Monday, February 25, 2008

Weekend Northern Food Trip (Part 1)

The whole idea was to have a nice provincial Saturday evening at the wifey’s hometown of Angeles, Pampanga. With the highlights being a cool nostalgic food trip of merienda (snack) at Corazon, a visit through Nepo, and capped off by yummy lip-smacking sisig at Victor’s along the highway. (The wife detests the wildly popular Lucing’s sisig, which she finds too fatty for her taste. I personally like it BECAUSE of the fat content, and the sizzling plate serving doesn’t hurt either. But alas… the bitch, oh I mean the “queen” has spoken… heh heh…)

And so we were off to the NLEX (North Luzon Expressway), a.k.a. “the most unreasonably expensive tollway on this side of the planet.”

We quickly proceeded to the Corazon district in Angeles for halo-halo. This is not to be confused with Razon’s of Guagua, which has successfully proliferated and overpriced itself back in Manila. I’m guessing the actual name of the business establishment is “JaJa,” with the “Halo-Halo sa Corazon” added as a descriptive suffix. Nonetheless, it has been referred to “Halo-Halo sa Corazon” for as long as I remember…

“we went all the way to Angeles, and all I took was this really bad photo of a rather pedestrian streamer…”

Forgive this idiot for not taking a photo of a visually unremarkable dessert served in a rather common-looking drinking glass. The ingredients aren’t even colorful, just various shades of yellow and brown, and the white of the ice. But while the presentation was unremarkable, the taste, texture and experience are beyond description.

Thing is, all ingredients save for the evaporated milk are homemade, which guarantees that their taste will survive various government regime changes, and over-commercialization of the condiment makers of this earth. They make their own sweetened red beans, sweetened bananas, macapuno strips, and their secret recipe pastillas (custard), the thought of which makes my mouth water just remembering it. All these are spooned generously into the aforementioned unremarkable glass, topped with shaved ice, and finished off with evaporated milk.

Your mouth watering yet? :D

Now oddly enough, the spotlighted halo-halo is usually supported by side orders of pancit palabok, nicely tart and tasty dinuguan (blood stew, believe it or not…), together with the obligatory chunks of puto (white sticky rice sponge cake).

And we’re off to other corners of the once-glorious city of Angeles…
(to be continued)

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