To start off the week, we’ll resume with a new post the Delightful Davao series. Let me just say that Davao remains to be one of my favorite cities in the country (no bias) for its rich culture, nommy nomz, and happy people. 

On Day 3 of our four-day trip last February, we started the day off bright and early to get a dose of adrenaline at Asia’s best zipline- The Xcelerator. As soon as it was over, we rushed to the next stop of the day- LUNCH (we were famished, the “short hike on a developed trail” turned out not to be so short, or that developed).

Located right next to the famous Crocodile Park, Riverwalk Grill is a restaurant that serves exotic fare such as crodile meat (naturally), ostrich meat, ostrich egg, and pangasius fish. We couldn’t pass up the chance to try them, of course.

We started the exotic nomz challenge with the Ostrich Egg Omelette. It’s a little pricey at five hundred pesos an order, but how often can you get an ostrich egg omelette in the city? One egg is good for a whole bunch of people. The omelette had shrimps, cheese, tomatoes, onions, and bell peppers mixed in and I was surprised that it wasn’t as fishy as I thought it would be. Actually, if I didn’t know better, I’d have thought it was your typical chicken egg omelette.

The second exotic dish to try was the crocodile meat. The meat was available as steak, sisig, roast ribs, caldereta, and kare-kare but we settled on the simple Croco Spicy one so we could actually taste the meat (we didn’t think it would be that saucy). When it arrived, the meat was mixed in spicy, oily sauce and garnished with strips of bell peppers, and onions. As expected, the meat was tough, chewy, and did not taste like chicken.

To wash down all the nomz that we ordered, we had glasses of the Dragon Fruit Shake, as recommended by regular diners of the restaurant. It came as a bright purple, frothy fruit shake topped off with an inviting cherry. It looked nice but I’m not a fan (maybe because I don’t like the fruit all that much either).

At Riverwalk Grill, you can choose to have your meal while cruising down the river at an additional premium of 300 pesos for the whole boat. The only drawback is that you can’t order additional nomz until you come back. Trying crocodile meat and ostrich egg was fun but it’s not something I’d do on a regular basis.But if you’re in Davao, you shouldn’t miss the experience. After nomming, walk across the street to visit the Davao Crocodile Park, to see where they got your crocodile meat from.