Rufina patis location

You need patis to enhance flavors in dishes like sinigang and, mixed with calamansi, nilaga. A few drops can make a simple dish into a ooooh-so-good. It is also used as a dipping sauce for sour fruits like green mangoes in place of salt. It’s also used as a salt substitute in some recipes. (an apocryphal story goes that patis is the secret ingredient of a popular fried chicken brand). Another story goes that one popular actress always asks her alalays (sidekicks) to make sure that her meals came with a bottle of patis.)

Patis is not uniquely Filipino. It is Asian. We share the use of patis (nuoc mam) with the Vietnamese. It is created through the fermentation process of preserving fish by packing it in salt.

(While on a trip to Malabon with historian Ambeth Ocampo and the grandson of Rufina Patis' founder, Ramon Lucas, back in the 1990s, we visited one of the small places where patis was being fermented. The smell of the place, of course, was unimaginable. Concrete vats with wooden-board-and-galvanized-iron lids held

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