Ponsyon By Breakthough: Surprisingly Good

Just our luck that a typhoon was hitting Visaya during my family's recent trip to Iloilo and Bacolod. However, a little rain certainly wouldn't stop us from enjoying the food from that region. Our first stop was a late lunch at Ponsyon by Breakthrough, a restaurant known for its seafood dishes.

The original Breakthrough is located at Sto Nino Arevallo in Iloilo City, a good 30 minutes distance from Iloilo. Thankfully, they have a branch at Diversion road in Plazuela De Iloilo just beside SM City. Happily, the restaurant was 5 minutes away from where we were staying.

 

Normally, the place would be full of customers but lucky for us they might have been driven away by the rain because there were plenty of vacant tables.

It's our first time to eat here so we took some of the waiters' recommendations.

Baked Scallops 160

The Baked Scallops were tiny since (I presume) these were sourced locally. There were about 5 in a plate. Although the scallops were nice and tender, I felt they baked these too long since there weren't any sauce left and the edges were burnt. I was a little disappointed.

Lumpia Hubad P125

The Lumpia Hubad (naked spring roll) was a surprise. Of course since it is hubad (naked), the filling wasn't rolled into the usual egg crepe. Instead they put fried pieces of egg wrapper on the side. The surprise is that the filling wasn't cooked at all. It had shredded lettuce, carrots and singakamas with some crushed peanuts. The sauce was your traditional Lumpia sauce (sweet style peanut garlic sauce) but it was very flavorful. It was basically a fresh salad. However, combined together the fresh vegetables, yummy sauce and crunchy fried egg wrapper and somehow everything worked so well! Really good and my mom enjoyed it. Serving was also big and is good enough for 2.

Pasayan Gambas P230

Nixing the expensive prawns and marlin, we opted for the more affordable Sizzling Gambas. This dish came to us in a sizzling plate with 12-14 small shrimps in red sauce, green bell pepper and raw egg on top (my mom mixed the egg before I could take a picture :)  The sauce tasted exactly like the sweet and sour sauce for fish/pork found in most Chinese restaurants. However, like the Lumpia, it was surprisingly good.

Sizzling Kansi P275

Kansi is an Ilonggo dish that is a cross between Bulalo (beef bone marrow soup ) Sinigang (sour soup). This is the first time I tried this dish and I thought I was getting beef chunks in a clear soup with a slight sour taste. What we actually got was a big beef bone split into two so you can access the absolutely delicious bone marrow, chunks of meltingly tender beef and soooooo good sauce with an ever so slightly sour flavor with some vegetables (carrot and corn) on a sizzling plate.

Even when the dish wasn't so hot anymore, It didn't turn greasy at all. Loved it! Dish is easily good for 2-3 person.

Litson Manok na Paa P165

For the Litson Manok na Paa, I can see that they used native chicken because it's really small, has lots of bones and very little flesh. Although the dish had some good flavor, it was dry and a bit chewy. Did not like this at all.

Final Verdict

All in all, we had a very pleasant experience at Ponsyon even though we didn't order much seafood. The dishes that we did order were surprisingly different but in a good way. I won't hesitate to go back here if I'm in Iloilo but I will definitely try more seafood. Dinner for 3 cost us around P1,000 (with rice but without drinks).

Note: Plazuela De Iloilo is a strip of restaurants/cafes located beside SM Iloilo. There is also a Biscocho Haus where you can buy pasalubong.

setting up a frozen theme decor

the driveway entrance to the Plaza