When you visit a country, you know you should not just go to famous restaurants to try their cuisine. You should also experience their cuisine through its street foods.
Every country has their own culture of street foods, which are fast, easy affordable yet appetizing delicacies that will surely makes you enjoy more than those fancy restaurants.
For students like us, we have this little habit of buying street foods after class. After a long day of tiring studying, we deserve to indulge ourselves with cheap but delicious foods, right?
Before, we went to the food part. I bought a drink from a convenience store. But, if you really want an authentic Filipino street food experience, you can buy some buko juice or any kind of 'palamig' or cold drinks. Some palamig drinks are of pandan or melon flavor.
We bought a little fishballs from a street vendor before going to the barbecue place. Fishballs are actually flat fish cakes that are deep fried. It is paired with a sweet sauce made from flour, soy and sugar. For a little zing, I added vinegar.
Our main stop for today is barbecue. Here they are grilling pork barbecue, isaw and betamax.
Pork barbecue is just usual marinated pork brushed with soy and ketchup while on the grill
Isaw is chicken intestines skewered and grilled while brushed with soy and ketchup too. Betamax is coagulated chicken blood barbecued. I don't eat betamax so I don't know how it tastes like.
I ordered isaw and pork barbecue. We also ordered some longganisa, some kind of sipced sausage famous in our city.
We enjoyed it with a sweet vinegar and onions sauce. It was filling and we had a lot of fun talking about little things.
Some street barbecue places here also sell chicken feet, chicken neck and hotdogs grilled to perfection.
Here we also have empanadas filled with vegetables, egg and meat of longganisa. The flat food is called okoy which is deep-fried fritters with small shrimp and some veggies. It is also enjoy with a sweet vinegar sauce.
Next time, I'll introduce you to some tusok tusok or other skewered street delicacies of Filipinos!
(First photo is edited in Canva. All other photos are taken by the author. I used the camera of my realme 6i phone.)