Bautista's Filipino Kitchen

(from Saturday morning)

The first thing Ron demands it lunch at his favorite Filipino restaurant in the world: Bautista’s Filipino Kitchen (she’s also a realtor – that reminds me of Fishpond in Chicago where the restaurant is also a travel agent, phone card sales and the place across the street is a restaurant and dentist). I thought we’d be at a restaurant – but it is really a huge food court inside an international market of people selling tons of t-shirts and necklaces and other tourist-y stuff. I have the chicken skewers with rice and egg roll. Very yummy. And the thing about Filipino cooking is there’s no trimming the fat off the meat. Oh no, you cook that lard and you serve it up! The woman at the counter slipped when speaking Tagalog into her regional dialect – which is the same as Ron’s so he got all excited. Sometimes that happens, evidently there’s a whole set of regional languages in each province that most don’t speak unless spoken to.

We walk out to the beach which is surprisingly narrow. The sand alternates between powder and gravel and hundreds of beachgoers are sunning their oiled bodies in the sun. We spot a few pockets of guy who are obviously here for the Volcano circuit parties this weekend. You can tell because they are beefy, lean and have lots of tattoos. And they stare. Or at least the ethnic guys stare. At me. Walking with Ron marks me as pre-approved for liking ethnic guys – it is like when you get pre-qualified for a 0% APR Visa card.

We walk out onto a breakwater and watch a school of gar-like fish. Walking back we stop back at Bautista’s for halo halo. Halo halo is a dessert made (in this case) with crushed ice, ice cream, candied palm seeds, jackfruit and a strange green gelatin. It was good but a little overwhelming in the sweet department once you finished the first two-thirds.