ariella, tim and i walk into “savoury”
seafood restaurant in downtown tacloban.
the menu is in english.
we ask what a word we don’t
understand is, and the waitress responds with a very assertive “no”.
so we decide to order things we
recognize – “shrimps with peas” and “crab meat”. the crab meat is by far the
most expensive item on the menu, so it better be the real deal and not that
fake, artificially pink rolled-up stuff, right?!
10 minutes later a different
waitress comes out, looks at us, starts giggling, and runs back into the
kitchen.
she comes back out after collecting
herself, and states “out peas”.
no more peas? okay, “we’ll take the
shrimp with cauliflower instead then”.
“out cauliflower” comes the
response.
“do you have any vegetables?”
“out shrimps”.
“oh, you don’t have any shrimp”. it
is all coming together.
we order some calamari instead.
20 minutes after the calamari
arrives, i inquire as to whether the crab meat will be ready soon. the waitress
says “of course sir” very authoritatively.
15 minutes later, the rest of our
food having long ago been eaten, i ask again. this time the waitress offers no
response and quickly runs into the kitchen.
i decide to go back into the kitchen
to see for myself if they are actually cooking any crab meat. the cooks are
sitting around smoking and drinking, and nothing is being cooked. i ask if
there is any crab meat being prepared. a cook responds: “we don’t have any crab
meat sir, only shrimp!”
we decide to head out; the crab meat
(and shrimp) will need to be a different night we suppose.
as we are getting up, a waitress
calls out “wait!”
she brings out a plain egg omelet.
“crab meat momsir” she says. (mom is
the respectful filipino way to address a female, and momsir is often used to
address males and females collectively.)
we sit back down and eat the
omelet. it hits the spot but is definitely just a plain egg omelet; no hint of
crab whatsoever.
while the cashier is ringing up the
bill, i inquire “what happened to the crab meat?”
the cashier says “we just brought
you the crab meat.”
“but i definitely didn’t taste any
crab meat. it tasted more like just plain eggs.” (which were also on the menu,
by the way, for about 20% of the cost of the crab meat)
“that is crab meat here, sir” comes
the reply, audibly confused by my queries. “what were you expecting?”
