First Day Food Trip

Kung ang High School ay may "First Day High", 
ang Grad School ay may "First Day Lamon".

(If High School has its "First Day High", Grad School has its "First Day Gorging")

My classmates Salve, Vanessa and I were not supposed to eat lunch that day because we were about to head to UP to crash Salve's graduation. She enrolled for the Filipino Sign Language Program in the University of the Philippines' College of Education for two weeks, which she attended 5 days in a row for 2 1/2 hours. Van and I expected that there would be food enough to be our lunch but since we walked (instead of riding a jeepney) from the Morato - Kamuning extension to the Timog-Morato Rotonda, we were understandably famished.

It was hard to think of where to eat at first but when we saw Lugaw Republic, I began to crave for Pares, so we checked out the food across the famous lugawan. The place was like a "food court" where there are different stalls that offer different menus.

At home we never really have beef meals because my mother hates the smell. So I immediately ordered the braised beef dish called "Pares".



I was expecting it to taste sweet and feel goody-ish.

This was Salve's order - Calamares (Fried Calamari with Lime or Squid Rings):

And this was Van's order: LOMI. It came in a BIG bowl so she asked us to eat it with her.

Here is a picture of my two classmates trying out the Lomi.

The Pares I ate was good but after a while, it became a little bitter, which was not something I was accustomed to when it came to the dish. I'm not sure but this was probably because of the Sinangag rice (Filipino fried rice) my order came with.

I was not crazy about the rice because it had some buo-buong salt, which told me that it might not have been cooked well enough. Eating this rice with Pares required me to endure the saltiness and the bitterness of the entire meal.

Meanwhile, Salve's Calamares was good too but I'm not really a Calamares person unlike my mother so I can't say much about it.

Most unfortunately, I was too full from my own meal to enjoy Vanessa's Lomi noodle soup! But I'm a Lomi lover so it was unfortunate for me to not have been able to eat more of it.

Despite a bit of disappointment, I had an enjoyable lunch and this was partly because of the root beer, which was definitely a great way to cap off a meal eaten underneath a raging sun!

So here they are again, hailing for a cab. On our way to UP!

To end this post, I just want to say that....

...YES, we ate at the UP FSL graduation too! Haha! ..but just a little because we were too shy. Besides, our friend Salve did not contribute anything there. But it was a good thing that we ate before going because they had a longer program than I thought and we would have probably fainted of hunger had we relied on the graduation food.

Lesson to keep: EAT BEFORE YOU CRASH.