Pangulasian Island Resort with chefs Deepanker Khosla and Chele González

Chef DK is driven by the belief that if they are not sustainable, they will no longer be in business in a few years. The restaurant runs on solar power and uses rainwater that is treated and filtered before being served or used the restaurant. They raise their own fish in a pond in their basement, and the fish are fed dehydrated vegetable trimmings from the produce that was fertilised using the fish’s own excrement. To eliminate their use of plastic, old tablecloths are repurposed into shopping bags used when shopping for produce and grocery items. These are just a few things from all the sustainable practices that chef DK applies in Haōma which serves as proof that it can be done using what he calls the 3 Ps: people, products, and processes. “First, hire people who share your ideals. Then, work with them to create sustainable processes that you can apply to make sustainable products,” he explains. 

The weather for most of the weekend made it challenging to move around the island, but one day was enough to give a small glimpse of what Palawan has to offer. Aside from the rich bio-diversity on land and in the water which has made it the adventurer’s final frontier, it also provides foodies with many interesting choices. After a morning of island-hopping, swimming, and snorkelling, a trip to the mangroves showed how rich it was with edible gems, from sweet mud crabs to giant clams. The locals demonstrated how they set traps along the roots so that when the tide is low, they gather them hoping to catch some crabs in their nets. They also showed how they harvested tamilok which is a form of woodworm that, as the name implies, is found within the dead trunks of mangroves. While the locals eat these raw and simply rinsed with vinegar, chef Ric took some back to the resort to be properly dressed in some relish and vinaigrette to make it more palatable to us tourists. 

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The weekend’s festivities were capped off with a cooking demonstration by chef DK with the preparation of the day’s catch in two ways: first as a traditional Indian pepper fry, and the second way simply steamed and served with Thai chilli and fermented fish sauce. These were the centrepiece of a sumptuous beachside barbecue spread prepared by Pangulasian’s highly competent banquet team and well-attended by the resort’s guests and higher management. There were plump oysters adorned with mango chutney; tuna tartare given the chef DK treatment which is one of his signature dishes in Haōma; a roast suckling pig served with an aromatic Indian-style mustard; plus a selection of fresh seafood that was grilled a la minute, plucked from the generous waters that surrounded us. 

There were many learnings from that weekend, but most poignant would be what chef DK posted as the sustainability movement’s greatest challenge—everyone thinks that it is somebody else’s responsibility to save the planet. To counter this, he proposes that we dig into man’s most primal behaviour and look at sustainability as a selfish motive. “We need to realise that we are doing this for our ourselves,” he points out. “It is something we have to do to survive and so that our children and grandchildren will still have a world to live in.”

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