ISAW - Davao's One of the Trademarks

"Masarap, malasa at nakaka-adik! "

These words can be the best description of tasting and eating different varieties of street foods; tat includes lumpia, siomai, kwek-kwek, balot, takoyaki, tempura, fries, barbeque and of course, who will ever forget, 'isaw', but those are just small numbers of street foods that we can usually see not just on some common streets, but this kind of small time business can be found and located outside the schools most of the time.

One of the trademark of being a Dabawenyo is that, you are eating this 'isaw', and of course the other common street foods, but this time, let us explore and discuss to you this what they called 'isaw'. -What is it by the way?

Isaw is a Bisaya/Cebuano term Intestine and Bitoka in Tagalog. It is basically from a chicken's intestine. It could be an excess part of the chicken that is barbeque purposes or and excess intestines from a chicken for disposal purposes but just happened that someone has initiated to create a business into it, and that is isaw.

An intestine of the chicken can be cooked particularly in two ways. It can be cooked through grilling (BBQ) and the second way of cooking it is through frying deeply in a boiling oil. But in this article, we'll be talking about the intestine that is cooked through frying as we can commonly see them on the streets.



Meanwhile, before it is sunk into the boiling oil,it must be hooked first with a bbq stick ad dip into flour all around the whole hooked intestine, then is ready to be cooked, and when it is already bi red or brown (like a fried chicken), it can now be displayed for sale and all ready to eat.

Furthermore, I personally admit that I tried and tasted it, and yes, is crispy and at the same time it taste's good when most specially when you put a "suka na may sili" on it, ahh, that tends to to be so delicious and addictive so to speak. And then, I realized why people are always yet so unstoppable of trying to make "bili" and eat those, and that's because it actually tasty and worth it either, coz it only cost you five (5.00) pesos per stick, so how do you find that? you won't even stop eating unless your money is running out. :)

However, I would rather say that eating these kind of foods (considering on the streets; polluted, too many people/customers/buyers, the dirty environment and everything) just made me realized also how risky it was. A habit like to be addicted to eat this 'isaw' is a kind of thing that we must try to control and limit ourselves, to refrain from any harful threats to our health. I think, one word to describe his thing is DIRTY - this includes cholesterol, different bacteria and other virus carriers like air, smoke, langaw and of course the customers themselves.

You might be thinking how to stop yourself from refraining, and so do I. But to make it more friend and fair, just be a health conscious one, put some high limitations, and, when you eat one of those foods, try to pick the newly cooked or the hot one.

The selling of these kind of (slightly processed) foods are actually not rare indeed, and these can cause everyone different diseases.
We can always see them selling in different areas here in Davao City, of course, it's not bad at all and we can't blame the because it's their own way to earn an income as they have based it from people who are particular of enjoying with the crowd eating on the streets every afternoon, every off from work and off from schools or even for dinner time.

The "isaw"  that trademarked the Davao City as one of the most visited place in the Philippines has made a name and will forever be the people's choice wherever you are in Davao.

Thanks for reading. :)


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The  photos below are (originally) taken from my Cellphone somewhere in our Public Market (Toril, Davao City). And the rest of the photos used in this article are from Google Images.