It was a typical ordinary night when I met a friend of mine in Tandang Sora entrance. My travel was a good worth of 2 hours and 4 rides. It was the very first time that I commuted going to the place, thank God that I know how to at least get an FX (an air conditioned PUV) ride that would have its route in Commonwealth.
After getting off to the place my friend instructed, with the assistance of the driver telling me that its already Tandang Sora, I made a very scary walk to the over pass foot bridge. Well, scary for me since I am very much afraid of heights, and the bridge, I describe it as so open, incomparable to the foot bridge I used to walk when I was in college in Espana-Morayta area, which was close and not as scary since it's made of concrete, unlike this one that is made of very thin scraps of metals. After the vertigo walk, finally I was on the other side.
The friend waited for me at 711 convenient store who was there already ahead of me for a few minutes. He was kinda in a hurry for us to leave and have another ride but I stopped him. Told him, hey let's have some here, then I pointed out the balut and penoy vendor.
Had my first pick on the penoy and asked my friend to join and help himself up. I ate penoy before, but as I remember then, it was having some soupy part inside so I was not expecting to eat something that was similar to a plain hard boiled egg. Wanting some "egg soup", I had my next pick on the hotter balut, yummy, I said. Had two of 'em, and my friend picked another balut after his penoy and I paid. The balut was like the average one but I was wishing for like something having a smaller chick. At any rate, at the end of my second one, I paid up and told ate (big sister literally, but this time, referring to the vendor) that she should be thankful that I really love balut.
While walking, me and the friend had a talk about street foods. Told him that I tolerate almost everything in native street food except a few ones like helmet (chicken head), adidas (chicken foot), and others. For as long as I know they are clean when prepared, I am eating most of 'em.
My friend mentioned to me, the ones that he thinks he's not able to eat are those that were cooked on dirty surroundings, like the typical street foods but the catch is they are being sold in Quiapo (how sad, the blog's name origin is being synonymous for what is dirty).
Speaking of unconventional food (that depends on what is your cultural background), this weekend, I have watched some entries over youtube.com of some episodes of Bizarre Foods. This show is being hosted by Andrew Zimmern who is a chef at the same time a food critic. This show is like a travelogue that focuses on the documentary of foods that are new to the sound and the sight, and in some ways unique, and sometimes also scary to eat, for a foreigner.
This episode I watched is where Andrew travels to the Philippines to document some of Philippine's gastronomic culture and he featured a lot of local foods, weird sounding, looking and tasting for the Westerners. They featured a lot of my faves, not so faves and definitely some that "I ain't eating." See it for yourself (thanks youtube.com):
Andrew says, "if it looks good, eat it," I say "not everything looking good is good tasting and not everything unpleasant looking are bad tasting."
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