Tacloban City's Stephanie Smoke Haus' Seafood Buffet for Fried Spareribs and Alimasag (Blue Crabs)

By some quirk, I'm here at Leyte for the second month in a row. You can read my prior posts here, here, and here. I wanted to try something different this time. Luckily, I have a team-mate who grew up in Tacloban. Considering that we'd be subsisting on hotel food for three days, we decided a restaurant buffet is the way to go, so Stephanie Smoke Haus it is, located right across Robinson's Mall. 

Basically the restaurant serves pork, seafood, some token vegetables, fresh fruits, and for those with a sweet tooth, fruit salad and buco pandan. The items were cheap, the choices decent. Everyone agreed that the best of the lot was the fried spareribs and the boiled blue crabs. 

What made these dishes stellar? We were lucky we got them fresh from the kitchen. The spare ribs were nicely browned in soy sauce and very flavorful, dispensing with the need for dips. The crab meat were sweetish, suggesting that the crustaceans were freshly caught that morning. I've been partial lately to mud crabs, but this time I came to appreciate the qualities of blue crabs--it is easier to pluck out the meat from the claws and the body, the meat is uniformly white and firm, and the fat buttery. 

Stephanie Smoke Haus

Avenida Veteranos, Leyte

(+63) 53 325-3797