Cycle 5 – Item 128

13 (Tue) May 2014

Sio Mai Mami

3.0

at Recipes

(Robinsons Place)

-Ermita, Manila, Metro Manila, Philippines-

solo

Try Every Restaurant in Robinsons Place () (see also TERRP)

Chin’s Express is a Chinese food court stall.  Filipinized quick-fix items, mostly stir-fried dishes, precooked in bulk and left to sit.

Mami is a Filipino-Chinese dish.  Consists of noodles, traditionally Cantonese egg noodles but more commonly nowadays thicker flour noodles, in a chicken broth, topped with shredded chicken or beef or pork or sometimes dumplings, like sio mai, plus various garnishes, such as scallions, cabbage, chilies.  Don’t know what the term means, though it was supposedly coined by Cantonese chef Ma Mon Lok at his restaurant in the 1950s.

“Sio mai” is what shumai are sometimes called in the Philippines.

The sio mai mami at Chin’s Express was atrocious.  For starters, the broth was pure MSG.  Second, the noodles were mushy.  Finally, the sio mai was so porky, on the verge of or just beyond the wrong side of going bad, that I couldn’t get past the first test nibble.  Nauseating, even in retrospect.  A strong candidate for the Worst Dish of TERRP Award.

(See also GLOBAL FOOD GLOSSARY)

(See also RESTAURANTS IN PHILIPPINES)