We had quite a wonderful surprise with the seafood bouillabaise at Lab-as Restaurant in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. Owned by the Fuentes family, we serendipitously stumbled on this restaurant while asking about dive tours for Apo Island. Sandra managed the travel agency while her brother Sande owned the pizza place and music bar. These establishments were located side by side at the northern tip of Rizal Boulevard (pretty similar to Roxas Boulevard's Baywalk, sans the smog). They had two varieties: the tomato-based soup and the coconut milk-based bouillabaise. On our first visit, we tried the former – a rich red broth of mussels, scallops, shrimp, fish, squid, crab, and mushrooms. It was a meal in itself, actually, and we needn't have ordered the fat crabs. It was part tangy, part spicy, and the freshness of its seafood ingredients was just fabulous. I can't remember the last time I tasted shrimps as crunchy or scallops as robust. By the way, "lab-as" is Visayan for "fresh".
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