If you love seafood like I do, summertime is the best time to enjoy them.

The season’s bountiful supply of fresh seafood makes for really amazing dishes. Even a simple mound of really fresh shrimps can be turned into a batch of halabos with a sweet natural aftertaste or kinilaw with its firmness and bite that stands up well to the acid, which can be vinegar or calamansi juice. This is the idea behind the fresh seafood on ice section of almost all buffet restaurants, including those located in hotels. You can have the fresh seafood as is, eaten with certain dips, or even have them grilled or baked.

Seafood, which include fish, are so versatile that you can practically have them prepared using any cooking method that you prefer. Steaming is light, healthy and easy. You can build up the ingredients, including cheese and cream, to make for a rich and creamy baked fish fillet should you choose the baking process. Boil them into a light clear soup dish like tinola or load them with tomato sauce to make a rich, thick saucy dish like Cajun Seafood. Or skewer them, marinate and grill, or stuff with aromatics and flavor enhancing condiments like garlic, onion and tomatoes first before wrapping in foil and grilling.

Seeing how much diners love fish and seafood, The Alley by Vikings, a buffet restaurant with a good following, has dedicated an entire station to seafood. It is called O’Sean Eleven, and it’s where diners go to have seafood paella, cold seafood, fish and chips, among others. These are dishes that diners can partake of at the restaurant, aside from the seafood dishes that they can also find in the other stations, such as the Chinese, Korean and Japanese stations.

Just recently, The Alley also started spreading out extra seafood dishes as their summer offering under the “Seafood Summer” banner. Each The Alley branch (Bonifacio Global City or BGC, UP Town Center, Ayala Malls Manila Bay, and Cloverleaf) has been featuring their own seafood creations, which shall be part of the regular buffet spread until the end of May. These unique dishes include baked salmon, Mixed Seafood Cajun, and seafood paella for BGC; Tuna Inasal Skewers, Cajun Seafood with Cuttlefish, and Steamed Shrimps with Soy and Calamansi Glaze for UP Town Center; Pasta Negra and Chilled Seafood on Ice for Ayala Malls Manila Bay; and Fish Fillet Parmigiana, Seafood Gratin and Creamy Garlic Seafood for Cloverleaf.

There is really no better time to enjoy seafood than during summer.