Filipino Fast Food...

anything for a try at alliteration...

Over at MLQ3 today, he has linked to a bizarre altercation about Jollibees ...

first an American and her friends go to try out Jollibees..here...and make rather uncomplimentary comments about it...

then...a Filipino gets hold of "Pam's" post and get's "ever so slightly offended"!

then...after receiving some hate mail...Pam answers back...

a storm in a tea cup was my first thought....but then...the average Filipino eats a fair amount of fast food...not necessarily from Jollibees but judging by the enormous number of pizza places, food courts and the like around Manila they must all be being kept in business somehow...so being so aggressively rude about fast food, in particular a home grown product such as Jollibees is fairly offensive..plus I have learnt here that Filipinos are very sensitive abour their country and anything Filipino...in the vast majority of cases that is a good thing...

Unfortunately Jollibees is really not to everyone's taste...I was taken there by a colleague my first week here to try Filipino fast food...and I have to say it just wasn't my idea of good fast food (an oxymoron?!)...it does tend on the sweet side and...well, to cut a long story short - I didn't really like it...but that may have more to do with the fact that I haven't eaten any similar fast food (probably pizza is the exception) for a couple of years...even predating reading this book.

However, in Pam vs. Filipinos...I think both parties handled it badly...Pam, did go slightly OTT in her comments...it's not great food - but I don't think it will kill too many people and obviously somebody likes it otherwise the company wouldn't have survived and been quite so prolific...on the other side of the arguement, I don't know the content of the rest of the e-mails but the one she highlighted did not exactly portray Filipinos in the most courteous and literate way...

MLQ3 then suggests that as feedback Filipinos could 'brush up' on their road kill recipes...giving us a few helpful links..here and here...which reminded me of two things...first on my return from one of my trips to Canada I brought back a "Road Kill Cafe" T-shirt which my mother thought was most tasteless..(best use of the word I have ever heard!)...the second thing was when reading about the beaver recipes I remembered a Christmas bakery list I saw for a hotel somewhere that listed amongst its Christmas goodies..."Small beaver"....which lead me (of course!) to the Naked Gun movies...

Drebin: Nice Beaver!
Jane: Why thank you... I just had it stuffed.
Drebin: Here.. let me help you with that.


funny how the mind works...!!