Ode to Laswa

Few things show affection better than a home-cooked meal prepared with care and devotion. And in this part of the world, there’s a reason why Iloilo is known as the City of Love. Before all the “touristy places” popped up around here, visitors were usually just treated to food --- plenty of it! We’d bring you to Tatoy’s for lechon, to La Paz market for batchoy, or to Villa Baybay for talaba.

Of course, if you were really special, you’d be fed at home --- with chicken binakol, or KBL (kadyos, baboy, langka), or milkfish sinigang soured with batwan. But if an Ilonggo or Ilongga truly loved you, and I mean TRULY loved you, you’d be treated to LASWA, a very simple vegetable soup dish prepared by the best cook in the village, with THE INDAY of the house (i.e., the Madam / Mamita / Donya / Grand Matriarch) overseeing the process. You’d be told, “Pasensya ka na, laswa lang maserbe namon.”

But then you will quickly realize that the disclaimer is a big, fat lie. It is not laswa LANG. Because as you take spoonful after spoonful of the pale green mixture of malunggay, patola, and stock, you will feel a warmth enveloping your heart, like a hundred magical hands putting back the broken pieces together again, you will be reacquainted with the happiest memories of your childhood, when your own mother, or tita or lola cooked your favorite meal. You will be humbled, and you will have tasted love like you haven’t tasted it before. Surely, after you’ve left Iloilo, you will taste many other soup dishes again in your life, but never as good as the laswa that you were served in an Ilonggo’s home.