Waxing Poetic, Waxing Inebriated

This here is a snapshot of my favorite joint in town called Burby’s.

If you don’t already know where that is, I won’t tell you. You might flock there en masse and we’ll never get a good table. And that’s primarily why I love it so much. They’re never really full even on Saturday nights. It’s not too high class, unlike some places where people show up to gawk and be gawked at. You can wear a t-shirt you’ve owned since high school and not feel alienated. So it’s like drinking in your own living room but at the same time you’re still out.

Not only do they have the best chicken fingers, they also serve a dark lager called Black and Tan that comes in a TALL (and I mean tall) glass. That kids, along with a side of blue flaming Devil’s Advocate will get the job done faster than you can read that sign hoisted above your head.

Oh yes! The sign. And I’m not talking about that Ace of Base song we all danced to at one point. I consider it a perk: a bar with an odd (and most likely inadvertent) sense of humor. If the conversation goes wry, it’s there to crack me up. And when I’m too intoxicated to catch the irony, I just look up at their wrought iron chandelier and stare. The only letdown is that they’re closed on Sundays. My theory is that that’s when they turn the place into a chapel and celebrate mass.

I mean how else would you explain “God is good” in the watering hole?

 

Ano Daw?

After swinging by the museum in Greenbelt, we decided to eat at The Kitchen.

The Beached Bear orders a glass of lemon grass iced tea.

Me: Lemon grass? Sounds like something rich people would order.

Beached Bear: Have a sip. It tastes vaguely like sago’t gulaman.

Me: It’s sago’t gulaman after blowing up and killing someone with a hatchet.

Beached Bear: It’s sago’t gulaman after blowing up and killing someone with a hatchet and then dancing to (Wonder Girls’) Nobody.

Does this conversation qualify as a food review? I dunno..

 

Irony In A Bottle

Over the weekend my roommates and I decided to go for an all-girls Sunday Slowdown (viz. a nepenthean tradition involving booze and semi-sleazy conversations about life in general). Normally Sunday Slowdown would involve a male attendee or attendees even depending on the day. On this occasion however our usual suspect found himself with a group of Celts in another alcoholic soiree and then got sick. Our guess is that his constitution simply couldn’t hold up against the big Kahunas of ale-chugging.

Whilst in the convenience store, the roomies beelined for the freezer and found themselves confronted with an impertinent little tag hanging on the neck of our poison of choice (see illustration below).

They gave one pause… and then grabbed ten of the little suckers.

You would think that my initial reaction would be an outburst of feminist rhetoric. They can’t be serious! What were they thinking placing such a strident symbol of misogyny on their product? In this day and age no less. Did the Gilbey’s marketing execs hire some cigar smoker from the 30’s to come up with this idea?

Then I realized I was holding a bottle of special dry gin with natural green tea extract infused with the crisp taste of citrus and the zest of ginger (best enjoyed with friends while making potpourri).

No self-respecting man will ever be caught dead with it. I shall reserve my rage for a more worthwhile cause. In the meantime, us girls enjoyed downing our ice-cold metrosexual beverage.

To add an extra pinch, I left the label on the entire time.

 

The Meal Of Fate

I am a recently converted siopao afficionado. As with all my food preferences, the obsession was triggered by my inability to produce anything edible out of my own kitchen. Except maybe instant noodles but a daily swig of MSG is not a healthy way to thrive. Even for me, an eight-year dorm food veteran. I leave it to the pros (or whoever is willing to brave my stove) to provide me with nourishment. Not too long ago when work-related stress (or rather stress-induced laziness) prevented consumption of a proper meal, I discovered my fall-back -the lowly siopao asado from 711. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve eaten the stuff before just not with the same gusto as now.

Incidentally, I came across one of Jessica Zafra’s articles where she spewed encomiums over a certain Chinese restaurant of her youth. According to her, it once peppered the metro but have now dwindled to a handful of hard-to-find joints. She mentioned their menu was centered on three oriental staples: siomai, mami and of course, siopao.

Enough said.

I proceeded to ask Manila-raised friends if they knew where to find the reputed chain. All I got were several hesitant replies of Hindi ko alam e. Pero sabi nila masarap daw dun. Some have never even heard of it. Some were slightly more specific with their lips pointing in the general direction of Binondo (Why we do that is beyond me. Do we not have enough fingers? Does lip-pointing provide more emphasis? Remind me to investigate that one of these days). The hunt went on for weeks to no avail. It was eventually dismissed as one of those lost causes one is forced to live with. This devotee simply had to forego a visit to the supposed mecca.

Then as chance would have it, I found myself in a cab bound for the National Museum on my bestfriend’s birthday. We were to see Juan Luna’s Spolarium and while dodging vehicles on Quezon Ave, an aged neon sign materialized. I shrieked, MA MON LUK!!!

It is now safe to assume that the museum took a sudden plunge on our list of priorities.

At the entrance, we were greeted by that familiar Chinese restaurant smell. Across the large mess hall was a painting of Ma Mon Luk himself. Walls were strewn with framed newpaper articles written about how he introduced mami to the Pinoy diet. The structure is an obvious remnant of the 60s. As were the waiters who’ve been there so long, they can enumerate the menu while navigating the maze of chairs backwards to and from the kitchen with their eyes closed.

We ordered two siopaos and a bowl of chicken mami which were (in true old school fashion) carelessly plopped on our table. And darn it, it was well worth the effort! The siopao was nothing like the artificial lump of who-knows-what they sell in 711. You can actually taste the kneaded homemade dough. The mami, pure broth, no MSG. A little soy sauce and it was perfect. Zafra was right. The secret ingredient has to be that overall haphazard what’s-that-floating-in-my-soup ambiance. We seem to take with it the same daring approach we do with the tap water and carinderia food. No one has died from it so it must be clean and should we drop dead, at least we had a good meal. I’d say, with all that history, Ma Mon Luk is a shrine to the sturdy Pinoy constitution awarded exclusively to those who braved the third world.

And had he been there, I’m sure Juan Luna will understand why we bypassed his painting for steamed dumplings and a bowl of chicken soup.

 

 

 

Spice up My Life….

I’m not all that picky when it comes to food. As long as it’s pulse-free and guaranteed to not cause a sudden and painful demise, I’ll eat it. The only thing I can’t stand is this nationwide campaign to go hot and spicy, a movement that was undoubtedly spawned somewhere within a 250 kilometer raduis of the Mayon volcano. Not that i have anything against it. [side comment #1: frankly, i think people who like it hot tend to be subconsciously sadomasochistic around the oral cavity. Why anyone in their right mind would find the sensation equivalent to that of swallowing a blowtorch pleasurable is beyond me.] Anyways, what’s disturbing about this is the weird way it haunts me despite all efforts. For instance, in the wee hours of a thursday morning, i was drawn to the kitchen by an odd rumbling noise in my tummy area and after a while strategized on how to get there unnoticed. [side comment #2: not a very easy feat as our resident feline friend (yes, i am talking about the infamous Mr. Flypaper) has recently gotten the impression that if humans so much as breathe in the direction of the refrigerator, a delicious treat would be in order. If not, prepared to be harassed to within an inch of your sanity.] So in the span of 5 minutes i managed to dodge the psychotic kitty, snatch a can of what looked like corned beef from the top of the fridge and learn the interesting factoid that we own three utterly useless can openers. my dear friends, witness the downfall of a perfect plan: I ended up struggling to open it “happy camper” style with a kitchen knife while trying to stave off the feline that has clambered up my right leg. So the fiasco finally ended, i sat down and after only the first mouthful did i realize that my mouth was on fire. How very serendipitous this has been. ***insert twittering bluebirds and violin playing cherubim here***

I contemplated sharing my spoils with the psychotic kitty just to see how he would react to this innovative method of torture cunningly devised by our pals from Carne Norte, but he’d never fall for it… DRAT!!  Unfortunately, my little misadventure was not the first and will not be the last. My own best friend has fallen prey to the joys of self-induced pain and for the longest time has been trying to coax me with soothing words like “hindi siya maanghang, promise!“. Even the people over at Tia Marias to whom i have explained several times along with the aid of hand gestures, international marine signal flags, sign language, smoke signals and half a dozen homing pigeons to hold the jalapenos in my taco have proven themselves unrelenting. And so my plight goes on…In the meantime, call the fire department.