Harlingen’s Pacific Island offers flavors from the Far East

HARLINGEN — The smells of a familiar place of faint remembrance great me and the playful Tagalog conversations warm my heart and my imagination.

The buffet at Pacific Island — Oriental Market and Filipino Cuisine at 2224 S. 77 Sunshine Strip — offers pancit and pork adobo and taro leaves and lumpias.

As always in such places I have difficulty making a decision. However, an acquaintance of mine from the Philippines who happens to be enjoying her lunch with a friend refers me to a lunch plate with pancit. I take the pancit and also the lumpias which I have always enjoyed, and the pork adobo.

Such names so curious here and so familiar in the Philippine Islands in the Far East always beckon me to explore. Pancit is basically noodles with vegetables. Variations of the dish come from throughout the Philippines.

I personally like the variation at Pacific Island, as I do the lumpias, which are thin and delicious spring rolls.

The lumpias harken to a memory long ago in Corpus Christi when I associated with a rather eclectic group of friends who met in different restaurants around town. One of them was Ron the schizophrenic with an IQ of 135 who was a walking encyclopedia of knowledge and who lived off disability checks.

Ron yearned for friends and was often given to buying them lunch if that was the only way they could eat. Some returned his generosity with abandonment as soon as they finished eating — until they needed another free meal. A few of us stayed with him and learned.

We’d met at this Filipino restaurant, and I had lumpias with a sweet sauce and I immediately became a fan of lumpias. I remember also that Ron as he often did annoyed a young Filipino woman with his rather loud dissertations on Socratic thought, political commentary and Vladimir Horowitz in Moscow, and I heard her proclaim even louder a string of expletives as we left.

On this Saturday afternoon I’m sitting in this pleasant dining room in a red-stained wooden chair and table and enjoying my pancit and my lumpias and my pork adobo. I don’t know the specifics of pork adobo, but I know I like it. The flavor of the pork is a fine complement to the lumpias and the pancit.

I have come to Pacific Island less than an hour before it closes. A somewhat animated group of people has clustered around the buffet, some speaking Tagalog to the staff. They soon leave and Pacific Island becomes a much quieter place.

When I return the following Monday morning for breakfast I am somewhat discouraged to find myself the only customer. I have said previously that the personality of a place is defined by the people inside that place and the uniqueness of each personality and how those individual personality relate to each other in constantly changing patterns.

I realize I have come in twice at times when business is typically slow. The best time to find a crowded dining room is the lunch crowd, and if I had just planned this a little better I would have found all manner of people and personalities.

However, as I sit down to enjoy my breakfast of pancit and bangus (smoked milkfish), I pause to consider that perhaps the quietness of a place reveals a different side to a restaurant’s personality. Perhaps each visit will show different parts of that personality, and those parts constantly change.

Because you see, Pacific Island has all kinds of personalities beyond the food and the people. To my right, shelves are packed with all manner of snacks and other eatables with intriguing names. The Del Monte Fruit Cocktail sits next to Buenas Sugar Palm Fruit Kaong and Tuna Flakes in Oil. Spam is joined by cans of Palm Onion Corn Beef.

There is Kamayan Sauteed Shrimp Paste and Kewpie Mayonnaise and Dagupan Spicy Guisado Bagoong, and I think how fabulous it would be to purchase some of these items and try them at home. I then consider that I might not have been able to observe all these color items if I were distracted by the sounds and the movements of the people.

I realize now that no place — and no individual — has one specific personality. Everything and everybody is a composite of many personalities, and every visit and every encounter reveals something new and exciting and beautiful.

Pacific Island is open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Saturday.