Thursday, June 30, 2005

Food tripping in Angeles City

Its my second week now in Angeles, doing some moonlighting. My friend happens to own this school here in Angeles and we're doing a physical exam on all the students - elementary, high school and college. And it's about 3,000 students all in all. When I checked with the nurse earlier today, I found out, that we haven't PE'd even 25% of the student body!! Gosh. Its not that we've been doing really HARD work to finish all off...but then, after 2 weeks, we haven't gone past the high school students. We're only done with 2 sections of grade school. Ha ha.

But the best thing about this stint is that 1) the pay is good and 2) I get the nights off. That means I can go around Angeles and try all the nice restaurants in town. Unbelievably there are a lot of them here. What's nice about these quaint, homey restaurants is that the owners are foreigners: meaning you get authentic Italian, Creole, Japanese meals all the time. Lets have a run down of the restaurants that we tried:

HANAMI. Great Japanese restaurant off Friendship Boulevard. The sushi is made fresh and tastes different too! It's better than the local Japanese chains like Kitaro and Sushi-Ya. (Tokyo-Tokyo is out of the question.) But mind you, the stuff there is expensive. The ambiance is so-so and when we were there...they were showing a Japanese news program. Quite irritating. P1200 for a sushi platter (for 2), miso soup, tonkatsu and San mig light. Not bad for the experience.

COTTAGE HOUSE. A few meters down from Hanami. They serve authentic Creole and Southern style cooking in here. The ambiance is hole-in-the-wall kind with lots of shadows and cigarette smoke. Looks like a place where you deal with the mafia or have dinner with an awful date. Food is superb, though. The baby back ribs are mouth watering. I even dreamt about it when we were in Manila. P870 for a baby back ribs meal (which includes beans and mashed potato), buffalo wings and 2 san mig light. Cheap for a good meal.

ALING LUCING. If I dream about Cottage House, I'm getting an orgasm when I think about Aling Lucing's sisig. Not with Aling Lucing. It's just near the train tracks and they serve heavenly, cholesterol-laden, mushy sisig. Their burong kanin is good also. I must if you visit Angeles. Ultra cheap too. P456 for 2 sisigs, 2 pwet ng manok, burong kanin and 2 san mig lights. Yum!

BAMBINO'S. We just spotted this Italian restaurant when we came home one day (after eating I guess from Hana-mi or Cottage House) Looks tattered, though, but to our amazement and glee, they serve authentic Pizza Margarita! I never had pizza this good in the Philippines! Its a basic cheeze-tomato-basil pizza that needs to be cooked in a stone oven to get that right crisp. They did it the authentic way and I'm quite happy about it. Can't stop munching on those wedges! P850 for a small pizza, a serving of eggplant pagmigiana and a half carafe of red wine. Not Bad.

After all of those food trips during my stay here in Angeles, I'm worrying about squeezing myself into my old jeans. I only have size 32 x 32 jeans and I vehemently refuse to buy anything larger than that. If it doesn't fit, it means I have to do something about my weight. Not much of a problem, though, because I lose weight so fast. But how can you resist these fabulous eats in the Philippines? Oh well, as I would always say, life is too short anyway...

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