Filipino Soup No. 5
The Filipino food and style of cooking is a product of centuries of integration of neighboring Malay - Indonesian, Japanese, and Chinese styles of cooking. Other cultures like Indian, Spanish, and the American have also greatly influence the present day Filipino cuisines. It is these various characteristics (brought here either by trade, immigration, or by conquest) coupled with our very own cooking style of Austronesian origin, that makes the Filipino cuisine unique and appealing to a vast majority of food enthusiasts. Foods like "lechon", "lechon kawali", "adobo", and others like the controversially famous soup number 5 have become known to foodies from all over the world.
The famous soup no. 5
Are you curious about what soup no. 5 is? Well, it is obviously, as the name suggest, a soup. What makes this famous or should I say controversial are the ingredients which are mainly Cow's penis and balls. This soup is also known aphrodisiac although its aphrodisiac properties might not have any effect on me. What I can say though is, it is delicious! This soup has various preparation techniques and serving styles, depending on where in the Philippines you are going to have it.
In the Visayas region, this is called Lanciao which is usually served hot and spicy. Because Filipinos love eating soup after drinking alcoholic beverages (as it is believed to lessen the intoxication from alcohol intake), the famous Lanciao serving food stalls are within the vicinity of downtown Cebu City where bars are found in almost every corner.
In Davao, you can have this in restaurants beside the Balbacuahan sa Buhangin or in Baba-boy in Damosa. I know there are other restaurants that serve soup no. 5 in downtown area although I am not quite familiar where. I just heard it from some of my friends who happened to have tried their version of soup no. 5. If you wish to prepare this on your own, you may visit this blog for the recipe, https://recipenijuan.com/soup-number-5-recipe/.