Thats funny becuase my mother cooks filpino dishes and dont use alot of salt, do not use sugar and soy sauce on a few dishes only... what it sounds like is that you have sorrounded yourself with people in poverty who use those 3 things to flavor what ever poor food they can afford to feed their families such as soy sauce with rice only... All the food you mentioned are just poor man's food. I dont have anything against it since my people have to eat but thats what they are not real dishes. Offcourse you cant walk into just any joint and expect something that isnt there. I mean when you decide to go eat here in the US dont you decide what you want to eat first such as either to have a Mcdonald or go to KFC before getting in the car? Well it is the same there unless offcourse you decide to purchase your meal from a street stall or from a small mom and pops restuarant which typically cater to the poorer people.
If thats the case all your getting are just low quality food although cheap and filling.

When i google online for advice in living in philippines majorities of expats tend to go to the poorer places where they can stretch their pesos... and yes I've check those sites becuase I plan on returning their in about 10 years or so to open an orphanage if not something of that nature.

Its a mixed bag tbh mate, I frequent a few of the Phils expat chat forums, and whilst there is definitely a proportion that are as u suggest there are at least as many that are not short of cash and live a good life there in nice areas without worrying about budget.

Also of the expats I met over there none of them really seemed particularly skint to me, and I did get chatting to a fair few of them.

Vucking:
I appreciate that your being civilan and that sarcasm is gone. Its all I ask. And your right there some expats living the good life and not short of cash. I just realized that my ex's parents now semi-live in cebu if not in the US and are suppose to be running a export/inport company.

Your not american are you? sound more like australian to me considering you use "mate" often.

Brit

Sarcasm is actually part of our sense of humour which does unfortunately get lost sometimes with other nationalities.

trying to decide what i should bring up to get temujen to rant about next.....

so many options

On balance Filipino food is terrible, for a variety of factors: quality of ingredients, basic understanding of cooking, general laziness when it comes to preparing meals. Obviously there will be places that are fantastic, but I think you will find they are Western trained chefs or have done stints in overseas kitchens. Exceptions to this are BBQ meats, which really cant go wrong with, but does get boring to eat after a while.

Not an insult to the culture or the people, but thats just the way it is.

so what do you guys eat all day? i read that korean food in manila is quite good? anything else?
do they have delicous fruit like in thailand?

i got one more question.

whats the best way to get from clark airport(arriving at 6pm) to makati (probably staying at the hozwat inn near burgos str., which was mentioned in this thread). or if anyone know some better hotel let me know

...... Do you have any idea how much those poor suckers make daily as chefs? They probablymake somewherebetween 400 - 1000 Pesos a day. Do you think someone who was edcuated in the western hemisphere would return there to make that kind of money? Someone that is going to study culinary there is more than likely from a poor background they are not going to go abroad to study. If for some miracle they did they wont return back to the country where it will take them forever to pay off their schooling.

Laziness? How did you come to this conclusion? Do they allow you to the restuarant kitchens for you to actually see the laziness? To me what this sounds like is that you hooked up with a girl from a poor background who normally cant afford all the ingredients for a dish so normally makes them quickly and being quick you translated for being lazy for taking short cuts. Most filipino's I know spends 1-3 hours preparing dinner meals is that being lazy? Do you know that families which you would consider middle class have a maid or 2 plus a driver? Do you think they would employ them if they cant cook?

I get it you dont like filipino food. Generalizing the people and not giving any thought of what you were going to say makes you an idiot. Its ok though I understand that your one of those narrow minded westerners which nothing is right unless its of a western design.

WOW . JUST WOW .

If you disagree with any point\view of someone that is ok .
To then call them idiot is ok too ??
Calling them narrow minded westerner is no generalization ??

i could say allot more

Btw , i love the philippines more the my country
i want to kiss the ground every time i arrive there
Despite that , imo the food sucks.

My comment was in no way based on his point of view. At the end of my post I even said I get it that he doesn’t like Filipino food.

So, ok I admit I went over the top calling him an idiot but I am correct that he was generalizing without any bases.

Quoting him he says: “On balance Filipino food is terrible, for a variety of factors: quality of ingredients, basic understanding of cooking, general laziness when it comes to preparing meals.”

This doesn’t sound generalizing to you? How was he able to get this
opinion? I am sure that the restaurants there would not allow him to
wonder into their kitchen to watch what is going on.

He then goes to say: “Obviously there will be places that are fantastic, but I think you will find they are Western trained chefs or have done stints in overseas kitchens.”

Not a very educated comment. We know that Philippines is a 3rd world
country where the average person makes about 500P a day. If a pinoy
was able to afford to go abroad and attend a western culinary school
where it cost them at least 100K for tuition and place to stay do you
think they would return back to Philippines to making about 15,000P a
month that will take them 20 years to pay their schooling? It doesn’t add
up. Now a lot of chefs who has gone through school there locally do get
hired as chefs for cruise ships. But again if you are a business owner
would you hire somone right of the street with no traning for the job you
are hiring them for?

Just the fact that he says that places with good food are places that have western trained chefs can only come from a very narrow minded person.

Someone should start the khanacademy of cuisine. Make the world a better place to live.

+1 to food sucks. Jolibee is a refuge in most places.

I had one of there sandwhiches when they first came around and never again...

I never said all filipino dish are great. besides Jolibee is just a bad/cheap imitation of Mcdonald. So even though I may never eat there again, they must be doing something right because they are opening branches in other asian and middle eastern countries. They are also considered the fastest growing fast food chain. They now have 20 branches in the US. Not to mention they are now worth 1 billion dollars.

So even you and I may agree with that their food suck we will also find others that will disagree with us.

my point was that the food sucks so bad, even bad fast food seems like the most edible option at times. especially when you're out in the boonies.

jolibee >> mcdonalds. it's not like they import all of mcdonalds' ingredients from the usa because it's an american company.

You missed my point, I said a "variety of reasons" which was not limited to the 3 obvious examples I mentioned. I could also blame the American influence which I feel has also had a negative effect on Filipino food culture.

Places that are fantastic, where you will pay Western prices I would almost guarantee will have foreign trained chefs, at least whoever is actually running the kitchen.

Laziness may have been the wrong word for cooking preparation, but maybe the point I'm trying to make is that compared to the readily available of quality fresh well cooked food that is tasty, Philippines doesnt compare to other third world countries such as Thailand.

I love phils and love some certain dishes but everyone should agree that overall food quality is terrible.

Also keep in mind that if you dont eat rice or fast food then food may become a problem while travelling around. Even getting quality bread or fresh milk is super difficult in Manila.

wait, are you saying that mcdonalds can actually get worse?

do they serve breakfast 24/7 at any mcd's over there?

not sure u can make a bad bacon egg and cheese biscuit

no Mcdo 24/7 for breakfast. There is no bacon egg and cheese biscuit here, however you get rice with your egg and sausage or fried chicken. Just recently they started using real english muffins instead of the bottoms of hamburger buns...

Random thoughts/musings

McDo is "ok" in the Phils, my burgers on my big mac always look like they trampled over them, just really not keeping the grill QC tidy...

KFC really shines, they do quality control over there like its their fkn life or death mission, always fresh and better than the states for some reason (and they have SPICY which they phased out in the states).

When Chicken Inasal is on their game, that sht is tha bomb, they phased out the garlic rice, fkers... (loved that sht)

Jollibee is ok, stay AWAY from the burgers, stick to the spicy chicken and fries. If they have chicken spaghetti as an option where ever your location may be (promotion) then get that and the fried spicy chicken. Thats a nice 2 am snack right there, very tasty...

I have had some great dishes in the phils but you have to make it work and stick with what works for you. The really great meals I have had were catered by people that knew what they were doing and the food was some of the best I ever ate. I just wish there was more of that spread more evenly around the Phils but you have your plusses and minuses everywhere.

I love the food in Thailand tho, except that fermented Isaan fish, but I kinda did that to myself. Other than that I have sopped up so much good Thai food I have dreams about their food. For anyone in Bangkok, Somboon Seafood and order the Curry Crab (thank me later)



^^^ Best eaten with pork fried rice and a garlic shrimp appetizer!

Dante you really should do Thailand first even if only for 5 days. Im dead serious about that...

/rant

fyp

He is 100% correct and you are an idiot.

I've been to more than 50 countries and Filipino food is the worst, for exactly the reasons he said. I will state them again, because as I said you are an idiot (lol).

1/ Quality of Ingredients (is bad)

2/ Basic understanding of cooking (they don't know how to cook and are to lazy to learn)

3/ General Laziness (Filipinos are the laziest people I have ever met.. you say they spend 1 - 3 hours preparing a meal, which is hilarious because it's also 100% true but it doesn't help your argument at all. They are to lazy to work, to lazy to study, to lazy to do anything other than stand around talking about their problems - pretending to prepare a meal is a perfect cover for this - it looks like they are doing something useful, but they conveniently have a lot of time to talk while 'waiting' for the food to cook). What takes them 3 hours to cook, would take any other reasonably smart hard working person less than 1 hour.

about their ingredients being bad, it's also bad luck of nature too. even their fish, if you compare with fish from other places, just tastes so bland even though you prepare it exactly the same way. and their rice is of the most tasteless variety. everything comes together to create terrible food. this country is cursed in this regard.

One more theory could be that most familys only have 1 cooktop (or open fire) which means everything is cooked separately, goes cold then put together at the end. Where most western kitchens would have at least 4 cook tops so multiple pots can be going at the same time.

There is also very little progression of meals, most familys I know cook basically the same variety of 5-6 dishes exactly the same, all the time, without experimenting or trying to make things better.

On a more positive note though, Filipinos are the least fussiest eaters and are willing try anything once, which is a really cool trait.

but what if i like it there and decide to stay? that would be disastrous

i would rather try PI and see if i like it, im pretty sure its my destiny