Butuan ‘fishing-village’ restaurant soon to open
Saturday, 04 February 2012 00:00
WHILE fastfoods and restaurants were sprouting up in Butuan's business center, a new type of dine-out is now being developed in an outskirt of the city and offers variety of freshwater fish foods instead of serving meat products, seafood and chicken barbeques. Christopher Lindo, owner of the GML agri-ventures, said the idea of putting up an outskirt aqua-food restaurant is to provide alternative venue for a growing health-conscious people who turn away meat products in favor of fi sh and vegetables. "It's just like a fishing village-type restaurant in the city's outskirt with a rural ambiance," said Lindo in an interview while feeding pellets to catfishes in his two grow-out earth ponds in Villakananga village at the city's southern side. Hopefully, he said, the ongoing constructions of a fish farm, an Athensinspired hotel and a restaurant building including a park in a 1.5 hectare Land can catch up with their target of a grand opening in mid-year. Unlike other restaurants and fastfoods including eateries that usually serve meat products and chickens, Lindo said they would serve better varieties of freshwater fishes that are available in the village's ponds. The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) regional office lists at least five fastfoods and 47 restaurants including eateries in Butuan, the Caraga's regional center, which has a total population of 298,378 (2007 census) distributed in 86 barangays, 36 of which are classified as urban.
Sources at the DTI said that many, not just health buffs, have been looking for a better fish variety that can be cooked anywhere. They said they are turned off by the smell of sea fish and the timeconsuming method of removing bones from the fish. At present, the GML agri-ventures has already established two grow-out ponds while three more are still undergoing construction in the area dubbed as fishing-village. "Our customers would enjoy fishing, we will provide them with hook and line fishing gears to fish in these ponds and their catch can be cooked in their own ways," Lindo said. He said a single warm-water pond measuring 100 sq. m. has a stocking capacity of 1,000 fingerlings. Aside from growing local tilapia, hito (African catfish) and bangus, the GML agri-ventures is also raising pangasius or iridescent shark catfish, a fast-growing freshwater fish. Scientifically called Pangasius hypothalamus, these slender, elongated silverfi sh to bluish-bodied fishes can grow to 4 feet in length and can weigh up to a maximum of 44 kilograms. Lindo, who also works as a consultant of Rep. Ma. Valentina Plaza of Agusan del Sur's first congressional district, said pangasius is adaptable to waters with low levels of dissolved oxygen and has a capacity to breathe in the surface. Originally cultured in Southeast Asia, particularly in Vietnam and ThaiLand, the pangasius fi sh is in great demand in the United States, Europe, Russia and China with its fi llet meat popular among high-end restaurants worldwide.
The web site Eurofi sh lists pangasius production in Vietnam at 40,000 metric tons in 1997. It is now considered as one of the top three cultured food fishes in the world. Brielgo Pagaran, Department of Trade and Industry regional director for Caraga, said pangasius farming is currently promoted in the region because of growing demand in the domestic market and as replacement for current imported products coming from Vietnam. Two years ago, the government-owned Caraga State University established a breeding-trial and grow-out pond for pangasius, a tropical warm water catfish, inside the campus to stimulate production in Caraga region due to growing demand in the local market. The fist pangasius techno demo pond was established at Den's Aqua Farm in Libertad, the city's west side barangay. The facility is now being used as venue for technology briefing every Friday for product quality, market and project viability. According to a report of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources-National InLand Fisheries Technology Center, this fleshy and fast-growing fish was introduced in the Philippines as early as 1981. It said the breeding trials started in 1985 but the market was not ready at that time so produced fingerlings were passed on to the aquarium fish trade as "freshwater hammerhead shark." The DTI's regional office has already recorded at least 80 pangasius growers in Carmen town in Surigao del Sur and in Butuan. ALDEN C.PANTALEON JR.
By ALDEN C. PANTALEON JR
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