Yum with Cheese Value Meal from Jollibee - $1.70?

All around the Philippines.

So Jollibee is Philippines’ answer to McDonald’s. That’s not to say they are short on McD’s. Or KFC or Wendy’s or whatever other American fast food chain you can think of. They LOVE their fast food. And they have a major sweet tooth too, desserts, donuts, everything.

We were stuck in Cebu City on New Year’s eve, so to make the best of it I picked a mall from my Lonely Planet guide and headed there, hoping to find a few bars to drink 2008 away. Nothing against Cebu, I was just thinking I’d be celebrating new year’s AWAY from a city for once. I picked Ayala Center for its newly constructed Terrace area, aptly called The Terraces. Being open air, maybe there would be a few bars and some fireworks. I mean it’s a mall right? There HAS to be a bar that’s open to celebrate New Year’s. You will find a bar (or 5) in every mall in Malaysia, and come Xmas or NY’s they’ll stay open till after countdown. That apparently is not how it works in the Philippines. Anyway, that’s a whole other story. BEFORE the clock struck 12, dinner was first.

For some reason I decided to forego a nice NY Eve dinner and thought it was as good a time as any to continue sampling the daily Filipino diet. I’ve seen Jollibee at least twice a day throughout my 2 weeks there, it’s a wonder how I haven’t actually tried it yet.

To be honest the menu doesn’t look that good, I feel like it’s just trying to be McD’s. In fact it’s actually more popular than McD’s there, but anyways. I didn’t see anything I’d especially like, so for comparison’s sake I went with a Yum with Cheese value meal. That’s basically a cheeseburger.

The big difference between this and McD’s is that the meat patty tastes very sausagey. Also again with the sweetness, I found the meat to be really sweet. Or maybe it was the ketchup that was sweet. The meal comes with fries and Coke, and I don’t really have anything to say about them. But overall not a very outstanding burger. It doesn’t suck, but I don’t miss it.

Ironically, in trying to figure out the price of the meal, I went to the website and found some pretty nice sounding items like Cheesy Bacon Mushroom and Amazing Aloha with an “It’s Back!” logo on it. Well damn why couldn’t they come back sooner?