Somewhat surreal moment

The story begins mundanely enough.

We had somebody come in to do court-ordered community service hours

The center does get these on occasion, it’s whatever. We're on the list and it's a good place to get comparatively easy work hours, even if they're not always easy to schedule. We are, after all, open in the middle of the workday.

Yesterday I had to go do a delivery route, as often I do when drivers go missing. As I'm walking out the door, I notice there’s a Benz double parked almost right in front of the center.

That happens sometimes. This street is sometimes quite busy because we regularly have events and there are schools nearby. People do pick-ups and drop-offs all the time, and usually they're gone in a matter of minutes. I thought no more of it and off I went.

Some ninety minutes later I returned, and noticed it was still there. Now blocking a few cars' worth of traffic. I head inside and start asking. The front desk knows, the director knows, we’re all talking about it, and we start asking around. 

We get to the kitchen where the volunteer’s busy washing dishes. Goes “Oh, that’s my car.". Doesn't even blink. Casually meanders out to move it and find real parking. Been here for upwards of two hours, and blocking half the street the whole time. 

We’re all mildly aghast.

Then.

We find out the service hours are for reducing fines

…on a giant pile of traffic tickets.

Because what else would it be, right?

Jollibee - Not - So - Lovely

 

I've never been a fast food person, nor a chain restaurant person. When there's nothing else they'll do, but I'm much more likely to try something singular and slightly suspicious, even in a far off place.

But the other day, someone asked me how to make a homemade version of the Jollibee spaghetti. My response was, of course, "...What." 

Now, I knew about it. Jollibee is a quick-service Filipino restaurant chain that's trying to be slightly upmarket while still bottom feeding. The spaghetti is what gets people looking because who the hell expects a fast food chain to have spaghetti- especially one from Southeast Asia. Now apparently there are locations that have palabok pancit, which is Actual Filipino Food, but they don't have that at the one closest to me so my hopes of something tasty mostly went out the window. They did have pies though, and so all hope was not lost.

I discovered there's a Jollibee location out on Alameda island, which is close enough for me to make the trip as an experiment. Unfortunately I had forgotten how absolutely foul it is to get out there. I want to grind that place to gravel so I can rebuild it properly. Ugh. But it's not about the journey to and from, as dreadful as it was.

This may not be the norm since the storefront is in a plaza where everything is very uniformly sculpted, but the appearance is fairly mundane, though the logo is distinct. Were it not for that (and the definitively different intended demographics), you'd have a hard time telling the difference between Jollibee and Popeyes or Chick Fil-a. The amount of sheer product I could see from the far side of the counter was absolutely wild to me. Alto-shaams FULL of cooked chicken ready to rock, dozens of possible orders of food awaiting boxing and bagging, with probably ten employees back there all busy at one thing or another. And one single solitary cashier. That I get, because half the counter was labeled Online Order Pickup and the entire time I was on premises there was a steady stream of people heading to and from. Probably 2/3 of the orders never saw a table, including mine since after the struggle to get there I wanted to go home rather badly.

"Have a Jolli day!" said the cashier as I took my blinking buzzer-to-be off to a corner to wait. Cute and inoffensive, at least. A good twenty minutes later (continuing the trend of 'Quick-service' being very much Not That) I had a bag full of food, and a half hour after that I was home to eat. Because of course getting back was even worse.

I didn't get the whole menu because I'm poor and prepared food is expensive no matter how lousy it is. However, I did get a solid sampler of what they're known for and what they're trying to push.

Chicken: Solid. Somewhere between Wendy's and Popeyes in crunch, with both the regular and spicy being suitably flavorful. Gave my poor beau some terrible heartburn though.

Spaghetti: What. Exceedingly sweet, sauced with what might as well be ketchup (probably banana ketchup and a handful of other things) with fragments of what might be ground meat, little coins of hotdog, and some sprinkled yellow cheese. It's the Filipino version of Chef Boyardee or Spaghetti-Os as we know them today. It's a nostalgic flavor for someone somewhere, probably a vast number of people. But definitely not me. Yech.

Adobo Rice: Sucked. Almost nothing to it but a whisper of soy sauce and vinegar to color and flavor it, with tiny flecks of chicken here and there. I'd made actual chicken adobo earlier this week, so I just put some of my leftovers on top to make it taste like Jollibee pretends it does.

Macaroni and Cheese: Quite nice! Pasta is thick and soft, sauce is rich. It's essentially Stouffer's, if you've ever had the occasion to try it.

Pies: Two! Peach/Mango and Ube. Both extremely delicious. Easily the standout items and I'd happily eat either of them any time. Remember when McDonalds pies were fried and delicious? These make the Golden Arches' golden era look tame.

Overall Verdict:  D I A B E E T U S

It's supposed to bring Filipino flavors of home, but if that's home I totally see why people would leave... if they can manage to walk after all that!

The Rich People's Christmas Lists

Eater did the thing again, poking fun at gratuitous potential holiday spends while discreetly providing affiliate links. 

Clever, yes. Mildly to moderately underhanded? Also yes.

But I had to look, just to see for myself what they were talking about. Their tagline was:

"The Fanciest Food, Kitchen, and Cookware Gifts Imaginable

Is it even a kitchen without a $200 pepper grinder and a $400 pineapple? (I’ll sip from my $1,200 bedazzled travel mug while you answer.)"

As soon as I read that I went AHA, because there's only one $200 pepper grinder on the market that I know about and I already own it! 

They took what's essentially a legacy item on par with your grandmother's Kitchenaid (the one from the era of machined internal parts rather than plastic ones) and used that to frame the notion of other things on their list being halfway reasonable.

Utter rubbish.

A 400 dollar pineapple.

A 230 dollar, fifty gram chocolate bar. 

A 140 dollar 'Gucci' pannetone?!

And that's just some of the edible stuff.

There's a candle that smells of cucumber for ~250. Why? You can probably get that at Yankee Candle for a tenth of that. 

Or the thousand dollar ice press, for when you absolutely have to have those perfect 2" spheres of crystal clear ice for your drink. 

Who on earth is reading this and thinking "Huh. I could use one of those!"?

Eater's audience is not the people who buy stuff like this. Never was, never will be. I honestly don't know why they bothered beyond curiosity clicks. It's a SkyMall Christmas list. A pile of gratuitously expensive mostly-junk masquerading as haute couture journalism.

Bah, humbug.