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Food talk!

More often than not during the work week i pick up lunch at this Filipino Restaurant called Pinoy Pinay conveniently & conversely located next to the 24 Hour Fitness gym haha... Its cheap (under $4.00 for a combo of meat & gulay or $4.60 for a 3 item combo... dude you cant beat that) and big, i'm usually served two meals worth of food in my to go box. Because i go frequently i am a familiar face to all of the workers there.

Although my trips there are impersonal & rapid i'm very observant of the workers and their characteristics. First i notice that they all smoke cigarettes and drive suped up Japanese cars with aero kits that look more like drag coefficients. But we're not here to talk about their cars.. (Its just interesting how people decide on car choice or preference... particularly when lifestyle gets precedence over necessity). These workers each have their own unique way of dealing with their customer (they're dealings with me) and i've sort of given them their nicknames based on their unique characteristics, looks or ethnicity.

The Punkass Kid. He is the youngest of the bunch and comes with plenty of attitude. He will usually waltz in with Ipod & ear buds in tact the ballcap writhen on his head and pants halfway down his ass. He's the kind of kid you just want to smack upside the head and say "pick up yer pants biatchh"... But i do like the fact that he keeps mostly to himself so i don't have to have an unneeded conversation.

The Idiot. This one is the newest. He's sort of like the geeky College boy of the group... (They use a to go box with three compartments. The big one for the rice and two smaller ones for the ulam or "dish". Usually they will NOT put the 2nd ulam on the 2nd small compartment to avoid mixing and overlapping of food and instead use a separate container. Also as a rule of thumb any dish with any kind of soup automatically gets its own separate container) One time the idiot put both adobo & kaldereta in separate containers leaving only the rice in the to go box and then a separate container for the sabaw "soup". This made no sense at all... i had the to go box with only the rice in it and two empty ulam compartments and then three separate containers for my ulam WTF? . The following day he put the mongo in the small ulam compartment and the adobo in a separate container. First i thought he was messing with me but i dismissed it, i mean fuck it its a to go box! He is the paradox... smart looking but in fact an idiot haha.

The Visaya. This kid is cool, he greets me every time he is on shift and apologizes when there is no chicken adobo then introduces me to the other chicken dishes haha... because i know and he knows that chicken is the shiznits haha! When there is adobo he will automatically fill the ulam container with it then will ask what other dish i want with it. Cool huh?

Big Boy. He's big boy coz ya... he is a Big ass kid. But i like him a lot because he gives me the biggest portions when he serves me. His servings i swear equals to about 2 1/2 meals.... Is it maybe some sort of an impulsive cognitive thing?

Note to Restaurant owners: Do not hire fat people. They either eat your food or give it away haha!

So yes good employees... but the crack about this place even though they are called "Pinoy Pinay Fastfood" is that they are in fact un-fastfood like. They are undermanned most of the time and have this inefficient customer line system that crams people in the same corner where the main entrance is. If you don't like to wait more than 10 minutes in line for your turn to pick your ulam then this isn't the Filipino fastfood joint for you. In fact you'll never see me there grabbing lunch any day between 11am-3pm (i go before 10 am or to Nanay Gloria's a couple of miles down the road) and never never on the weekends. They don't even have a water fountain or water dispenser... you have to ask for it at the counter. We all know this is booolshiet because how many fastfood restaurants do you know have NO water availble to fetch for yourself? That's rather archaic, don't you think?

Posted by: Marc Gabay
Friday, December 02, 2005