Food in the Philippines - Mara posting

The other morning, I ordered a pizza for breakfast. For the week prior, we ate oatmeal and bananas to save money (and cholesterol levels – in tourist places, overpriced eggs and white toast is often the only option, but we found a store that sold instant oatmeal).  I wanted something different. Perusing the menu, I saw that a pizza cost the same as an egg and toast, and the kitchen was willing to make it.  So I ordered a vegetarian pizza. 

After about 30 minutes, the waitress came back, smiling. “I’m so sorry, the chef . . . he made the wrong pizza. If you wait 15 minutes we can make you another.”  I asked what had been made, above the din of my growling stomach.  She said, “It is like the vegetarian, but with tuna.”

I’ve never had tuna on pizza before, but since we were by the ocean, I figured, why not? So I told her that I would eat that one.  A few minutes later, she came back, laughing.  “It is not tuna,” she said, “it is egg.”  I was really hungry, so I said “ok.” She brought out my pizza, with a half-cooked fried egg on top.

And so it went in the Philippines: for me, an incredible food challenge.  In addition to the fried-egg pizza, here is a sampling of the other foods that made me cringe:

1.      Canned black beans (fermented, and stored in a fish sauce)

2.      Worms in my mango and a giant maggot in my banana.

3.      Vinegar is the only condiment. Granted, there may be three kinds of vinegar on the table, but nothing else. No soy sauce, no chilies, no herbs, salt or pepper.

4.      Halo-halo. I still don’t know what it is, but it seems like a poor, gelatinous substitute for ice cream.

5.      Sarsa. Not salsa, but a foul sauce that we bought thinking it would be like mayo to mix with our canned tuna.

6.      Crème crackers. I thought they were crème cookies. But when I opened them, I realized that what I bought was saltine crackers, layered with unsweetened lemon. (I actually kind of liked them after the initial disappointment passed).

7.      Grilled meats and fish. They are excellent (the first dozen times you eat it). But after the fourth or fifth day of only grilled meat and white rice, I hoped for some veggies….

8.      Service – I’ve never been one to complain about service, but we had really bad luck. Two different times the waitress forgot to submit our order, so we waited for over an hour, and then when she realized the mistake, they had run out of fish (which is what we had gone out to dinner for)!