Category Archives: Restaurant

Kapehan Welcome Sign Typography

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Buko Halo-Halo Natural Container

Coconut as ingredient and container for buko halo-halo.

Discarded buko halo-halo natural containers.

Buko halo-halo shop

Universal Drinks Menu

Language is not a barrier in ordering a particular beer at a non-English speaking restaurant if the photographs of the actual bottles and cans are in the beverage menu. Quite logical.

Fire Extinguisher Tree

Instead of cutting the trees, this restaurant in Bacolod use them as a place to mount fire extinguisher.

Table Condiments 

Customizing the final taste of fried rice, noodle dish, or viand is a Thai eating experience, hence the availability of more than three kinds of condiments on the table. I would usually put spicy fish sauce on my fried rice to make it hot and salty.

Hotel

In Sri Lanka, a ‘hotel’ is an eating place (restaurant) and not (always) a sleeping place.

Fish Presentation

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Wok Grille

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Wok with flame window grille design

Walk for Sake

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No alcoholic drinks to anyone who comes to this restaurant by car

A restaurant’s own way of campaigning ‘don’t drink and drive’ on its alcoholic drinks menu.

Kedai Kopi Din Tokyo

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This traditional coffee shop in Kota Bharu has nothing to do with Japan. Feels like the kopitiams in Singapore with its old town ambiance and good local coffee but instead of tables and chairs it has two long wooden benches for communal use, a ‘kopi bar’. I’ll never forget the very hospitable proprietor who handed 5 ringgit to my 8 yr old daughter as spontaneous gift. My total bill was I think 8 ringgit for 2 mugs of coffee and nasi berlauk.

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Native refreshments

Menu Miscellany

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[Yogyakarta, Indonesia] Warung makan menu

Scrolling through my snapshots, I found several menu pictures which perhaps at that point in time struck me as something interesting to snap on.

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[Yogyakarta, Indonesia] Here’s the warung place. I’d find this again just for their ayam goreng

I think the place and my ala carte eatables were quite interesting too that each experience merits preservation by means of a menu photograph.

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[Tokyo, Japan] This is Tokyo so that’s the menu – that vending machine to prepay for one’s order. This menu machine will give you a sort of receipt to hand over to the one-man restaurant guy. Very efficient

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[Tokyo, Japan] Restaurant counter where the guy (not visible in the picture) is preparing my prepaid ramen

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[Makati, Philippines] Somewhere in Poblacion is this tiny Korean eating place managed by an ajumma who sits by the cash register table

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[Makati, Philippines] The inside of Magpie’s menu. A picture menu is logical for a foreign restaurant

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[Makati, Philippines] Magpie’s menu also in the wall with couple of magpies, a symbolic bird of South Korea

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[Makati, Philippines] Beni’s Falafel menu of vegetarian, kosher, Israeli fare

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[Makati, Philippines] Beni’s Falafel place

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[Makati, Philippines] List of Puerto Rican viands with some background information written and printed in several pages of bond paper that are stapled together

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[Makati, Philippines] Another page of Sofrito’s menu. I don’t have snapshot of the place but it’s a small one similar to Beni’s Falafel

Tinuom

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Early this month, I found myself checking in at Iloilo airport, about 4:30 PM. Being alone, and seeing that it was still too early for my 7 PM flight back to Manila, I went for a walk outside the airport in search for a carinderia. In other words, looking for something interesting to eat (or something interesting to see), as generally, I find airport restaurants in the country dull.

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No other passengers. I guess, no one would venture out of the aiport anymore after securing one's boarding pass - except me

Walking past the airport gate, a little past the flying school’s some kind of an aircraft laboratory, I reached the doorstep of this tinuom carinderia. Tinuom is chopped native chicken that is boiled mainly with tomatoes, onions, salt (and maybe lemongrass), inside a banana leaf. It must be carefully wrapped so the stock won’t leak, else it wouldn’t be as richly flavored as it’s supposed to be.

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Cooked with banana leaves which makes the broth flavorful in a bukid way. No sautéing done with the native chicken which makes it healthful than tinola, I suppose

Tinuom is said to be Cabatuan’s specialty, a town that has recently become an airport town. More than 2 decades ago, I was playing by the river, by the mango tree in barrio Tiring of this town. Never did I thought that Iloilo airport will be relocated in this countryside (bukid).

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Tied and wrapped during cooking, the one on the left side. That whole wrapped thing (with water inside) was boiled in a caldero

Tinuom is a kind food I can identify with eating in a nipa house in the middle of a bukid. It tasted like bukid, my kind of flavor, my kind of interesting meal before boarding.

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Flying school just beside the tinuom carinderia. From afar, the lab looked like a sari-sari store. I guess Coca-Cola doesn't limit its signage sponsorship to stores only, for in this case, an aircraft lab

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A sari-sari store by the road leading to the gate of the airport. Everything is surrounded by ricefield

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