1 Bonifacio St, Vigan City, Philippines
This is my first in a series of Philippine posts, of food I had during my 2 week trip to Philippines end of last year.
This was the first meal we had since landing in Philippines and taking a 10 hour bus ride to Vigan from Angeles City, with the last meal before this being a crappy eggs benedict from Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, about 14-15 hours before.
I’ll confess, I forgot the name and price of the dish. It IS essentially crispy pork but I don’t remember the Filipino name. The closest I’ve come to via googling is Lechon Kawali. But the price is accurate to about USD0.40 so it’s a fair estimate on my behalf.
First thing to note about Filipino food, it’s very similar to Malay / Chinese cuisine. 
This is no exception, reminding me very much of Chinese Roast Pork, only this is cut into chunks before roasting. I liked it, not too much seasoning so you get to enjoy all the porkiness.
We also ordered a serving of fish, I really don’t remember the name, and the price is around the vicinity of $1.50 as well. Because I have no idea what it is, I didn’t include it into the topic of this post, but here’s a picture. It was okay, standard fare, fried fish cuts, with sauce that was starchy and quite flavourless, maybe that’s why it also came with pickled vegetables %5B12%5D.jpg "See the dark stuff on the raw onions? That's cincalok.")
mixed with a fermented sauce, I don’t know what it was but it tasted incredibly similar to a Malaysian sauce called Cincalok, which is basically fermented shrimp.
Another thing to note about the Filipino diet, they eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Also, most of their dishes (the flavours of Philippines, if you will) are a little too much for foreigners of the non-asian kind to handle, and a lot of the locals told me stories about how some of the Caucasian visitors would order a lot thinking they are adventurous, and when it comes some of them would only eat white rice, perhaps picking on the egg or vegetable dish only, cos the other dishes are too overwhelming. I can picture it, and have nothing to say except to shake my head at the thought.
3 comments:
what about filipino food makes it "overwhelming?" i'd force myself to shovel that food into my gut just forego that pseudo-adventurous foreigner stereotype.
anyway, that pork does look nice and crispy... mmm. but doesn't appear to be anything TOO outlandish that i can't find a similar dish here.
yeah, like I said, similar to chinese / malay cuisine, which is not hard to like, IMO.
I dunno, I guess it's cos filipino food uses a lot of vinegar and dark soy? Or that they eat innards (which again most asian cultures do)?
They also eat dogs and what I think are chicks, cos they look like a full chicken but no bigger than a baby's fist in size, but i'm not going to assume people are stupid enough to order that only to say it's disgusting later....
And like I said, I can't imagine people not liking filipino food, as it's similar to other asian cuisine. I guess... I guess some people just suck, is all I can think of.
I say I can imagine, because I know some Caucasians who've been to Malaysia and refused to eat one of our desserts cos it was too colourful. It was Ice Kacang for christ sake. Filipinos have a version called Halo Halo, same thing. Google Ice Kacang, or Halo Halo, and look at the pictures, and tell me if that's "so disgusting" you wouldn't eat it. See... I cannot understand it, but I can imagine it happening.
ice kacang looks just like a snow cone. the yellow snow makes me a little nervous though.
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