Philippines: Jollibee! and Other Fast Food

Filipino food is really good. I say this even though Nana and I spent a shameful amount of time in the Philippines eating fast food. That's because the Philippines boasts some really tasty fast-food options--and even a few welcome wrinkles at McDonalds!

Jollibee

Jollibee is the undisputed champion of Filipino fast food chains. Not only does Jollibee outnumber McDonalds in the Philippines, but Jollibee also owns Chow King, the second most ubiquitous Filipino fast food joint, and a 70% stake in Mang Inasal (see below). As a result, I'd guess that roughly half of our meals in the Philippines came from Jollibee in one way or another.

We hit Jollibee up at two different times of day. First, a Filipino breakfast, fast-food style: garlic rice, scrambled eggs, corned beef hash, and a pandesal (a local roll) with sausage.

We also stopped by Jollibee for a late dinner, where in addition to the standard Yum Burger, we sampled Jollibee spaghetti and some fried chicken.

The spaghetti was . . . odd. Not unpleasant, but the sauce was sweet, with a very faint hint of chili. It's almost like they accidentally dropped a packet of spring roll sauce in the mix.

Jollibee also does desserts, a la McDonalds apple pie--but in this case, it's mango and peach instead of apple inside.

McDonald's, by the way, makes its own variation on the pandesal--a "hamdesal" with ham, egg, and (yes) honey mayo.

Mang Inasal

Mang Inasal ("Mr. Barbecue," if anyone bothered to translate) is best known in the Philippines for offering unlimited rice with every meal.

But it's best known in our little family for selling tasty, super-cheap barbecue.

That spread--with pork skewers, chicken, rice (one wrapped, one unwrapped), and a couple calamansi (a kind of Filipino lime)--cost all of $3.

Further evidence that, if I lived in the Philippines, I might weigh 400 pounds.

Yes, They Make Wasabi Kit-Kats

A couple years ago, while making our way back to the US from Korea, Nana and I stumbled upon a pack of green tea Kit-Kats during a layover in Tokyo. We promptly bought a few, and while we meant to blog about the experience, it seems we never got around to it. Just another one of those weird little things that, despite all our best efforts, didn't make it into the blog.

Little did we know, however, that we were just scratching the surface of Japan's strange Kit-Kat obsession. (Our friend Rosa over at ZOMG Candy has links to some relevant information, including reviews, here.) It turns out that "Kit-kat" sounds a lot like the Japanese for "good luck," so it's become a thing to give people Kit-Kats before important events, such as (especially) college entrance exams. From there, the Kit-Kat has blossomed into a national obsession, with hundreds of strange flavors available, including regional and limited-edition varieties, some of which are considered collector's items. Yes, you heard me: collector Kit-Kats. There's even a Kit-Kat blog devoted to the phenomenon.

Thus for Christmas, in addition* to bringing home a stash of dark chocolate Kit-Kats (delicious, especially when frozen), Nana and I decided to torture--I mean, treat her family to some of the stranger flavors we could find.

The top is wasabi, the bottom sweet potato.

Each one seemed to be made from a white-chocolate base, with the flavor and color added.

We decided to taste the sweet potato first, on the theory that it was less likely to nuke our tastebuds and/or make us swear off Kit-Kats for the remainder of our natural lives.

Verdict? It actually tasted like Japanese sweet potato (which is a little less sweet and a little less orange than the sweet potatoes you find in the US). Fairly edible, but it had a sickly, buttery kind of taste that means we probably won't be buying any more.

Next: wasabi.

 At first, it didn't taste much like anything--but then it hit.

As you can see from the photo above, the wasabi Kit-Kat actually tastes like wasabi. White chocolate and wasabi. Hm.

*Somehow, I managed to spell this as "edition" in the first draft. Whoops!

Thanksgiving Dinner

To help us homesick expats celebrate the holiday in style, the FIS school culture committee organized a special Thanksgiving dinner at the Hilton. Nana and I weren't really sure what we'd be eating, but we had our hopes up for some traditional Thanksgiving fare.

And we weren't disappointed! We had a private room at the Hilton buffet stocked with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, pumpkin soup, and cranberry sauce.

The only thing missing was a good old-fashioned pumpkin pie: we had to settle for an odd pumpkin tart and some pumpkin pudding.

In addition to our private buffet, we also had free range over the main buffet, which included mostly Japanese or pan-Asian dishes, as well as enormous piles of crab legs.

It took a little bit of work to get that melted butter (in Japan, they serve crab legs with ponzu sauce), but according to Nana the result was well worth it. I, in the meantime, spent most of my stomach capacity on the old-fashioned Thanksgiving fare, which was delicious (but, it must be said, not quite like Grandma used to make), and on red meat, which can be hard to come by in this town.

Edited to add: Go team Crab!

Justin and Nana Eat Weird Stuff for Your Entertainment: Fried, Sugar-Coated Sweet Potato

The place we bought these was basically a shack with a deep fryer next to a tiny little train station up in the hills.

They also sold fried chicken and fried . . . I don't know? Fish cakes? But we opted for these huge chunks of sweet potato.

Verdict? Awesome! (They also get the co-worker/neighbor Dayle seal of approval.)

More on our excursion to the nearby temple/shrine complex later.

Sanma Season

This week, our Japanese teacher informed us that it's sanma season in Japan. Sanma, which literally means "autumn knife," is a vaguely mackerel-like fish that we often see jumping along the surface of the water here in Fukuoka. To the Japanese, grilled or pan-fried sanma is an autumn classic, the equivalent of apple cider or pumpkin pie. It's also super cheap (about $1 per fish) and incredibly healthy: basically, it's packed with all the good stuff you find in wild salmon, only moreso.

But the most important question: how does it taste?

Nana and I decided to find out by picking up some sanma of our own. The preferred method of preparation is very simple: take a gutted whole fish and grill it or pan fry it without any added oil (sanma is oily enough). Lacking a grill, we (and by "we" I mean "Nana") went with the latter, and took the added step of flouring the fish lightly to prevent charring.

The result didn't look very appetizing, and it took quite a bit of nifty handling to separate the meat from the bones--but the fish itself was delicious: rich like mackerel, but a lot less fishy. The Japanese add a little citrus and some pickled radish, but we thought it tasted just fine on its own.

Downside: the stuff smells very fishy as it cooks!

Say Cheese!

It's tough to find good cheese in East Asia--tough enough that every now and then, they'll devote a whole restaurant to it, like some sort of delicacy.

Such is the case with Cheese Dining Angelo, a restaurant in Tenjin that specializes in all things cheesy.

(Many thanks to our coworker, Dayle, for showing us the place and guiding us through the menu!)

The menu at Angelo is built around a bunch of different types of fondue, some familiar, some exotic (think "squid ink"). We stuck mostly to the familiar stuff: plain, basil, tomato, and sesame (our one adventure).

 Here's plain (on the left) and basil (which was my favorite).

Here's tomato (on the left) and sesame.

As per usual, you're given bread and veggies to dip in the fondue--but the addition of squash, okra, and little cocktail weenies provided a distinctly Japanese touch. (The Japanese are obsessed with hot dogs.)

We also had a great caesar salad with hunks of bacon and tofu in it. The cheese, ironically enough, left something to be desired (it was that chewy, plasticy Asian cheese), but the dressing was awesome--a hint of smoked red pepper, I think.

After our fondue, we indulged in some risotto made inside a giant wheel of Gran Padano cheese.

Our deserts were also cheese-themed. Here's a surprisingly light baked cheesecake.

And a tart with cheese, nuts, and chocolate. (Plus the world's smallest fork.) Yum!

Izakaya

An izakaya is normally described as a Japanese pub: a place where you go to drink, but which also serves decent food. The comparison is apt, but I think an izakaya is more like a Japanese tapas restaurant: a place where you can order a bunch of small, nice dishes for sharing, and also drink yourself silly if you so choose.

Last night, Nana and I had our first izakaya experience since coming to Fukuoka when we sat down for dinner at Enya, a dim, cozy place on the market street between Fujisaki and Nishijin. We didn't drink, but boy did we eat! And not a bite crossed our plates that wasn't delicious.

Round one was kushiyaki, or grilled stuff on skewers. (Like yakitori, but yakitori technically means chicken.)

We ordered a set of pork skewers, plus a skewer of green chillies and leeks. From left to right, we have (I think): tripe, tongue, some kind of white meat, and pork belly (think bacon, but not cured). All delicious, but that pork belly was out of this world. Took us back to our samgyeopsal days in Korea!

Round two was fried mushrooms, which we were specifically instructed to dip in a tray of salt.

Nana says this was probably her second-favorite, after the pork belly.

Third round was a plate of potatoes with parsley in butter.

Tasty, but a bit on the bland side, I think.

And finally, we have some squid dumplings.

My second-favorite, but I don't think Nana cared for them as much.

Soba!

I know it seems like all we do is eat . . . and until school starts, that's pretty much the truth! (Though we've also been spending a lot of time at the beach.)

Tonight, Nana and I went out for soba, one of our favorite Japanese foods, at a noodle shop down the street from our place.

Soba is a thin buckwheat noodle that can be served either hot or cold. It packs a lot of flavor, even when unseasoned, and has the most fiber of any Japanese noodle style.

The simplest cold soba (mori soba) is basically a pile of noodles on a plate, which you dip in an icy broth (tsuyu) of sweetened soy sauce, seaweed stock, and rice wine--flavored with wasabi (Japanese horseradish) and scallions to taste.

Eating cold soba noodles is a real test of one's chopstick chops. Here's Nana's technique, demonstrated on a plate of zaru soba (cold soba with seaweed):

(Note: E-mail subscribers may have to click through to the blog to view the video.)

There are also a variety of hot soba dishes, which usually take the form of a big bowl of soup. I picked one at random and ended up with the standard soba-noodles-in-soy-broth with a topping of some kind of pickled vegetable (Nana guessed rapeseed) and flavoured with a bit of lemon peel.

The result was delicious, and totally unexpected! That dash of lemon, plus the bitterness of the pickle, gave the ol' soy broth a whole new flavor. Yum!

EdBurgher Repost: A Japanese Dinner

(Over the next couple weeks, we're going to be re-posting a few Japan-related items from our old blog, The Educated Burgher. For those of you who have seen them already: feel free to ignore them. For those of you who haven't: gape in awe or something.) 


We've had a lot of questions from friends and family about the food here in Japan. Well, we're happy to say that we really haven't had a bad meal yet. And when you can't read the menu, there's a lot of serendipity involved in procuring a meal.

Last night, for example, Nana and I went downtown for dinner with some friends. We chose the restaurant by the time-honored method of walking until we were too hungry not to stop at the first cool-looking place we saw. Then, as a group, we ordered one each of the five items on the "best" menu. (We couldn't tell if these were the specials or the most popular dishes. Or, of course, those with the highest profit margin.)

Here's what we got (with apologies in advance for the poor picture quality, and for the fact that I was a little slow with the camera at times):

-A fried scallion pancake, similar to a dish we had in Korea.

-Breaded & fried chicken with a mild mustard, ginger, & garlic sauce.

-Fried tamago (mildly sweet egg) stuffed with fish eggs. Gone too quickly for me to get a good photo!

-Simple fried gyoza (pork dumplings with a soy dipping sauce).

-Beef belly (think bacon, but with beef) stewed with potato & onion.

When we finished with these, we asked the waiter (in halting Japanese) to recommend something else. We ended up with motsunabe, a dish that originated right here in Fukuoka.

Motsunabe is a type of nabemono, which basically means it's a simple soy broth with a bunch of meat and veggies piled in it, and it cooks right in front of you at your table. The meat in Motsunabe is usually either pork or beef offal. Ours was cow stomach!

Which brings me to another early lesson we've learned about Japanese food: so far, it seems like they can take just about anything and make it tasty. That's not to say there isn't simple food here--one of the best meals we've had so far was basically a bowl of chicken noodle soup, sumo-style. But not knowing what we've been ordering has also led us to some great meals I don't think we would have found on our own.

(Originally Published August 13, 2010.)