Chicken A$$

Manila, Philippines.

I dropped down to the Philippines for a quick vacation from China, hung out at the Cebu Shangri-La on Mactan Island for a few days. The food there was great but not many odd items to explore. They didn't offer much Filipino food there. Nice cocktails though. I didn't get to see much of Manila, and Cebu City's Carbon Market (a real deal third world wet market) was interesting to poke around but man I was not impressed with the food I saw there. There were few vegetables, and I didn't find any of the Philipine desserts I'd been searching for.

My first night in Manila, I wandered the streets looking for the weirdest meats. I had high hopes and expectations, but I had landed in the Malate district, with no connections, and found the place to be, well, lacking in Filipino food. I checked the stores and found little to interest me, except a little bottle of durian jam. Instead I found lots of fast food chains, many of them probably-failed-by-now in the home country ... like Shakey's Pizza. Remember them? Well they have them in the Philippines now.

I ended up eating at a yuppie cafe because I was exhausted and hungry and the food looked good and they were playing Detroit techno music and I'm a sucker for that as much as I'm a sucker for weird meat. After I filled up there, I finally found a row of skewer shacks. One of them had English signs for everything and in addition to the normal universal standards, they had one intriguing weird meat dish: "Chicken Ass". So I found room in my belly to fit one skewer of the chicken booty meat. It tastes like chicken. I know that's a trite cliche, but really the taste and texture were just like every other chicken meat I've had. In fact, you've probably eaten chicken fanny already. McNuggets? Probably some chicken patooty in those!



They probably had a laugh to see some foreigner walk in and eyes light up for the chicken butt, and nothing else. Chicken ass on a skewer.

Later I found an upscale Philipino restaurant that serves field crickets, fried froggies, balut embryo eggs, and "chicken tail" (polished terminology for the upscale crowd, eh?), but dining there just wouldn't fit into my schedule, so that's on the list for my next trip here. I'm already looking forward to it. The Philippines are a good travel alternative to Thailand -- less tourist hoards, amazing beaches, everyone speaks English. I'm coming back soon!