And the lunch was good

Grilled tonto which really, really tasted smoky and juicy.

Champorado and dried fish for snacks

We eat this for breakfast or snacks. Some people prefer to combine the champorado (chocolate porridge) with some other salty accompaniment.

I showed this photo to a French Canadian friend, and for all their exotic and yucky Frenchy delicacies (frogs' legs, snails, etc), she went yech!! with this one. She said, she can eat the chocolate porridge but with more cream and butter, and she can probably eat the dried fish, but the combination of the sweet porridge and the salty dried fish was totally alien and disgusting to her. Hahaha, ok. What do you think?

Filipino McDonald's

The McDonald's of Tacloban overlooks the bay area (glass windows behind the building). On clear days, you can even see the San Juanico Bridge, but you've to strain real hard. In the 80s, McDo (as we call them here) served only the regular American menu of burgers, attracting only the upper middle class. But they found out that they were losing a lot of customers to Jollibee (local fastfood rival) which served rice, spaghetti, and fried chicken. They soon changed their menu to adapt to the Filipino taste.

Combo meals.

(Remembering 9/11 by posting something American.)

Small pineapple: anti-theme day

Tahong Crackers

Tahong is a type of mussels that we either make into a soup or we bake, freshly harvested. It spoils easily, so it has to be cooked immediately. Being a coastal island (naturally), we all like our seafoods freshly caught and not frozen or packaged. But sometimes, investors never learn.

If you want to know how it tastes, all I can say is it smells of rancid oil. I never got to the taste part.


[I'll be back on September 1.)

Adobong kangkong at Gerry's Grill

This is sauteed water spinach with oyster sauce and topped with roasted minced garlic. Very common dish over here. (I just learned from Wiki that in the US --esp in Florida and Texas--this is considered a weed because of its harmfulness to other plants. Hahaha.. really Lois?) But weed or not, it's delicious.

The 3 Qs

Bananacue, camotecue (sweet potato), and another bananacue called turon (wrapped in lumpia wrapper). They're streetfood snacks here.

Sweets vendor

Dried fish vendor/s

Tira tira

I don't know what they're called in English, but this is enjoyed by kids all year round. Remember that candy which stretches as long as your arm when you try to bite a chunk off?

Poor ducks

Suman latik

We have many ways of preparing rice as we have many varieties of rice. Suman latik is sticky rice wrapped in this kind of particular leaf (I forgot the name now), then steamed, and the latik is sugar syrup prepared with palm sugar and syrupy coconut milk. Only a few people can prepare this well.. (in my opinion). The secret is in the latik.

Stylized baduya

One of our local snacks is the baduya.. mashed banana with flour and shaped into these weird globs, then deep-fried. We dip it in granulated white sugar. You can buy it anywhere as this is a streetfood. But eating at one of our chic restaurants here (Giuseppe's), this is what the baduya will look like. Sprinkled with powdered sugar, and served a la mode. Delicious.. and expensive.

Pineapples

As we were double-parked at Imelda St. (named after Imelda Marcos and now officially renamed Veteranos Ave but still called by the locals Imelda St.), we saw this truck unloading "queen" pineapples to a fruitstand. These pineapples come from Ormoc City, where they have pineapple and sugar plantations. They're sweet and cheap.


(Photos by Arlene)

Duck eggs

These duck eggs are on their way to the balut maker.

Street Scene Series: Fruit Vendor

(Photo by Arlene)

The fruits do not look that fresh, but here they are: Bananas, Orange (Ponkan variety), Avocado! Pomelo, Melon, Watermelon, Papaya. The avocados and melon are out of season.. I have no idea how they got here.

Want some fresh buko juice?

In case you start thinking that Tacloban is all Greek-looking buildings and monuments, let me start showing you the real side now.

After all that sightseeing, you might want to stop by for some fresh buko juice. Buko in any Philippine language (we have more than 100 languages, did you know?) means 'young' and is mostly used to describe young coconuts, not persons. Lined on the side of the street on your way to McArthur Park (just a few yards from there), you will see these small bamboo kiosks with buko piled high on tables or on the ground. You drink and eat a buko without any utensils while you try to sit back on the creaky bamboo benches and look out to the sea which is just across the street. Cars rarely pass here, so the sea breeze is not polluted. One buko costs P10-12 (about $0.25 each), it's very refreshing and better-tasting than a soda. Best time to come here.. around 3 in the afternoon, when the sun is not hot anymore. Place is the locals' secret. I never see a tourist here, they're probably thinking 'is it safe? is it clean?'. Haha.. (Note: buko is rich in fat, so if you're dieting don't do this everyday.)