Pastillas

If you have been to Iba in Zambales, you probably did not miss this sight – the pastillas stalls along the detour road back to Manila. Juliet’s is not actually a favorite but it offered the best shot from the car.

These roadside joints offer a wide variety of pastries and sweets but I am not really sure if these are all home-made in Iba or elsewhere. Many of the sweets and cookies and candies displayed appear to be the same products that one finds in the stalls at the Market!Market! or in SM Hypermart.

Of course, there’s going to be a lot of difference if these same things are given as “pasalubong” coming from a place four or five hours away from the metropolis for expecting city folks.

Juliet’s emphasizes the fact that it is D’original, as many others have done. Naalala ko tuloy yong bilihan ng buko pie sa Los Baños – The Original. While there are many other pretenders like the ubiquitous Collete’s or the Divinia’s, people still insist on lining up for “the original” buko pie, whether the price, or the better taste, real or imagined, makes all the difference.

Iba folks like Juliet have somehow found a niche market of a sort. We have been to Zambales for short summer trips a number of times and we always make it a point to add to the daily sales of these pastillas joints, not so much from the business side of it but more on the pleasure that their sweets give us.

They are probably really not uniquely Zambales products but one gets a feeling that there is some sort of a different sensation that they produce in the palate.