6.009 Awful

katch4246

11 years ago

Cycle 6 – Item 9

14 (Wed) January 2015

Awful

0.5

at Tao Yuan

-Malate, Manila-

with various colleagues

TEITY (see Try Every Item at Tao Yuan) (Visit 33) (Items 185-196). Eating my way through the restaurant’s entire menu: all 222 items.

From what I’ve seen so far, it would seem to be one of the best in the neighborhood, solid on all counts: taste, quality, variety, service, vibe, proximity, maybe price. Once I’ve tried everything, I’ll know exactly what to get, depending on the circumstances, whether it’s for a quick bite on my own, a casual night out with friends/colleagues/family, or a formal occasion hosting bosses/VIPs. That kind of certainty, in the unpredictable culinary landscape of Manila, will be invaluable.

12 new items tonight, total 196 down, 26 remaining, averaging 5.94 items per visit (as of tonight), on pace to finish at TEITY 38.

Beancurd Roll (0.75): pre-deep-fried, seeped in oil; essentially the same item as the Smoked Beancurd Sheet Roulades with Shredded Vegetables, found on the main menu, the only item thus far that I’ve ordered then rejected and sent back; but here, everyone else didn’t seem to mind, so we kept it.

From the outset, I’ve anticipated that the most challenging aspect of TEITY for me would be the items comprising the inner (e.g., lung, kidney, intestine) and outer (e.g., skin, tongue, feet) parts of animals – generally, I only eat the middle third (e.g., meat in between).

A few months back, I’d treated a group of Filipino colleagues to lunch – they like this kind of thing – and got through most of the stuff on the main and dimsum menus (see generally 5.298 Braised Pork Belly with Taopok).

That left the goodies on the hotpot menu, the scariest of them all, so there we were again, just the guys this time.

Ox Tongue (2.0): sliced paper thin, intriguingly chewy; not much flavor; maybe worth exploring further, if prepared in a different manner.

House Special Pork Skin (0.5): pre-deep-fried, probably to tenderize, which rendered it unpleasantly spongy and greasy.

Beef Tripe (top) (0.75): chewy; mild flavor, which was a good thing + Pork Intestine (bottom) (0.5)–rubbery; strong flavor, which was a bad thing.

Beef Lung (0.0): squishy; intense flavor, had to spit it out after an exploratory nibble; magnificently awful, exactly what I imagined lung would feel, taste, look like.

Sliced Pork Kidney (0.0): pasty; overwhelming flavor that exploded after a few chews (“…This is actually kinda–oh, wait, no, there it is.”), delayed evac; the “sliced” refers to the decorative hashing knife-work on the surface (see main photo), which made it more grotesque.

Pork Vein (0.75): also pre-deep-fried; flavorless, the most that I could hope for at this point.

Sliced Local Fat Beef (1.5): finally, the middle part of the animal; don’t know what the “fat” refers to.

Winter Melon Slice (1.5): Radish Sticks were better.

Fried Taro (top) (1.5): nothing objectively wrong with it, but I personally don’t like the texture + Chix Leg Mushroom (bottom) (1.5) – coulda been fresher.

Although I found most of the items to be abhorent individually, I enjoyed the overall meal nonetheless. Partly because I got to try certain things for the first – and final – time; I even discovered that ox tongue might not be so bad after all. Partly because I got to check off several icky items, although a few remain; I guess we’ll be back soon enough. And mostly because I got to share the experience with friends – misery loves company. Good times.

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