Volume 4, Issue No. 57
OPINION/COMMENTARY
/ News That Fears None, Views That Favor Nobody /
Our latest as of Tuesday, May 2, 2023
~ The concluding coverage of the month-long Filipino Restaurant Month three days ago quite appropriately took place at this Little Manila joint where food and entertainment are intertwined. And so, after a delightful dinner, the next thing to happen was to wind down, turn on the karaoke machine, grab the microphone, and sing to our hearts' content. True to its slogan, MB is the place to be . . . for fine food, entertainment, and conversations.
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KARAOKE AT MB THE PLACE TO BE
Fun Part of Filipino Restaurant Month
After a Delightful Dinner Each One Steps Up To Sing
By ROMEO P. MARQUEZ
Editor, The Filipino Web Channel
"As long as you're having fun and still doing stuff, it doesn't matter what other people think". - Nick Carter
TORONTO - The last food outing undertaken by the Philippine Consulate in cooperation with some media concluded this past weekend at the MB The Place To Be, a restaurant-cum-music-and-comedy-lounge serving both Filipino and mainstream customers.
It was a wonderful finish to weeks of sensing, and tasting the finest dishes - not for free mind you, but at a cost to the Consulate which shouldered the expenses - and discovering why some restaurants command popular patronage.
At MB The Place To Be, we loosened ourselves from the stress of conducting interviews, meeting deadlines, writing stories, and creating videos just for the pleasure of featuring and promoting Filipino culture, in both food and music.
Everything was worth the troubles. We had the chance to interact with the captains and chefs of the restaurants, much to our delight, especially in satiating our hunger for some choice Filipino food.
Adobo, our national dish, is variedly interpreted in the different restaurants, perhaps an indication of the geography, political, cultural, and social diversity of the Philippines.
In one restaurant, for example, coconut milk (or gata) is an ingredient in both chicken and pork adobo. In another, the adobo tasted like commercial adobo, i.e. the basic ingredients are skimped in favor of having more sauce to sprinkle on rice.
Where I come from, Cavite and Quezon provinces, my parents would cook adobo the way my grandmother wanted and called it antigo or original or genuine adobo, which meant braising either chicken or pork in a mix of cane vinegar, soy sauce, garlic, and bay leaves.
That's just one of the things we found out. A common item in all the menus is pork cooked and made in versions that defy definition, such as lechon kawali, lechon roasted on open fire or oven, lechon Cebu (which is similar to the Chinese roasted pig), sisig, paksiw na lechon, etc.
I'm no connoisseur of food, I'm simply an average consumer who likes to eat. But I do have a taste for what's good, not fancy good, within the limits of my pocket.
That said, the Filipino Restaurant Month which the Philippine Consulate promotes every April, was a kind of journey from food in the homeland to how they're adapted to Canada to suit non-Filipino taste buds.
But back to MB The Place To Be. If anything that could be said about it, it is the ambience that belies its physical structure. From the outside, it looks unsophisticated and dreary, which, by the way, is its chief attraction.
For once inside, it greets customers with the kind of welcome of being at home. Minus the blazing sound of the karaoke machine and the stage performers, the place is good for quiet conversations. (Video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2tj4J4VFZw)
I'm truly surprised that the food there perfectly fit my not-so-discriminating taste. I gobbled up the pancit first, and then the rice, lumpia, fried siomai, and two slices of pork barbecue washed down by a glass of sago (tapioca) and gulaman (jelly).
We - and I mean Consul Mary Grace Villamayor, Cultural Officer Tey Samonte, administrative aide Bong Baranda, artist and journalist Michelle Ramos and her dad Federico, and yours truly - had a grand time after the meal.
Owner Mike Cruz extended the courtesies like we were special guests. He sat with us, conversed with us patiently like we were players he regularly coaches in a basketball game. He even did a karaoke duet with Consul Villamayor!
I said earlier we had a wonderful evening at MB The Place To Be for all the right reasons - the food, the company of friends, the conversations, the fellowship, and, of course, the karaoke.
I never knew that Consul Villamayor had such a beautiful voice as she sang thrice. Bong is the real crooner in the group, and got a tease from Mike that he should be the song master for his joint. The quiet and reflective Tey contributed two songs.
And then I never imagined that Michelle would be persuaded to sing, and she did Somewhere Over the Rainbow ala Judy Garland. For the fun of the evening I sang My Way and I Just Called to Say I Love You, and thank god, there were just a few disinterested customers at that time, or I would be banished from the establishment with my out-of-tune rendition.
That was the fun part. Previous weeks of coverage had been quite formal. But tonight, we were more casual, having bonded while we shared personal and professional stories in the middle of meals.
In my 13 years in Toronto, I never had such a good time as this one at MB The Place To Be. The rapport was great only because the company of people from the Consulate and media was enthusiastic about everyone's presence. (Copyright 2023. All Rights Reserved).
