned it up, added some onions, added some tomatoes. I honestly think these things will be great with some garlic and vinegar. On its own, that's beautiful as well. Oh, here we go. Our clams are here. Thank you. Clams and black bean sauce. One of my favorite ways to eat clams. Scoop up some of that gravy, put it all over my rice. Those clams, so ridiculously tender. I mean, you saw how fresh these things were. They were squirting up a storm. Each piece, just so gentle. And flavorful. This sauce is so good, by the way. Nice amount of black beans. This is a great rice companion. Normally, if I'm just eating the clams on its own, I'd love it with some garlic and butter, but with rice, this is what you need to do with the clams. Like, seriously, guys. This is beyond ridiculous. Serves it with some sea grapes. Oh, yeah. Amazing. It would be an understatement. Really would. Oh, the prawns are here. Yay. Look at the size of this monster. Pinch it off the head. I was gonna eat the head a little bit. Aww. Crack it open. Look at that beautiful, beautiful meat. Oh, just as I was getting into the prawns, look at this. The fish has arrived, citron style, in a pot surrounded by spices and garlic and cabbage and everything else that just makes this fish beautiful. This, this is a feast to behold, my friend. Hang on a second. I'm gonna get to this, but I gotta taste this prawn first before it gets cold. Oh, oh, oh. The head, the head is intact. They just took out the antennas. All right. Gotta have the head. Suck on the insides. Look at this thing. This is the craziest thing ever. Dip that in the fried garlic. Do not sleep on the fried garlic. This might just be one of the happiest days of my life. Correction. This is one of the happiest days of my life. That prawn meat is so ridiculously sweet. It's bouncy. You cannot get anything fresher than this. This is like eating a shrimp lollipop. This is so naturally sweet. I see this big bowl of just chili soup sitting here. I think I'm gonna take my prawn for a swim. Swim away, monster prawn. Conquer the broth. Get some of that spiciness. Spicy, numbing, happy. Let's go for another dip. It's a beautiful day, whenever monster prawns are involved. It really is. And now, now let's get to this fish. Look at this crazy fish. Let's dig into this thing. Oh, look at that beautiful flesh. Let's get some sauce with it. Put it on my rice. Let's get some cabbage in there as well. You know, make sure I eat my veggies. Everything about that was amazing, guys. Oh my gosh, what a day I'm having right now. Let me just taste the fish on its own here. Hello, tender. I want to get a piece with some of the skin. What I'm loving about this is this whole fish, it's kind of like a fish tempura. So the fish is fried. The skin obviously battered, it was crunchy. And they put it into this spicy, numbing broth. So that the batter and the skin just soaked up all this just delightfully spicy elixir. So every bite you get of the fish, it's got so much of that irresistible broth all up in here. The skin is not like overly soggy. It still has a semblance of chewiness to it. This fish is just beyond tender. And they got some great veggies in here that also soak up broth. And all this just goes perfect with rice. This is a perfect style to cook this fish. Our last item has arrived. The salted egg giant crab. Yeah, you're beautiful. You know it. This is the salted egg crab. But check this out. This morning I was at a local market and I saw this egg. This is a salty duck egg. I'm going to add my salty duck egg onto my salty egg crab. I think that's going to be a lot of honey. Oh, a lot of food coloring in this one though. There it is. I'm going to kind of crumble it up. Okay, that's stupid, that's stupid. Okay, that's dumb. It didn't go as I thought. I'm sorry. But let's give this a try. You see all that delicious yolk just running, just coursing through every inch of this crab leg. Zip that meat into the salty egg sauce. This is one of my favorite ways to eat crab. A piece of my salted egg out here. Don't knock it till you try it. It's like liquid salty egg and solidified salty egg. I think it's pretty good. The yolk's my favorite part. Oh, yeah. All right, you guys ready to open this thing up? Oh, there's the tamale. Gotta have some of that tamale. Get some salty egg sauce. Oh, by the way, look at this, guys. Look how incredibly massive this claw is. Holy cow. I'm pretty sure this claw sunk ships before. All right, I think I managed to get most of the claw intact. Look at this beast of a crab claw. The pieces that didn't touch the salty egg sauce, it's just so sweet. Get some of that yolk on here. This has been one of the greatest seafood meals I've ever had. This day in general has just been incredible. I go to the seafood market and you just randomly meet three awesome guys that invite me back home for dinner, which was absolutely spectacular. And I ended up making three awesome friends. Come here, grabbed a bunch of different seafood. This restaurant cooked it up. One of the freshest, tastiest seafood feasts I've ever partaken in. So if you are ever in Manila, I highly, highly recommend coming here and doing what I just did. Also, guys, I just want to note that what I did today, meeting just like three random strangers and going back for dinner at their place, that's not something I recommend you guys do unless you feel 100% safe and comfortable. I mean, that's especially something you shouldn't do if you're traveling alone. But for us, we ended up talking to these gentlemen and we felt pretty good about them. We took some precautions, and plus there's three of us, so we felt pretty comfortable going with them. And that ended up being a fantastic experience. But by no means don't do what we did. Make sure you gauge every single situation for yourself. And if you do decide to go hang out with some locals or with some new friends, like I said, make sure you're 100% comfortable with the entire situation. With that said, I just want to give another shout out to my new friends, Ali, Mohamed, and Remo. You guys are just the most friendly, most awesome, most hospitable gentlemen I have met on this trip. And thank you so much for having us over and sharing a meal with us. That was by far some of the best rice and salmon I've ever had. And as always, guys, I put the information for this location in my description box below. Thank you all so much for watching this just incredible seafood adventure. And until we eat again, I'll see you later.