Robinson's Food Court in Cebu

Cebu City, Philippines.

I grabbed a few cans of different Philipino beers from the supermarket and carefully looked through all the food court offerings, asking questions as I went along. Most of the "help" couldn't care less about my little project and tried to dodge my questions -- but I persisted. I ruled out any un-weird items, or items I've had before, or things that really were not all that weird like, oh there's some tiny crabs. I've had all kinds of crabs. Crabs aren't really weird.

So here's what I settled on: various goat innards, pig intestines, pig lungs, and a mystery "green noodle" which I'll explain in a separate article. I also ate two unusual seaweeds, which aren't really meat, but they're kinda weird. One looked like miniature green grape bunches on vines, and had a pleasant burst of juicy sweet saltiness. The other might be the same "sea beans" I had in San Francisco last month, they're little twig things and also kinda yummy.



Back to the meat... The piggy intestines were prepared two ways -- crispy fried, and non-crispy fried. I prefer the crispy. The un-crispy part was more juicy-meaty and reminded me of eel. No offense to eels. The pig lungs and goat lungs were a spongy/porous texture -- like a thicker, chewier, more flavourful beef tripe. There were also cubes of pork blood jello in the stew. Did I write about Chinese pork blood yet? Anyway, the goat-innards stew was nice and spicy, which I like, but not as crazy spicy as Thai food.



Americans eat plenty of innards too, they just don't like to know about it. Think of all the stuff that becomes filler for ground meat, sausage, hot dogs, spam, etc. But in many other countries, like the Philippines, people are generally OK with eating the innards as they are. In a country with such poverty, it would be unthinkable to waste any usable part of an edible animal. I assume the prime cuts, the steaks, go to those with money first, and the rest are left with the trimmings and tossings. So I guess the difference is, those with money can pretend like they're not really eating this stuff, but most of them are, it's just one step removed, processed and the source ignored and forgotten.