The Food

One of the things I was most worried about with this trip was the food. I heard such conflicting stories. Tyler said it was awful, other people said it was great. If I wasn't already confused enough, here is the conversation I had with the lady at the airline as I checked in.

Her-"Cebu? Oh, I LOVE Cebu. I went there for my job a couple of years ago. I'm so jealous. The food is fantastic."
Me- "Really? Where did you eat, because my husband says it is awful."
Her- "Well, actually I lost a lot of weight while I was there. There is a great restaurant over by the call center. I can't remember the name of it. But, anyway, the mangoes there are just fantastic."

Are you as confused as me? I was immediately glad that I had packed several bags of beef jerky, dried fruit, and pecans. After I got there, I got a little more of the full story. I guess a few days after Tyler got there, he was served rotten fish at a restaurant. Not a little off or a little fishy- seriously rotten. When he asked the waiter to take it away, he admitted that he thought it "didn't smell good" when he served it to Tyler. You know how after you have the stomach flu it can be hard to eat something you had just before you got sick? I think that is what happened to Tyler- only it generalized to all of the available food there.

As I've said before, the grocery stores smell awful. Several of the malls have grocery stores in their basement. I could hardly stand to stay in the same building to shop. I only went into the grocery store a handful of times and wish it had been less. I did find one place that I really loved to eat called "Bread Talk." I saw more fat people there than any other place in the Philippines. I especially like the "Ube Bundle." It was a roll filled with "ube"- some kind of bright purple sweet potato baked in a banana leaf. Other than that, I didn't like most of the bread. I don't know what they do with the flour there, but things just don't taste right. I'm going to sound paranoid like Tyler, but it tastes a little rotten.

I asked one of Tyler's employees where he liked to eat. He told me he didn't know because he ate all over the place. I pushed for him to get specific and finally he said, "Anywhere that is comfortable to eat is a good place to eat." Interesting how what's available changes perspective.

Another place I enjoyed eating was called "Sinagag". I asked one of the employees what the name meant and he said it was the type of rice they served. It means taking leftover rice and frying it with garlic and other spices. Funnily enough, later that morning (this was a day we began work at 12 a.m. and took our first break for breakfast) when we went to Sinagag, he ordered regular rice. When I asked him why he didn't get "sinagag", he said, "It is yesterdays." Somehow I just assumed all Filipinos would like it.

When we left, we tried to give a lot of food to the lady that cleaned the apartment. She wasn't interested because she "didn't know how to eat that kind of food." Even canned beans. I'm not sure what they eat although, judging from the size of them, not much. I figured that since all of them were the same height as me, I might be able to find a decent pair of pants that I wouldn't have to hem. Very discouraging to find that even size "large" often didn't fit.

On the plane ride back, the snack reminded me of one of "Chef Oliver's" concoctions.


It was a chocolate wafer cookie sandwiched between two saltine crackers. The "greaseless peanuts" were heavily flavored with garlic, but it doesn't even mention that- garlic is such a common ingredient in everything. Anyway- overall I'd say the food was not good, with the exception of the mangoes. They were fantastic. But I did lose 4 pounds in two weeks, so I'm not complaining.