All about food

Our life here mainly revolves around food (not so different from how it was in New Zealand, in a way), so this post is going to be all about food and our restaurant experiences.

The level of service in restaurants here varies, and it doesn't really depend on whether it's a more or less expensive place. When we order, they repeat the whole order back to you to make sure they got it right. The drinks sometimes come right away, and sometimes with the food, or when you're half way through your meal. Water - you sometimes get it, sometimes you don't, sometimes you get it half way through the meal - there's no rule here, either. The distinction between appetisers and mains is just to denote the portion size, I think, because the food either comes all at once, or one dish at a time, but the appetiser could be the last one that comes. Most places only have forks and spoons to eat with, and we're quite excited when we find a place that also has knives.

Modern Asian food at a nearby restaurant

There's no tipping here, but some places add a 10% service charge to the bill. When you pay, they usually declare what they received: "I received 1,200, Sir", or "I received a credit card, Ma'm". I'm slowly getting used to the fact that in all the shops and restaurants they call the customers Ma'm and Sir, sometimes slurred into "Ma'amsir" as if it was one word :-)

While Filipino restaurants are the most common, there are a good number of Korean, Japanese, and "Western" places, a couple of Chinese, but surprisingly we haven't seen any Indian yet.

Beautiful ramen at one of the places at IT Park

Great Korean food

Tacos at our favourite Mexican place, Red Lizard

We both love spicy food, and it's not so easy to come by here, but seek and you shall find. We went to a chicken wings place in IT Park, lured in by this poster:

We did not participate in the challenge

We chose the second to hottest flavour of the wings, and man were they hot! It was beautiful! We were both sweating heaps, and half way through I started saying "ouch" with almost every bite, but it was worth the pain :-) 

I think I left two in the end

One of the MANY fast food restaurants here is Shakey's Pizza, which is apparently a US chain. Feeling adventurous, we went there and ordered the "Cheeseburger Pizza", which truly lived up to its name - in form, if not in flavour.

I'm not proud of it, ok? ;-)

There are several somewhat fancy ice cream places around, and one of them tricked me into ordering the Cheese Berry flavour - who doesn't like cheesecake-flavoured ice cream, right? Turned out the cheese bit was a sprinkle of yellow Gouda-like cheese...

Great expectations

And reality

Jon was clever and ordered the plain milk flavour

Another good place for food is the nearby Ayala Shopping Mall. There are several somewhat upscale restaurants, a bunch of mid-range ones, plenty of fast food, and a large food court. 

A very pleasant super cheap meal at the food court

There's also a lechon place with pretty good reviews at the food court, so we decided to give it a go. I'm not sure how many pigs they go through every day, but you can watch them cut up the meat with a big cleaver through the window:

I didn't quite manage to capture the action shot

When we ordered, which was no later than around 12.30pm, they were already out of lechon, but they could still offer us pig head. We took it, but it was not the best meal we've had here, probably not surprisingly. The ears, which you could still see on the plate, were grossing me out a bit, and most of it was chewy and not very meaty at all. Oh well, we'll try anything once.

Our plate of pig head

While we've found a bunch of reliable restaurants that we go back to, and we're still exploring new places, I really miss fresh vegetables and simple, non-restaurant food. That's why when Jon went to Uzbekistan for a few days a couple of weeks ago, I went all out at the supermarket and bought a bunch of "normal" stuff to have at home. Our kitchen is just not equipped for cooking, but sandwiches you can make anywhere. I had the capsicum, tomatoes, and cucumber plain, without even any salt, with plain cheese sandwiches, and it was a feast for supper! :-) 

Even the capsicum is individually wrapped :-(

Even though we haven't eaten from the street stands here, we've both had digestive issues because of the poor hygiene around food preparation here. Hopefully that just means our guts are stronger now and ready for Bangladeshi food at the beginning of August! :-)