Beef Royale Jamaican Patty from Royal Caribbean – $?

A very small booth in a small airport in a somewhat small town in Philippines (Clark Airport, Angeles City).

 

I’m posting this in response to the post below this one. This is my only experience with Jamaican food. Judging from  where I got it, I’m guessing it ain’t too Jamaican. I can’t remember the price as it was months ago. But it wasn’t expensive… maybe around the vicinity of 1-2 dollars. Maybe. 

Just like any regular hot pocket, with the meat tasting like heavily processed (read: way too tender) road kill and the skin a little too hard from sitting in the heated erm.. window display for too long.

Oh, except this gave my friend and I the runs the next day. Luckily we only had 1 each. Tho I wouldn’t hold that against Jamaican food, cos I mean look where I bought it.

Since I don’t have much to say about this, but have 4 pictures to share…. I’ll just keep babbling on. The 2nd picture shows you the available flavours. Not everything was available at that time. I went with the Beef Royale as it had the word Royale, and the scene about Cheese Royale from Pulp Fiction couldn’t stop playing in my head immediately after reading the menu.

And this twisting text thing is giving me a headache.

Balut from the corner of a dark street at Lapu-Lapu, Mactan Island - $0.25

All over Philippines.

My final Philippines post. Before going there I didn’t know what to expect of the country, its people, and the food they ate. But I knew about this one, and it was my mission to try this before leaving. Ironic that I should only find someone selling this on my very last night in Philippines. I was excited as hell, and wanted to eat it the way it’s meant to be eaten; by the side of the road where they sell it off a box behind a bicycle. But for the sake of taking better-lit pictures, I bought 2 to bring back to the hotel where the toilets are well lit and the toilet bowl is well within reach in case it really is as bad as people make it sound.

I’m no expert but as far as I know, balut is boiled (or steamed?) duck eggs at its mid-growth foetal stage. I was told it’s 2 months after they’ve been laid. And I don’t know how to make that not sound dirty.

It’s available all over Philippines and as far as I know they’re the only culture that eats this.

They mark the egg with an X where you are supposed to open it. I believe that is where the “clearing” is, as the other side is where the egg white and duck foetus is clinging to. You want to crack it open at the opening so you can drink the fluids that are in there, foetal juice if you will.

Being a smartass I decided to open the other end (the top of the egg).. and was met with egg white. So I peeled the whole thing vertically and there you have a side-view of what’s inside the egg.

The egg white is nearly inedible as it is really tough. It also has this veiny overlapping feature that… well I think they’re really veins. And along the entire egg is a black strand swirling around, thicker and darker than the other veins. That, I believe, should be the umbilical cord.

Although the overall structure of the bird is visible; beak, eye slit, feathers and all, but on contact the bird is actually very soft, almost jelly like. I suppose the bones aren’t fully formed yet, hence why I keep calling it a foetus instead of a baby bird.

Now I was REALLY excited when I bought these eggs, as I’ve been meaning to try this for a very long time now. However, after the slow process of unshelling the first egg, I lost my appetite, much to my surprise. I LOVE eggs, of any kind and any method or style of preparation, even ones that are black and translucent (look forward to this post in the future), so this should be no different. Yet somehow, no. Not this time. My friend pointed out that it could be due to the fact that i was standing over a toilet bowl. Maybe… maybe.

Anyhoo, after some slight hesitation and deep breaths I ate it. It just tastes like stale eggs, with a slight poultry taste to it. I know I’m not being overly helpful with the description here but YOU try eating a foetus and be descriptive about its taste. It’s eaten with salt and chili vinegar.. I tried it with and without and can’t decide whether there is any improvement with the extras or not. They don’t smell as bad as people make it sound, and they don’t taste as bad as people make it to be. It doesn’t taste GOOD, no siree, but it doesn’t taste bad. But it sure was an experience and I’m glad I can check this one off my list now.

Crunchy Breaded Pork Lauriat from Chow King- $2

All over Philippines.

Remember when I said this was going to be the last Philippine post? I lied. I decided bad Chinese food is worth posting about too. Philippines has a chain (they like chains) of fast food restaurants serving Chinese food.

Take a moment to let that sink in. I think this is weird as fudge, because to me, fast food is almost a food category in itself… So Chinese fast food sounds as weird as “car bike”. But since I have actually seen half-car half-bike vehicles before, I guess Chinese fast food can exist in this dimension without destroying the space-time continuum.

Observe, the Lauriat set… I don’t know what Lauriat means… but I take it as “set meal” or “meal”. Or “set”. I ordered the Crunchy Breaded Pork Lauriat w/ New Ube Sioplet, other options include the Crispy Fish Fillet Lauriat w/ New Monggo Sioplet. All kindsa funny language there. 

Firstly, Sioplet is all wrong. I think they are trying to say “mini” pau, pau being Chinese for bun, in Chinese it'’s called “Siu Pau”. They got that right (spelt Siopao in the menu). But this is the mini version, so I guess the are trying to say “Pau-let”… however, they went with “Sioplet”… which doesn’t make ANY sense as all. They cut “Siopao” in between the p and the a! Like pork cuts… and the mini version, they call porkculets…. I mean you put the “let” at a meaningful position, not stab it in the middle of a word.

Anyways. Ube, I’m guessing is Tagalog for taro, cos the bun is purple. On the plate I have crispy breaded pork, prawn crackers, chow mein, the Sioplet®, and rice.

This sucked. I wouldn’t order this ever again. I would probably give Chow King a miss entirely too.

For your viewing pleasure, I’ve put a pic of what my friend ordered too. I think it’s the Spare Ribs with rice. Don’t ask me how it tastes like, but from the Lauriat I had…. I’m inclined to think that it sucked too.

PS: At least it was cheap.

Double Cheeseburger from McDonald’s - $1.50

All over Philippines.

Not much to say about this one, except that it was my very first meal of 2009. For comparison’s sake I got a very unadventurous Double Cheeseburger Value Meal from McD’s. It tastes and looks exactly the same as I what I get in Malaysia. The same goes for the fries and Coke, obviously.

I also got a Taro Pie, which is quite new to me, and I’d welcome this addition to the McD’s pie family in Malaysia (which includes apple, banana and at one point, pineapple).  Taro btw is yam, and if you still have a puzzled look, you should to google it. You get it a lot in chinese cooking.

My friend was slight more adventurous and went for something more Filipino, with the Chicken McDo & McSpaghetti. Ok adventurous may not be the best word to describe this, but you get the idea. McDo must be their short name for McDonald’s as you will find their   website is www.mcdo.com.ph, that or they think fried chicken is the flagship McDonald’s dish in the Philippines.

I heard the spaghetti is sweeter than it should be, and the fried chicken tasted like fried chicken. I wasn’t sure what to expect walking into a McD’s in Philippines, now I know it’s not that much different from what we are all used to.

My next post will be the last from my Philippines trip. I have a lot more pics, but because they are so similar (to each other) as well as to chinese food, I decided to give them a pass. Also most of them are more snack-like than a proper meal. Maybe I’ll post them in a batch next time. But what I’m posting next, well that was one of my culinary missions before going to Philippines, so you can imagine how happy I was to find it on my very last day, also the reason why it’s the last post.

 

 

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?

 

Bolognese Pizza from Pizza Volante - $7?

82 Session Road, Baguio City, Philippines

On the second day of our Philippines trip, we were at Baguio, a small highland city with a population size of a large one. Kinda killed the fun of being at a highland (where the weather is a nice 68°F, an awesome relieve from the average South-East Asian temperature of 80-88°F), as this means over-crowded streets, and major major polution.

Anyways, Session Road is where the action is, and I noticed it was packed with pizza joints, among other things. Yellow Cab, Greenwich, Pizza Hut, Shakey’s & Pizza Volante on the same street, about 2 blocks long. Now if they’re that passionate about pizza, they should theoretically rock at making it, so we had to give it a go as part of the Filipino experience.

First pizza was an 8” Bolognese. I know, pretty boring flavour, not my choice. Without trying to sound daft, it tasted like spaghetti on bread and a lotta cheese. OK so it does sound a bit daft, but hey, I write ‘em as I taste ‘em.

Next pizza is a 6” whutchamacallit. I forgot the name. It was beef something. Why I don’t remember is a combination of it being over a month ago and the pizza being very un-memorable. It was.. mehh.. it had a strong red wine taste to it and nothing else that stands out.

This was all the time I could afford for pizza in Philippines, but I just googled Pizza Volante and I see some people raving about how this is one of the better places to get pizza in Philippines. Based on that, I’ll have to say I was wrong about them rocking at pizza making.

Oh here’s a San Miguel Strong Ice that went with my pizza. It was, as with all other San Miguel beers, good but made better with the price being only $1. This is standard  throughout the country, prices ranging from $0.60 to $1.50 for bottled beer. Why drink Coke when you can have a San Miguel!

Crispy Pork from Cafe Uno - $1.50

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 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.

Baby Back Ribs from Balan's Produce - $18.00

851 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, DE - (302)292-2606

Here's the baby back ribs I spoke of yesterday. As you can see from the shininess, these suckers are soaking in BBQ sauce. The sauce is a lot thinner than most BBQ sauces I'm used to - I'd say even thinner than A1. Also, I didn't detect any tang that I usually do with BBQ sauces either. The best comparison I can make right now is the sauce that gets coated over orange-flavored chicken.

This particular batch was charred a bit more than I would've liked, so they were not quite fall-right-off-the-bone tender but they were still fairly tender. As with the pulled pork sandwich (pictured in the back), these ribs carry the same smokey flavor, perhaps even moreso because of the slight overcooking.

Overall, these ribs were a great add-on to one of the smaller sandwiches and the portion is large enough to split with two or three other people who also order a sandwich.

Smoked Pulled Pork Sandwich from Balan's Produce - $3.50

851 Old Baltimore Pike, Newark, DE - (302)292-2606

I'm not sure if this qualifies as a Filipino dish, but it came from a Filipino grocery store. Whatever the case, good food is good food.

The picture didn't turn out so great, but the pulled pork sandwich tastes much better than it looks. The meat is moist and tender and saturated with a great smokey flavor. Then the bun is soft and chewy, similar to the buns you get for Italian beefs in Chicago. MmmMMm.

The size of the sandwich is fairly small though, but the price is fair for what you get. It's probably about four or five inches long and chockful of pork. I think even my sister can pack away about two of them without too much trouble. As for me, well, that's a different story...

Side Note: My friend ordered the Smoked Beef Brisket Sandwich ($4.25, no picture available) and said the meat was sort of tough. Just wanted to throw that out there because I doubt I'll ever order it when I have to pulled pork to pick instead. Ooooh... alliteration.