incessant rambling

i was part of the demolition team that decimated a whole lechon in under thirty minutes earlier in the day. on the other hand, that wasn't an excuse not to grab dinner after attending mass. luk thai was convenient, i already had the chance to sample their (not so stellar) food offering but was pretty impressed with the tom yam soup so we decided to give it another shot. aside from the tom yam, ron ordered "khao gaeng kheawan gai" which literally translates to amazing-thai-chicken-in-green-curry-rice-topping. which is pretty long winded. true to it's name, the dish was amazing. amazingly bland. even the carinderia curry served more flavor than this version. it was salty, flat, lacked the "gingery" taste and had sweet potatoes instead of plain caucasian patatas. my order wasn't any better. i got the "lad na nua" which is supposed to mean flat noodles in thick gravy sauce with beef. right. they are indeed a race of few words. from a taste perspect...

imagine a fillet of dori fish, dipped in egg then crusted with breadcrumbs and grated parmesan then fried till it's golden brown. the result is an extremely delicious dish where the fish melts in your mouth after a crunchy bite, the parmesan adding the salty aftertaste. i had this served in cafe mediterranean but i asked them to change the rice into a shepherd's salad which is nothing but chunks of green bell pepper, red tomatoes and cubed zucchini seasoned with salt, pepper, a bit of lemon and olive oil. this is one affair worth the sinful indulgence.

kung di mo nai-intindihan ang binabasa mo, siguro wag mo na dapat ituloy ang pagbabasa. kung nagpupumilit ka, aba eh medyo me katangahan na yan. eneways, me mga tao talaga na ang lakas ng loob mag pantasya. isang kaibigan ko eh medyo malakas ang tinitira nitong drugs. pantasya ata nito eh si aga mulach sya, inay ko po.. pwede namang inumaga bulak . di naman po ako likas na manlalait, pero medyo nakakairita lang na gusto po nyang mag pa set up. di lang yan, me criteria pa.. "tall, beautiful, fair and kind." - natatakot po ako kung sakaling magkatuluyan sila ng mga kaibigan ko... SUKOB ang kasal. inaaay. pero sa pagdadalawang isip, me katwiran nga naman. me kasamang "kind". para siguro sakali maawa sa kanya. leche.

bored, waiting for food in luk thai. saw the interesting wall mounted pictures. used the drinking glass as a prop. excellent studies. still bored

August 22, 2009 Saturday 9am - a bit hungry. texted red, mencie and judet - "let's have lunch around twelve." 9:01 - still waiting for reply. tagal ha. 10:30 - red, "Dens, working today. Dami nag leave today." oo nga naman, e kung dami nag leave yesterday di na eto relevant. 10:31 - i answered. "Mag leave ka rin. Aba you can't be the cook, manager, front desk, sex slave and personal assistant to the devil all-in-one." 10:35 - red, "ayaw nila." 10:35 - mencie, "cuz, am still in the clinic. working today eh." 10:36 - told my cousin, "well, good thing we till have work. at least we should be thankful for that. e kung wala tayong work, pwede na lang kaya tayo maging sex slave?" 10:38 - mencie, "hah? anong sex slave?!" 10:40 - "ay wrong person. naman kasi, sabay kayo nag te text. sampung daliri lang po ako. joke lang." 10:41 - mencie, "ha ha ha, sumbong kita kay tita!" 10:42 - "sira, patay...

italian meatballs are generally served with pasta and tomato sauce, what makes it extra special is that it is mixed with parmesan among other spices. the pinoy meatball is similar to italian meatball in the sense that we both use bread as an extender - though at times, i have this distinct impression that we use sweetened bread. pinoy meatballs are generally fried then re-served in a sweet and sour sauce. no wonder, a lot of filipinos are candidates for diabetes. my favorite though is the mediterranean meatball, kofta. kofta is made from finely ground beef, onions, parsley, salt and pepper. you can always add cilantro or cumin to give it that tangy zest. it doesn't have extenders and it is usually grilled or shaped like a tube in a skewer then served with pita bread. the trick is to double-grind the beef to make it extra fine and it becomes a sticky mass that doesn't need egg to bind the dish. try the one in Cafe Mediterranean (greenbelt 1, makati) where they shaped it into bal...

early thursday morning and i was rushing to get some breakfast before heading off to the airport. mariano promised we're going to have brunch but for some reason he wasn't able to call after midnight (like he promised) to confirm. heading off to greenbelt i first went inside pancake house, flipped through their menu and decided to find another place. i am not supposed to be eating wheat and flour based products. end of delusions of stacked pancakes smothered in blueberry and swimming in karo syrup. ended up in Binalot a couple of stalls away. pinoys love to pack food and bring it to school, office, picnic and your occasional rally. binalot takes this to the next level by serving classic pinoy food "binalot" style. here's my picture set of daing na bangus (deboned and dried milkfish) with tomatoes, salted egg and extra fried egg. i was thinking how many banana trees they needed to massacre (lord help me). salted egg is pickled raw whole eggs in a saline solution th...

yummy, delicious, california maki, tokyo tokyo, a complete meal with mango, rice, fake kani (crab meat), roe, wasabi and a bit of kikkoman sauce. not. don't order this one, i love eating in tokyo2 but didn't particularly like the california maki. sour mango and a bit cold.

in short, tama na ang kababuyan na eto . drats! dinner with the gang last night in Cyma. food was uh, bad. service, bad ass. company, fantastic. got in a bit late and they had a platter of slightly anemic porkchops, kebabs, osso buco pasta and a pepper stuffed with rice concoction that looked slightly alive. i mean, it was ready to crawl out of the serving dish. leah wanted me to get some of the porkchop but it wasn't that particularly appetizing. besides, someone from the gang took all the good parts (read: the FATTY PORKY PART!) and left the chewing gum meat. so i ordered my lamb gyro that made it's maiden debut in the bill but not on the table. forgot to ask them to replace the pita bread with lettuce. anyways, i have been avoiding baboy for a while now. and no, i am not referring to you-know-who-you-are. apparently, not good for my blood type. there is no justice. this is the osso buco. don't order it.

my friends know that i'm not particularly fond of sweets. but EVERY time i find myself in Seattle's Best i MUST order the coconut macaroons. it's disgustingly sweet, sticky, grainy, nutty, oily and faaaantastic. it's too sweet i swear ants get diabetes by having a bite. it's so sweet it reminds me of wena, disgustingly sweet but mildly annoying. order tea to go along and savor each tiny bit. don't hesitate the use the flat side of your fork to scrape whatever sticks to the... to the... (okay you fill in the name of the paper that you use to mold cupcakes)

A distinctive 'S' shaped double curve, commonly found on chair arms - that's the web definition of Cyma. for most, it's just the name of a restaurant that serves Mediterranean and one opened in cebu (the terraces, ayala) recently. i've always liked cyma in manila and decided to grab dinner in the place when i got the chance to travel for work sometime early august. if you're new to the place, you must order the gyro (somehow the waiter pronounced it as "hero") as that's a typical order. it's presented like shawarma with pita stuffed with onions, tomatoes, grilled meats and a special sauce that gives it a peanuty garlicky flavor. the most popular would be chicken and beef but i personally prefer lamb. you have the option to repcae the pita with lettuce to make your wrap a bit "healthier". if you're inclined, you can spread the gyro and cut it up into pieces very much like a side salad. ask for a slice of lemon and bit of olive oil ...

my last post about my blood testing adventure i forgot to mention that i headed off to the carinderia (side street food stall) to grab some brunch. was supposed to head off to the gym to get some workout and i usually grab something otherwise i just might end up getting faint. anyways, i really don't know my blood type (at that time) so i had the perfect excuse to order meat he he he. this is Ginataang Langka or young (unripe) jackfruit cooked in coconut milk. the perfect version is spicy hot but this one was a little too sour for my taste. it also had a lot of buad flakes (dried fish) that made it too salty. if you look carefully enough, you'll see that i ordered a slab of breaded porkchop that's set off in the far left of the picture :) this one's a throwback to our spanish heritage. menudo is similar to cocido with pork, green peas, potatoes, carrots cooked in a tomato based sauce. the main difference is that we normally don't add chorizo de bilbao (it's rath...

met up with ron and red today, ron was supposed to head off to naga but his brother was late (for the millionth time) so i asked him if he wanted to join me and red for lunch. if anyone cares to remember, red was the fellow who suddenly got sentenced to being a goat for the rest of his life when he found out that he is blood type AB. apparently he's the grazing type as majority of meats act like a poison to him except for some in the fowl and fishy type. that conversation sort of piqued my interest in the ever raging war of the weighing scale so i decided to have my blood type tested in HP. my doctor friends were sort of amused by the fact that i can't even remember my blood type. the last time i had it checked was way back in grade school (for some mandatory vaccination that i can't even remember). anyways, when the medtech pulled up a syringe with an impossibly long needle i sorta blurted: "ah miss? i thought you were just going to prick my finger?!" "ah, w...

dinner alone is not unusual for me. dinner alone, in italianni's is a bit unusual for anyone though. specially when everyone else is with a date, family or group and i'm seated by myself, camera in hand playing with my food before wolfing down the meal. saturday night and coming from a long run in legazpi park, i went back to my unit in perla mansion to freshen up before deciding to head off to greenbelt in ayala for dinner. i was thinking of teriyaki boy (nah, had enough japanese for a while), tokyo tokyo (another japanese option), cafe mediterranean (was not really keen on pita and humus) and on and on and on. there are a number of boutique restaurants in greenbelt but i was underdressed to even get a table. whereas in cebu you only worry about the food, in manila, you worry about the food, your outfit, your budget and your date. italianni's eventually became my final stop and i settled on a table on the second level of the restaurant. at least if i get bored i can do som...

did you ever wonder why breakfast is called that? it's supposed to be a combination of two words, breaking fast. i guess when you've slept for eight hours you're hungry and needs to get some fuel before heading off to your daily activity. in my case, since i wake up at around ten in the morning, i usually have brunch. short for breakfast and lunch. i usually grab something to eat before heading off to the gym. which is kind of ironic, i have this plan to lose some weight and i grab some food before lifting weights. hmmm. i have this grand plan to sample the various eating joints that dot the road heading off to my gym and am posting two here: mojos (deliciously greasy and spicy deep fried potatoes served with garlic mayo) and spicy schublig sausage (too dry, don't order this) from handuraw, batchoy (noodle soup in clear beef broth with yesterday's leftover meats, ask them to re-heat this one) and tocilog (sweetened spicy chicken cutlets, fried garlic rice and the re...

there used to be a handful of restaurants in cebu that must be visited by everyone coming from manila. tongs is one of them. there's nothing spectacular about tongs, think open-air gerry's grill. the biggest attraction for the restaurant is their very reasonably priced buffet at Php 180. even the buffet is nothing spectacular except that they served oysters. topped with garlic and cheese then baked, blanched then dipped in a spicy vinegar concoction called pinakurat. these are the usual preparations that the patrons enjoy. for manilenos where a plate of six oysters can cost you triple the cost of the buffet, the oyster feast is enough to mark tongs as must-visit place. never mind the fact that of late, the oysters have shrunk and shriveled to global recession sizes. that or the oysters sometimes resemble re-hydrated prunes. even more alarming are a number of stories about adventures to loo land that happen after a visit to tongs. nevertheless, people go back for more and the lu...

i guess that's the best way you can describe the current state of rep. tony cuenco, suckered into a defensive corner by tommy. tommy accused tony of not doing much for the south district of cebu in the past nine years and tony retorted by publishing a full page ad showing his projects that amounted to close 433M and an additional 100M in proposed or ongoing projects. he even came up with a list of barangay captains, councilors and other supporters that received dole outs from him in the last election. unfortunately, we all know that congressmen receive 70M for their annual swine barrel allocation. which now opens the question, what happened to the 200M balance? on another note, we ALL know that politicians grease the hands of a lot of barangay captains and councilors to ensure their support in the local and national elections. suffice to say that we ALL know that this is not allowed but everyone else does it. on the other hand, we also know better than to PUBLICLY launder the list ...

when you walk out of a restaurant you don't expect to come back to it anytime soon. the last time i walked out of aden restaurant in IT park i was steaming mad, hungry and almost late for a conference call with my boss and a colleague to discuss a client implementation. i ordered two dishes from their menu and had to endure about 30 minutes waiting while everyone else around me got their servings, dessert, coffee. my bestfriend approached the cashier and bellowed that they can keep their food because we're not even waiting for the rest of the order to come in. the most irritating part was that they served the garlic kangkong ahead and they didn't even serve the rice or set any utensils. the cafe ambiance didn't sit too well with us digging in with our fingers. anyways, i was forced to come back to the place because some colleagues wanted to grab some food in the middle of a break from training. i grabbed my jacket and turned up the collars so my face is half-covered, di...

I read that title for two showbiz columnists whose underlying theme is that they know Cory on a personal basis. one had legitimate reason to be familiar with Cory as Kris is his best friend. on the other hand, the other writer recalled a few occasions where he was invited to a press conference and a dinner by Cory's daughter. that and the fact he shook hands with cory after digging his hand into a plate of greasy nuts. i guess Cory is name-droppable nowadays. in any case, the closest that i'll ever get to cory is the fact that kris was the classmate of my niece in san agustin (dasmarinas, makati). at that time, kris was either a straight english or tagalog speaking teenager. remarkably, kris resembles her mom when cory was still a young lady. but i guess that comparison ends there. in an entirely different note, last wednesday the metro was literally drowning in rain and the wind howling through the streets. i guess, that's pretty symbolic of the tears and cries of the peop...

i'm like sooo over meat (temporary insanity). so there are days that i go out and try to look for something else rather than indulge in my caveman instincts for meaty meatiest dishes. coincidentally(?) i ordered pizza and pasta combinations from different places and i guess wanted to do a quick comparison of how it stacked up to each other. um, more like i have this tendency to order the same food i like. anyways i got attracted to pizza hut as they were announcing this Php 99 combination meal that comes in different sets so i ordered the carbonara and an extra set of pizza. i was really planning to order the bacon overload pizza but it wasn't available (that should have been my warning) so i ended up with aloha as a pair for my carbonara. both came in burnt and lacked flavor. heck, i must have finished off half the pepper to get some taste. good thing i was reading a copy of "chic hits the fan" and i was busy figuring out the list of colorful characters to notice ho...

i got to the office and before heading in i grabbed my lunch. i was kind of sick getting the humba or pork belly every day so i decided to order a salad in kul's. not exactly vegetarian as it had some grilled chicken on top. i tried to enjoy each bite but who am i kidding? i'm not a field grazer, i'm no goat but i do have the goattee.

last night i attended tonton's birthday. to be 21 and celebrating with friends is something fun. after the heavy meal i excused myself as i drove off to a funeral wake. arlene's mom passed away a couple of nights back and the weekend is the only chance that i'd be able to make a visit. a study in contrast, whereas tonton's celebration was rowdy and noisy, the wake was filled with a quiet hush as everyone huddled together to talk about memories and reacquainting themselves with old ties. the sonorous prayers drifted out of the chapel where the coffin laid. and just like every other filipino practice, food was being served. not that i have any appetite after tonton's grand bash. made me reflect on life and death in one night and the food that comfort us all.