PARES and condiments and franchise

    Yesterday, I got out of the house to buy grilled boneless milkfish in Cainta (seedless bangus). On my way there, I passed by the sidewalk lined with street food carts and mobile stalls, the pares mami, siomai, barbecue, kwek-kwek and fishballs. All of them emitted that unmistakable fused aroma of grease, condiments, and kerosene. All were beckoning me.

    I have been into "healthy" diet lately, but then again, what the heck.  I had a bit of struggle but its been a long time since I had some of these hepa foods, as they are called.

 

       I caved in.

    I tried was the pares mami without the fried rice. The chef, I mean what else should I call the guy, got a plastic bowl wrapped in plastic bag (or plastic labo). He tied the open end to secure the bowl, used the dripping ladle to push the air out of the bulging plastic wrap, scooped up few bits of beef chunks (from what part of the cow, who knows?) from the strainer on top of the boiling cauldron, and then ladled a cup of steaming, dark, murky thick soup onto the plastic wrapped plastic bowl. 

   

     I guess the plastic wrap is a hygienic improvement from the dip and then rinse in a pail of heaven-knows-how-many-times used water of the past, also its more convenient for the vendors for they don't have to lug bulky water containers, pails and basins needed to wash and rinse. But it's a one use plastic warp, which I thought was banned in Cainta. It's bad for the environment. 

    One thing about eating pares is the assortment of condiments added on top of it: spring onion, calamansi juice, hot sauce, chili garlic, etc. You can create your own formula to suit your taste and state of your mind. Its like the soup and the noodles are the blank canvass and the rice, eggs, chicharon and condiments are the paints from which you can create your own epicurean dish. 

   

    There are many street foods that are now being served in restaurants and in the malls. They have gone mainstream and some chefs even experimented with them,  spiced them up, decorated and artsified them with expensive leaves, spices, served in fancy containers arranged with other whatchamacallits to give that illusion of class to the poorman's food, which to my opinion is an effing waste of time.

   In the case of the pares, I don't think the rich will get into eating slaughter house by-products and the common pinoys are not going to pay twice or quadruple the price for a cosmetically enhanced street food that most of the time lacks the grit and the flavor of the ones served in street carts and pedicabs.

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