The Philippines: More Food!

I seem to be pathologically unable to travel without penning long, pointless blog posts about food. If only there were some way to transmit tastes and smells over the internet, these posts might be marginally interesting to our readers, instead of just rambling and self-indulgent.

Anyway! Here goes.

The produce in the Philippines is absolutely amazing. Not only are the islands home to a significant percentage of the mangoes, pineapples, and bananas eaten around the world, they're also home to a host of other fruits, including varieties of the above, that are hard to find elsewhere.

One of our best meals of the trip was really just a simple showcase of fresh Filipino ingredients. It was in Tagaytay, outside of Manila, at a place called Sonia's (also known for its toilets, apparently).

If you squint enough to see through the dim lighting, you can see chunks of fresh pineapple, mango, and papaya, plus some yellowish slivers of jackfruit, which has a texture sort of like thick artichoke but tastes something like a mix of Asian pear, mango, and banana. And that was just for our salad! Later, we had bread and pasta with various sauces, including sun-dried tomato, pesto made with fresh basil, and green peppercorns in olive oil. Dessert was a plate of banana spring rolls with a side of honeyed sweet potato, capped off with tea made from sprig of tarragon.

Honestly, one of the best meals I can remember. The simple trick? Pretty much everything on the table was grown within walking distance of the restaurant. More easily done in the middle of a tropical paradise, of course.

Sonia's was a great showcase for the natural abundance of the Philippines, but how about actual Filipino cuisine? Well, our lovely host, Beia, and her family treated us to a full Filipino breakfast one morning. Quite a feast:

Fresh fruit featured prominently (that's papaya and mango), with generous helpings of mushroom omelette, corned beef hash, and a local roll called "pandesal." We washed it down with mugs of drinking chocolate.

Nana learned the stabby method for eating the middle slice of a mango . . .

. . . and I discovered the joys of coco jam, which is basically like peanut butter, but made with coconut instead.

Beia's family also hosted us for a family potluck to celebrate the various auspicious occasions we happened to crash.

Here, you can really see the odd fusions of American and Spanish cuisines with the Filipino palate. We have Filipino spaghetti, a stew of red peppers and chicken bits, a kind of spiced meatloaf, and garlic sausages with . . . marshmallows. Tasty, if somewhat puzzling!

Finally, a dash of traditional Filipino cuisine, sampled at a well-known eatery near our friend's place of work.

The centerpiece was a big bowl of simple beef soup (upper left) with a plate of veggies and seafood in Filipino "curry," which is actually a peanut sauce. We also had a side of crispy fried pork rinds in blood sauce. Totally awesome, but too rich for more than a couple bites!

Overall, Nana and I really liked the food we ate in the Philippines. In many parts of Asia, to get a lot of flavor, you have to put up with a lot of spiciness. Not so in the Philippines!

Final verdict? If we lived in the Philippines, we would get HUGE.

*Special thanks to our hosts, Beia and Romel, who found us some awesome stuff to eat!