T is for Troll

Just a warning to you all.


This is a KFC Double Down. THIS IS NOT FOOD.

In the interests of science, I ate one of these for my last meal of the day. [Remember, I work on the night shift - my last meal of the day was at 6am.]

And it turns out that despite my sister's surprised endorsement and encouragement this is pretty much blech all over the place. Who on EARTH thought that it was a good idea to sandwich bacon, mayo, and processed cheese between two KFC Original Recipe fillets?

And the stores that I visit, pass by, or otherwise have access to routinely show this item as sold out, which means that yes, other people are actually willingly eating this stuff.

I shudder to think that some people are actually coming back for more.

So, yeah, PSA for everyone reading this blog. Please, think of your tummy. Please do not eat this stuff because as it turns out, it is terrible. I had to force myself to finish mine, and I had to eat something else immediately afterward to get the idea of it out and away. Do yourself a favor, DON'T take a leaf from my book. Just don't eat this.

[And that title? Grading system at Hogwarts. I don't care if Gred and Forge were pulling Harry and Ron's legs when they said T was the lowest possible grade a Hogwarts student could get. This stuff deserves that abysmal rating.]

Scenes from a Vacation

I was on hiatus for a couple of weeks. As you might have noticed, the last blog entry had been on my birthday - and then radio silence here and on the Facebook fan page.

Well, that was due to a vacation. Took some time off, which culminated in me and my partner celebrating yesterday [Binary Day, otherwise known as 10-10-10] in a Chinese food marathon with friends and family.

Pics or it didn't happen, so here's some of the food from the past weekend:

Elbert's Cheesesteak - provolone cheesesteak hoagie, fries, iced tea and orange juice, 8-10-10.

Toast Box for breakfast with chocobos, 10-10-10

Conti's cakes for dessert, 10-10-10

I should try to go back to more regular posting from here on out. As it's almost time for the busy season to start at work, not to mention I've a 20k-plus story to write, I'll do my best.

It's National Coming Out Day. All my love to friends and readers and especially to a wonderful queer friend of mine in the US. And here is a possibly relevant video.


Chris Colfer [Glee's Kurt Hummel] for the Trevor Project: "It gets better."

Kanin Club Again: Brunch Before a Birthday

Related posts:
Meal in the City: "Crispy Dinuguan" at Kanin Club, UP-Ayala Technohub
Meal in the City: Kanin Club Redux

As one of us will soon be turning a year older, my partner and I went back to Kanin Club today for a celebratory brunch. Here's what we had to eat.

All photos taken by my partner.

Salad: green mangoes, onions, tomatoes, salted eggs, and bagoong [fermented shrimp paste] dressing. On the menu, this comes with cilantro; we had that taken out of the order since we're allergic to it.

Mains: crispy dinuguan and deep-fried tilapia, and rice of course.

The whole meal before we started eating it.

After the meal, we scotched our plans to go bowling and decided to go eat some dessert instead.

And dessert-slash-early-birthday-cake is Chocolate Fudge Cake from the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.

Meal in the City: Tempura Japanese Grill, SM Mall of Asia

Related post:
Dream Team!

After watching Despicable Me together with my partner, it was time to grab some eats, and we settled on one of our favorite places to eat: Tempura Japanese Grill.

[You might ask: Yes, but with so many restaurants in a mall you don't frequent, why settle for something familiar?

Answer: We wanted to eat comfort food.]

Here's what we had to eat.

As is our custom at Japanese restaurants, we ordered sashimi. We usually eat maguro. While the fish came from a fairly good catch, fresh and properly prepared, we couldn't say the same for the rather limp garnish of radish and carrot.

My meal of tonkatsu curry rice. Good stuff, wonderfully tasty without being overly salty. I liked how the kitchen balanced the sauce mix perfectly.

My partner's meal of chili mapo tofu ramen, the best dish that day, hands down. The kitchen was very generous with both the tofu and the ground pork, and the latter was perfectly seasoned, sinking into an already hearty broth and making it even tastier. I will have to order the version that goes over rice for the next time we eat at this restaurant.

Again, a good meal from a reliable restaurant. I'm glad to know that the food at the three branches I've been to has been uniformly nice. Have to go back for the other new dishes on the menu, too.

Return to Toast Box: Cuppa Horlicks

Related post:
Meal in the City: Toast Box, TriNoMa, Quezon City

Related link:
Horlicks @ Wikipedia


A cup of hot Horlicks is aces on a cold rainy day.

So it was supposed to be a lucky day, this 8th of August - but it dawned rainy and rather fiercely windy at that. Not much sun, but I guess that didn't prevent people from going out to the malls.

My partner and I had gone to the TriNoMa / SM North EDSA area for a scouting expedition today, and after taking notes on restaurants in the malls and some window-shopping, we went back to Toast Box for a cup of hot Horlicks.

I did mention somewhere on this blog before that I never drank Horlicks as a kid, didn't I?

Now I drink it because I find it to be immensely comforting and warming. Good thing Toast Box imports its stocks! I've no idea where to find Horlicks here - and I'm not the only one searching; I know people who actually went to Hong Kong and Singapore and had "get lots of Horlicks" on their to-do lists!

Keep warm and dry, everyone! Hope the rain tapers off for a bit....

Meal in the City: The Sandwich Guy, Eastwood, Quezon City

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what the sandwich filling is?

Last week I'd found myself ordering a bacon, beef, mushroom, and cheese [otherwise known as a Mushy Bacon] from a branch of The Sandwich Guy near my office. It was pretty good for a first meal at that place, except perhaps for the part where I had to drink several glasses of water afterwards. The bacon was salty and flavorful, but the cheese sauce they used was a tad bit too much for my tastes. Enjoyable, yes, but not something to eat too often.

Having enjoyed the generous hit of bacon bits in the first sandwich, and having been intrigued by the presence of a peanut butter and banana sandwich on the menu, I decided to put the two together and create - what else - an Elvis sandwich.

[Yes, as in "Blue Suede Shoes".]

My half-eaten Elvis sandwich.

So I dropped in at the shop tonight during my lunch break, ordered the PB&B, and then smiled sweetly at the cashier and said, "Please add bacon to that."

Her reaction was pretty priceless and went something like this:

@.@

o_O

>.<

She wound up punching in the codes for the PB&B sandwich and then the code for "Extra Deli" into the register, and then retreated to watch the sandwich makers do their thing, still looking green around the gills.

[Seriously, has no one ever ordered one of those at this branch or at any of the other branches? Why the shock and awe?]

So I watched as they layered two toasted slices of whole-wheat bread with chunky peanut butter; a whole banana, sliced; and a generous scoop of bacon bits.

Cue missed moment of awesome: I really should have had the presence of mind to say "Thank yew, thank yew very much" - but hey, I was hungry, and I needed to get back to my desk.

Verdict: DEE-LISH. Apparently the final topping on the regular PB&B sandwich is a sprinkling of cinnamon; mixed with the bacon, it did help quite a bit to temper the salty taste. And, yeah, peanut butter and bananas - what's not to like?

Seriously, this sandwich was great. I'm definitely having this again very soon.

I hope you get a chance to make yourself an Elvis sandwich today - or, failing that, getting one from your local sandwich shop / takeaway. [I just hope they don't look at you like you've sprouted an extra head, and that teased into a pompadour.]

Meal in the City: Toast Box, TriNoMa, Quezon City

The Kaya Toast Set at Toast Box: two soft-boiled eggs, two pieces of white bread toast spread with kaya and butter, and a cup of teh tarik [black tea with condensed milk].

It's always fun to venture forth and choose another place to eat at for the first time. On the other hand, there are days when one just wants to eat something familiar and soothing - you know, comfort food. Food that makes one feel inherently better just for its mere existence.

One of the places where I can get food like that is Toast Box in TriNoMa, Quezon City. Part of the Singaporean BreadTalk group, this place serves traditional Southeast Asian food, drinks, and coffee in minimalist settings livened up by a dash of retro charm.

I've been a semi-regular at this branch for more than a year now and I have to say it's really become one of those places that I go to because it's so damn comforting to sit there and eat delicious food done right, washed down with an assortment of hometown drinks.

I often host meetings with friends here, as I did today, when I hosted a mini stitch 'n' bitch session-slash-super happy fangirl times. And it is still a favored go-to destination when my partner and I are doing our shopping and want a snack, a hot drink, or an actual full-blown meal. Try their Hainanese chicken rice and their nasi lemak; the kaya toast and thick toast sets are also magnificent.

And their drinks! Oh, wow. Try the house bestsellers like teh tarik and Nanyang coffee, or indulge in a delicious blast from the past like Horlicks. [I never had this when I was a kid - now that I'm an adult, I try to get as much of it as I can, as it is no longer being retailed locally.] Their cold drinks selection also features something that puts a smile on many diners' faces: a Milo Dinosaur. Fantastic.

The funny thing is, why did it take me so long to actually write up a Meal in the City post on this place? I guess I just keep forgetting to take my camera with me when I go here for a dose of homey good food.

Do try to eat here or at its other branches when you can.

Meal in the City: Singaporean food at Orchard Road, SM Megamall

In the previous post I mentioned heading to SM Megamall in Pasig City - actually, we went there specifically because we'd heard that there was a Singaporean restaurant that just opened on one of its floors and we wanted to try the food there.

Me and my now-infamous Zombie Head hat, photographed by my partner at the entrance to the restaurant, named Orchard Road.

The ordering system at this place is supposed to be very simple: pick up a menu-slash-order-slip from the counter when you come in; walk around the enclosed/island kitchen to see what whets your appetite; tick off your choices on the order slip; turn in slip to cashier and pay up; wait for staff to bring your food.

There are so many ways this could go wrong....

Well, actually, there was only just the one: the place was so new. So green. The inexperienced cashiers themselves were the bottleneck for lines of hungry patrons who were gradually getting irritated at having to queue up to pay for their food. And the rapidly-overwhelmed kitchen staff got confused at the sheer number of orders coming in, meaning dishes were delayed or mixed up before getting delivered to the tables.

My partner and I split up and decided to order two entirely different things; here's my order:

In the foreground, my Hainanese chicken rice; that's a partially eaten order of kaya toast in the middle, and then the two drinks are my milk tea (with the straw) and my partner's peach iced tea.

The milk tea was excellent, but that was just about the only good thing about my meal. I've had better Hainanese chicken rice and kaya toast at Toast Box in Trinoma. The rice was too sticky for my tastes (and I wound up leaving quite a bit uneaten on my plate), the chicken was haphazardly chopped, and the toast only had just enough kaya spread on it to be detectable to the tongue - mostly I was eating butter, not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely not why I ordered it in the first place....

And as my partner noted as we got ready to leave the restaurant, you can tell that the folks behind the restaurant really spent for their ingredients - so then why was the cooking so damn indifferent?

So, yeah. We were disappointed and unimpressed by our lackluster food and the pointlessly held-up service. We're probably not coming back, and we don't recommend this place to you.

All we need is love, each other...and gelato

The reason for the hiatus: my partner and I were celebrating eleven years together. We took time off from our respective jobs and spent the last four days running around the city together, exploring, eating, having fun. and delighting in each other's company.

The one thing that we tried to do was to do things for the first time. So we ate at restaurants we'd never tried before - there were hits and there were misses, but the experience was great all the same.

We stopped in at a photography studio and had our portraits taken. It was a simultaneously sad and funny experience: we were imagining what our photographer must feel like shooting all these people that he may or may not meet again; we were feeling our nerves because it was something we had never done before; he was fussing about his hair and I was unhappy with my scarred face.

[Some people even asked me afterwards if it was a pre-nup shoot.

In a word, no. Sorry to disappoint!]

We saw Toy Story 3. As we make a point out of seeing Disney/Pixar movies, no surprises there - except for the part where we splashed out for tickets to an IMAX 3D theater.

[One of the Barbie doll's final outfits made me gasp and point at the screen because I'd had that Barbie doll when I was a kid. Barbie and the Rockers...wow, that was a very long time ago.]

And yesterday's highlight: an eat-all-you-can gelato interlude, at a nice place called Gelatone in Greenbelt 4 [Ayala Center, Makati City]. Five hundred pesos gets two people all the gelato they can eat, provided they show up during all Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays of July, 2-5pm.

Let's let the pictures speak for themselves.

Starting off with my lemon sherbet and his peaches-and-lemon one.

His next two flavors: mint and chocolate, and mixed berries.

I tried the panna cotta-flavored gelato next.

My third scoop was mascarpone with candied figs.

My partner's final flavor was cheesecake.

And mine was dark Toblerone.

It was a great break from normal life. Yes, we only had eyes for each other. It was an occasion that needed to be remembered and commemorated. And that's precisely what we did.

Here's to us, my love.

Meal in the City: Daeyang Korean Restaurant, Kalayaan Avenue, Quezon City

[Hey, it's the much-awaited return of "Meal in the City"!]

It's been a very hot and humid few weeks in the city and temperatures are expected to keep rising. And eating-wise, that means my partner and I are turning up our noses at most soups. We'd rather have lighter meals, or if we have to eat a lot can we please have a lot of cold drinks on hand too?

This weekend we'd both been suffering some serious food cravings: he wanted lots of vegetables, while I was dreaming about kimchi, the older the better.

So we struck out on a hot and sunny Sunday morning for a serious, home-style Korean meal.

[Related Meal in the City post: Bibimbap, Mashitta - UP Diliman.]

We first went to a rather large Korean supermarket in the general vicinity of QC's City Hall - we wanted to know if they also served food. Unfortunately, we were told by the salesladies to come back in a month or so as they were still ironing out the kinks in their restaurant-to-be.

So we walked off along Kalayaan Avenue in QC in search of the next nearest Korean enclave, about a block or so away. Seeing an open door under the sign "Daeyang Korean Restaurant", my partner asked if we could try that place. I balked a little because I had hoped we'd at least go somewhere with air-conditioning, but finally gave in - Daeyang it was.

The restaurant had a rather...quirky...idea of interior decoration [the walls were full of scribbles from other patrons and visitors!] but the menu looked damn good, so we nodded at the waitress and placed a large order.


Bring on the banchan!


Here is a closer look at the appetizers: fish cakes kimchi-style, flash-wilted spinach with sesame seeds, paper-thin radish slices in a sour brine, and our favorite kind of kimchi. The kimchi was very strong, very bracing, and very welcome on that hot day!


More kimchi goodness in the form of kimchi jeon - sort of an omelet or pancake filled with chopped kimchi, other veggies, and squid bits.


My lunch: a massive bowl of dolseot bibimbap. The rice crust on the bottom was amazingly crispy and delicious. I doctored mine as customary - with a lot of gochujang, or chili soybean paste - and happily waded in as soon as it arrived.

Oh, and how massive is massive?


THIS massive! I mean, look at that - the stone bowl is so big it makes the nearby water pitcher look small!


And my partner's entree: a heap of beef bulgogi, which he ate with a bowl of plain white rice and the lettuces presented at table along with the banchan.

We started out the meal as the only patrons in the restaurant, but by the time we'd dug in a large Filipino family came in, followed by an unrelated group of four who ALSO ordered soju to go with their meal ["Well, someONE's getting blasted at lunchtime," I whispered to my partner].

And as we were finishing up we found out that the restaurant has this sort of eat-all-you-can promo going on: eat all the pork rib you want, charcoal-grilled right at the table, for 300 PHP per head, every Sunday. So we're definitely going back to Daeyang when a Sunday finds us in the mood for a feast that's straight out of the Flintstones.

Meal in the City: Kanin Club Redux

The first time my partner and I had a meal at the Kanin Club at the UP-Ayala Technohub, we went into such raptures over their house specialty Crispy Dinuguan that I wrote about it, including a warning for people who might find the idea of blood stew strange and/or disturbing.

[Though there ARE a lot of other cuisines where blood features as an ingredient in some preparation or another. THIS! IS! BLACK BROTH! /Sparta

Wikipedia: Blood as food]

On Sunday the 14th we went out to get something to eat. While commuting we were able to catch the pretty much non-event of the Pacquiao-Clottey fight; he and I had called it right. My partner said Pacquiao would win on points; I said that the fight would last around ten rounds.

Getting down at the Technohub just as the unanimous decision was being announced, we noticed that people were looking disappointed as they left the restaurants where they had watched the fight. And in the general confusion of that Sunday afternoon we managed a coup: we simply walked in to Kanin Club and scored a table. No lines, no waiting.

Remember, this was Sunday at lunchtime - normally, anyone who wants to try the same trick will have to wait for a table to be freed up. Not us.

As we were itching to try something new on the menu we went for a couple of other house specialties.


Here's the whole meal, minus the additional cup of plain rice we ordered halfway through.


In the pot is Tokwa't Baboy. Essentially it's fried cubes of tofu combined with boiled pork in a sour-savory sauce of vinegar, a little soy sauce, and lots of onion and garlic. Popular all over the Philippines as an accompaniment to lugaw [savory rice porridge, like congee], or as something to accompany beer and other hard drinks.


Our rice dish: Sinigang na Sinangag. I think Kanin Club was the first to try an idea like this: cook some rice and let it get dry and fluffy; cook a big pot of sinigang na baboy [pork, finger chili, and vegetables boiled in a sour broth]; drain out the soup and use elsewhere, then stir-fry the rice and the veg and the pork all together. The result is a very popular soup distilled to the basics, and mixed with rice for a meal-in-one. Garnished with tempura-fried leaves of kangkong and served with an extra red siling labuyo on the side, it was definitely a new encounter and a delicious meal.

Washed down with numerous glasses of iced tea, it was a hell of a summer lunch - and then we headed to UP-Diliman itself to walk it off! It was a great way to spend a summer day!

First Visits: Sakae Sushi, SM Mall of Asia

All credit and blame for this one goes to Jonette at The Hobby Horse, specifically the Ureshii: 12 entry. If it hadn't been for her, I wouldn't have known that I could eat conveyor-belt sushi here in the city.

Although, while she and her significant other went to the Sakae Sushi at SM North EDSA, my partner and I took the exact opposite route and went to the branch at SM Mall of Asia. OMGWTF yes we were so very far from home! (We were there for a change of scenery, and to see what we might find.)

Anyway, food pics a-plenty here.

The rules for the All-Day Sushi Buffet are in Jonette's post, but let me recap anyway: for PHP399 per head for adults, eat your pick of the conveyor belt (but no leftovers please or you get charged extra). The meal also includes a bowl of miso soup and unlimited refills on either hot or iced green tea. As it was a sunny day, my partner and I opted for the latter.


The first four plates. Yes, that is my partner in the R2-D2 shirt that I got him for Christmas 2009, waiting patiently for me to finish taking the photo. I LOVED the green iced tea and drank a lot of it.


Conveyor belt! After the two Japanese dudes in the photo came into the restaurant, I grinned at my partner and muttered, "Well, now you know this place is authentic; even Nihonjin visit it!" Since they ordered octopus and squid sushi, the conveyor belt started having those dishes on offer too.


A close-up on a packed conveyor belt.


A stack of empty dishes partway through the meal. My partner laughed at me when I muttered, "Okay, kill-count stands at 12." We wound up finishing off 16 plates! (Yes we were hungry, could you tell?)

And then afterwards we walked the meal off - and if you've ever been to SM Mall of Asia, you'll know that that is a ridiculously easy thing to do.

We'll probably visit the SM North EDSA branch at some point in the near future.

Meal in the City: "Bacon, Eggs, and Rice" from Hungry Hippo, Timog Avenue, Quezon City

I love bacon, I love eggs, I love tempering all that grease with a shot of plain rice, and I love the plate garnishes of tomato and cucumber.

So, yeah, breakfast again, out in the city again. I once spent a summer interning at a sort of little techie start-up along Katipunan Avenue (fronting the Ateneo de Manila campus), and one of the things I loved about the work was that if the boss-man wasn't cooking for his employees (or we weren't cooking for him - that happened several times), we'd have free rein to run around Katipunan looking for a new place to eat.

The nearest place - one where we all inevitably stopped at least once a week - was a neat little breakfast-and-diner place called Hungry Hippo. I think the thing I loved most, after the excellent food that is, was the reverse-image mural painted on the wall - you could only make sense of it when you looked at it in the mirror opposite. Then you'd know that there was some funny text on the various depictions of printed matter, such as books and even a rallyist's placard.

Anyway, I was sad to leave Katipunan when the internship was over, since it also meant I had to go well out of my way to eat the delicious bacon and eggs at Hungry Hippo.

However, a branch has opened up near my current office - and I am a happy eater once again.

The thing about Hungry Hippo is their consistency. I've had this particular meal twice - once in the morning, once for an early dinner - and both times the bacon has been amazingly tasty and crisp. It's not all fatty, either. The eggs are always good although sometimes they can be a bit dry; but that's easily remedied by the fresh veg crunch. And as I mentioned in the first paragraph, I love the fact that the rice is plain steamed - so you don't have to fret about consuming extra oil, if for instance it was served in its garlic-fried version.

Anyway - bottom line is, I'm so happy there's a Hungry Hippo in the Scout Area. I love this place.

First Visits: A Saturday at the Salcedo Weekend Market and Rockwell's Pepper Lunch

[Warning, image-heavy post!]

We spent the Saturday of the double-celebration weekend of Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year in Makati. Having gotten up at an ungodly early hour of the morning, we had been thinking of going to Banchetto in Ortigas and then we remembered, hey, it's a Saturday, the Salcedo Weekend Market is only open on Saturdays, we've never been there - let's go!

[We in this case being of course me and my partner.]

So after a quick consult with good old Google Maps we ran off at around 7 in the morning. By the time we arrived the market was already in full swing. Here are some of the photos we took.


Lots of fruits and fresh produce. As expected the fruits and round stuff were moving very quickly, because it was the Chinese New Year.


Seafood! (I heard that particular joke a LOT this weekend.) I can't wait for next month when the crabs and the really good shellfish come into season - I foresee MARVELOUS eating ahead!


Lion dancers. They were booked for the whole day of the market, apparently. All the kids - and there were a lot of them - thoroughly enjoyed following these nimble dancers around.

Food and goodies after the cut!

Meal in the City: Breakfast at Wheatberry, Scout Tuason, Quezon City

I love breakfasts. That is all.

Here's today's, which my boyfriend and I ate at a bakery and cafe called Wheatberry. It's located near my office and is apparently one of the favored places for meetings and coffee in the area.


My breakfast was a house specialty, the Chunky Corned Beef. Cubes of very nice, home-made corned beef with lots of sauteed onions and chopped garlic, served with garlic rice, two eggs any way (I had mine scrambled), and some veg: cucumber, tomato, and some papaya relish (locally, "atchara"). Delish. I loved the texture and flavor of the corned beef. (Sorry, the picture is a bit blurry, and doesn't do justice to the meal....)


My boyfriend had the Wheatberry Breakfast Sampler: house pancakes, potato tots, two eggs any way (he had his over easy), and breakfast sausage. Those pancakes were, in a word, amazing. We both agreed that if they weren't made from scratch at least they were made from a very high-quality mix, as they tasted fluffier and went down heartier than the standard mixes employed locally. Also, very tasty mini hash browns.

We asked for juice to go with our meals, and that right there was the major disappointment: the orange juice was prepared from a local powdered mix. Really a bit of a letdown since Wheatberry has a wide selection of gourmet teas, specialty coffees, and coffee-based drinks - was it too much to ask for a decent juice selection to go with?

Meal in the City: "Meatball Siopao and Cold Milk Tea" from Chowking, Tomas Morato

There are cravings, and then there are cravings.

In this recent case, I'd found myself in dire want of some good old-fashioned 燒包, or siopao. That's what we Filipinos call 包子, or baozi, those wonderful steamed filled buns that they have so many variations on both in China and here.

So when I found myself early at work this week, I decided I'd better nip over to a Chinese fast-food place and pick up something to satisfy my siopao need.


The fast-food place is called Chowking and it's damn popular in my country. My breakfast consists of a meatball-filled siopao and a regular serve of cold milk tea with ice and tea jelly cubes, something that Chowking calls "nai cha".

Around these parts the most popular type of siopao is still the one with "asado" in it, or what Chinese folk might call 叉烧包, char siu bao. But I'm one of those other people who vastly prefer meatball siopao, partly because the meat is a pretty neat single entity that won't flake out or spill from the bun, and partly because Chowking's version is so nice (containing both Chinese sausage and part of a salted egg).

And of course, there's me and my absolute love for milk tea. I like the Chowking version but wish that sometimes they didn't put too much ice in it. I love the tea jelly bits in the bottom, though.

The idea of this being a "breakfast of champions" gains some sort of heavenly/legendary humor when I read that it was none other than Zhuge Liang himself who invented these things.

Meal in the City: Variety Meats on Sticks at Mang Larry's, UP-Diliman

[Variety meats?]

In the previous blog entry I mentioned going out to UP-Diliman to spend a Sunday afternoon with my boyfriend. As we were packing up to leave, we decided we'd eat dinner before heading home, and started thinking of suggestions.

And then we remembered that we were in UP, and night was falling. Time to see if a certain favorite, much-loved, and well-visited grill cart was on campus.


Okay, here's the drill. If you study at UP-Diliman/Ateneo de Manila/Miriam/Kostka, you will hear the name "Mang Larry's" bandied about by hungry, happy students. He owns this sort of grill cart thing, which he sets up in the late afternoon near the UP-Diliman post office. The charcoal-fired grill is where he and his assistants cook all sorts of chicken and pork innards and organs skewered on sticks. And he's there, on campus, most days - as he was on that Sunday night, on the last day of holidays.

People come from all over - and I mean all the way from places like Manila and Pasig and San Juan - just for his variety meats on sticks. The space where Mang Larry sets up shop often tends to become a parking lot for all sorts of cars, some with very respectable marques. And in the darkness you see all sorts of people in groups, happily chatting and downing sodas and iced tea, and breathing in the savory smoke that wafts off the always-full grill.

Mang Larry's been doing his grilling thing for more than ten years now and he's practically an institution in UP-Diliman, and he's done very well for himself out of it.


The menu at Mang Larry's always includes pork barbecue, the cleaned-up small intestines of pork [chitterlings] and chicken [we call 'em "isaw manok"], chicken gizzards and livers, pork tripe, and other assorted innards. Everyone loves the isaw manok, Mang larry's best-seller, though I'm more partial to the chitterlings my own self.


Quick close-up on the tripe, which we call "goto" regardless of whether it came from a cow or from a pig.

They say that one is not a student of UP if one does not know of or eat at Mang Larry's.... I'm glad we managed to catch the cart on that Sunday night. I think we'll have to go back soon.