MY DAILY BREAD

Abundant with affordably-priced cafes and restaurants, some friends in New York often equate my living in Manila with a daily indulgence in great meals that one would pay for handsomely like in Soho’s Filipino restaurant, Cendrillon.

There would be dead silence on the line whenever I’d mention my eating habits could be so bland at times that some well-heeled cousins had ascribed my sometimes austere gastronomical pleasure to some undisclosed life-threatening disease — followed by a whisper of, “Maybe that’s why he came back to Manila … to spend the end of his days.”

Truth be told, I sometimes wonder if my persona does tend to bring bad luck, for my favorite local eateries, which I could tirelessly go to on a daily basis, had disappeared — one is Juan Soy in Greenbelt, the other is Pinoy Don in Robinson’s Malate. I don’t even know if they have any branches anywhere else in the city.

Be that as it may, something I enjoy every morning is the pandesal. I call it the two-biter because its size nowadays only requires two bites to gobble up; average price is two pesos each at the neighborhood bakeries.

A couple of years ago, in my regular attempt to make sure my brain doesn’t go anywhere without my consent, I took a one-week baking class in Diliman, Quezon City. Now, here is what some bakers in my class told me (they were there for the certification required for overseas job applications): the texture of the morning pandesal differs from that of the afternoon which is more airy inside and toasted on the outside. How's that for trivia?


Chow King’s wanton noodle is another favorite of mine, which I would have for lunch whenever possible. It’s tasty and light — I don’t feel so bloated and lethargic afterwards. It costs about 68 pesos for the large bowl. It’s usually served very hot (the camera even caught the steam coming from it) so give it a few minutes before digging in.

I used to go to Ma Mon Luk in Quiapo for mami and siopao, but I noticed I felt sleepy afterwards. It wasn’t until another blogger had written about this restaurant that I found out about the true cause of this sleepiness — excessive MSG (monosodium glutamate). That was the end of that.

Now, some of you may be too young to remember Little Quiapo, but it was once very popular, especially among the students in the university belt area. Like Chow King, they were famous for their mami, siopao and halo-halo.

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