Br-unch

I like breakfast food that works in lieu of any other meal of the day. Take congee for instance. You can eat it when you're sick (my go to sick food of all time), but on nippy days like last week, blustering with a cold front from the north and miserable rain, a bowl of congee is comforting and cosy. Add some toppings of choice and you're good to go. Some days all you want is a zen like approach, tofu, a few slivers of green onion, ginger, with a splash of soy sauce. Some days, it's toss everything from the fridge - pork, century eggs, fish balls, an egg, vegies, bbq chicken, peanuts, bagoong, a pickle. Whatever suits your fancy, for the base - boiled rice - will take it in.

I also love our filipino -logs (tosilog, tapsilog, longsilog, yada yada); meat, egg, and rice. Side of atchara for contrast. You get varities around the country, danggit being a favorite of mine further south in Cebu or Palawan, where the fresh danggit is sublime, crispy, not overly salty, and makes for a change of pace when travelling. I once ordered a bangus with rice and egg in Zamboanga, didn't realize how large the bangus is outside of Manila, found myself face to face with a bangus the size of a platter, it was too much food and difficult to gulp down in haste before my flight took off.

The last few days, I've taken to eating a lot of crispy adobo flakes with egg and garlic rice. Pancake house has a really good version, not so crispy perhaps, but the adobo sulipan is chocful of stewed garlic and tasty meat (a mixture of chicken and pork); I like to mush the garlic and mix it into the already garlicky rice, and douse the meat with hot sauce. And I've discovered that Vanilla Bean, a cafe in Salcedo Village has a good crispy adobo meal, the eggs are softly scrambled, the rice is garlicky but not too oily, and the adobo is quite crunchy, with stringy bits blended in. Not enough garlic but I can appreciate the dish. If VB was open beyond 6 pm, I'd have it for dinner too, but I know I can always depend on Pancake House if I'm feeling the need for garlicky meat and rice after 7 pm.