Dolor’s kakanin
I was a very young child when my father first brought us to a humble house along a narrow street beside the Concepcion Church in the fishing town of Malabon. It was my first Dolor’s Kakanin experience–an experience that would be repeated over and over and something I would introduce to my husband and children years later. Kakanin is the generic term for sweet steamed rice cakes often cooked with coconut milk. Dolor’s specialties include sapin-sapin (literally, layer-layer) which describes a kakanin with three layers of various colors, kamoteng-kahoy (cassava, my personal favorite), biko made with whole grains of glutinous rice and a kakanin made with mais (corn) but distinct from the more common maja blanca.
Although Dolor’s now has outlets along Governor Pascual Avenue in Malabon and along Banawe Street in Quezon City (there used to be one inside Cherry’s Supermarket along Congressional Road although I haven’t been there in years, so, I wouldn’t know if the stall is still there), the best way to exprience Dolor’s Kakanin is still to go to the house beside the Concepcion Church. When you enter, there is a simple counter behind which is a tall frame with several shelves. Each shelf contains a huge bilao laden with kakanin. One bilao for each kind of kakanin. When you order, slices of kakanin are cut from the contents of these bilao and transferred to a new one, the size of which you will have to choose. The preparation usually starts with the sapin-sapin which is carefully arranged around the outermost part of the bilao. It is followed by the mongo kakanin (blue in the photo), the kutsinta (the red kakanin in the photo), mais (yellow), kamoteng-kahoy (the cream-colored kakanin) and, finally, biko at the center.
I wish I could have taken a better photo to give justice to Dolor’s Kakanin but my family got to the bilao before I did. It’s pretty obvious that someone had feasted on the kakanin before I took the photo, right? Anyway, I included the top half of the box in the photo for those interested in knowing where to buy these wonderful Filipino delicacies. Believe me, Dolor’s wouldn’t be the institution that it is in Malabon if the quality of its products had not remained constant throughout the years.
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