This story originally appeared in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on November 25, 1999.
Forget the diet. All the mouthwatering dishes had been laid out in front of me. I didn’t know the name of the restaurant, but the carte du jour said we were having steamed oysters, lobster thermidor, sea bass in beer batter, horseradish and sponge gourd soup, grilled pork belly and mungbean noodle salad. The cuisine was similar to that of the upscale Cowrie Cove’s. We had ordered all these dishes which would probably cost Papa the price of a three-piece Armani suit.
Afraid that his Citibank Gold Visa might be rejected, I snatched a table napkin and covered my face. The napkin felt odd. It wasn’t starched as I had expected. It was paper, and it wasn’t even Kleenex. I think it was Empress, the kind that is dyed a brownish shade of pink. It looked and felt more like newsprint than Cotton USA. The china gave me an even bigger dose of reality. The plastic plates were pale canary and mint green with specks of brown stains from yesterday’s lunch and scratches from scourging sponges. The glasses were empty jars of Ludy’s Coco Jam. The tablecloth was of cheap vinyl, with bananas and guavas printed against a fuchsia background. The screeching ceiling fan made me cringe each time it blew the corners of the flypaper on the cashier’s counter nearby. The waitress who usually wore a long skirt with a thigh-revealing slit was on leave and her duster-clad grandmother was doing her work. The floor was covered with faux marble linoleum. Dusty Phoebe Cates pinups line the walls.
In reverse Cinderella fashion, a fly-swatter magic wand sprinkled pixie dust on our table and transformed our steamed oysters into talaba, and our lobster thermidor into ulang na may aligi. A second swoosh of the magic wand turned the mango chutney into tadtaring mangga’t bagoong, the sea bass into pritong apahap, and the pork belly into inihaw na liempo. A third flash of the magic wand caused the horseradish and sponge gourd soup to mutate into pinakulong malunggay at patola, and our mungbean noodle salad into sotanghon, tokwa at tengang daga.
o more pretending. Our family wasn’t dining in some fancy restaurant. We were in the heart of Sucat’s Imelda Market, my dad’s preferred dining place. We used to go there once a month, whenever he craved barbecue that might have been concocted with feline instead of porcine ingredients. The very first time we went there was on a Sunday morning when we didn’t have much to do. That was pre-SkyCable, and the only thing on television was ”The 700 Club.” Mama and Papa wanted to buy some fresh fruits. Since there was nothing to do, my brother Mickey, my sister Gigi and I, all wearing denim shorts and thong slippers, hopped into Papa’s metallic green BMW.
Then we sneaked into the place any kid from an exclusive Makati school wouldn’t be caught dead hanging out in a wet market. I prayed hard that nobody would see us. Nobody did, but Papa saw the restaurant sign. He was hungry, and wanted to try out the ”specialties” of the house. The next thing I knew, all five of us were sitting in a restaurant where slabs of meat dripping with blood were as visible as the menu. I acted as if I were allergic to all the food on the table, including Coca-Cola. Gigi, who was studying in Assumption, rolled her eyes the moment the waitress served the appetizer of dilis. Mama settled for buko juice–in its husk, please. After a while, Mickey announced that he would grab a quarter pounder with cheese at McDonald’s.
But of course, McDonald’s was an eon away. We were starving by the time the talaba and the liempo were served. Papa used his bare hands to pick up some of the oysters, dipped them in vinegar and, speaking with his mouth full, declared that we definitely had to try them. Then he sampled the grilled pork and put three scoops of rice on his plate and wolfed everything down, unmindful of the consequences of having a diet high in saturated fats. Papa was almost through with his second helping and all I had were a couple of sips from Mama’s disinfected buko juice. My stomach was making sounds that were louder than the ceiling fan. Then the waitress served the buttery lobsters, sprinkled with cheese and toasted garlic. Papa picked up a tail and cracked it open, using a makeshift nutcracker. The baked lobster’s fleshy part came out, made a trip to the pool of butter sauce, and ended in his willing mouth. I gave in. ”Gastric juices would corrode the inner walls of my stomach if I didn’t eat anything,” I told myself.
But I was simply too weak to let the lobster pass. I picked up my fork, dipped a piece of pink tissue paper in water and wiped it clean. I got a lobster tail, dipped it in butter, and the thought of having a quarter pounder simply evaporated. I moved on to the liempo, the pritong apahap, the tadtaring mangga’t bagoong. I was too preoccupied with my dilemma that I had not noticed that Mickey was through with his third helping of liempo. Gigi’s hands were dripping with different sauces on our table. Mama’s lipstick had faded from eating too much sotanghon. Mama, Gigi, Mickey and I shed our pretentious fronts and slouched in our chairs, put our elbows on the table, our forks on our plates, and our bare hands on the food. We cracked jokes about the stray cats and dogs brushing against our bare legs under the table. We fought over whose turn it was to use the swatter to ward off the little insects carrying bacteria. Papa laughed when my sister spilled her Coke on the table, which was surprising because he usually got mad when anyone didn’t conform with Letitia Balridge’s ”Handbook of Etiquette.” If it had happened in a hotel, he would have sent us straight to the washroom.
On New Year’s Day, our family had lunch at the Jeepney Coffee Shop of Hotel Intercontinental Manila. The lighting was a soothing gentle yellow, the waiters comely in colorful barong, the walls graceful with Manansalas and Baldemors, the air sweet with piano music. I ordered salad Nicoise for starters, spaghetti Bolognese for the main course, and crepe samurai for dessert. My dad ordered his usual grilled pork belly. We people-watched as we waited for our orders to be served. Gone were the kids sweaty from playing patintero and in their place were 10-year-olds with Nokia 6150s in their hands. The waitress wore her hair in a tight chignon and there was no cashier watching ”Eat Bulaga” on a black-and-white TV. The maitre d’ was greeting everybody with a half-meant hello.
There were no families laughing over soda spilling all over the table, but dads talking on the cellphone, moms applying lipstick, ates eating flavorless leaves from the salad buffet, kuyas staring into space. Gone also were the flies. The waiters were buzzing around, taking orders, bringing food to the table and taking extra care that nothing would spill on their customers’ Armani suits. When my day took his first bite on the grilled pork belly, I immediately sensed that he wanted to head straight to the kitchen and throw the pork back into its marinade. I tried the dish and I had to admit the one at Imelda Market’s was far better. Maybe the flies dropped some magic seasoning into the cook’s marinade there. Apparently, flies also excrete other magic elements that enable families to bond.
That’s what I learned from Papa. He taught our family that a five-star hotel doesn’t necessarily give us the best that life has to offer. We don’t have to order crepe samurai or creme brulee instead of our favorite halo-halo, puto and kutsinta. Steamed oysters will still have the same zest whether or not they are served with a sprig of parsley on the side. Fresh sea bass will always be scrumptious, and it’s the same fish vendors call apahap. Black woodear mushroom is tengang daga and tengang daga is black woodear mushroom! And serving sponge gourd soup on a gold-rimmed Noritake soup bowl won’t make it taste any better. Papa taught us to make these simple paradigm shifts. I then realized that there was no need for my family to be very rich to have a genuinely good time. As long as Papa, Mama, Mickey, Gigi and I are together, and as long as there’s good food around, we’ll have a good time.
