As I’d mentioned before, last week I was back in California, visiting the ‘rents and taking in the San Jose Sharks‘ first two games of the season. And while I did wax poetic (if briefly) about the best burrito in the world, I’m sure you were hoping I would bring back a truly wacky food story. Well, I’d hate to disappoint, so:
I landed in San Jose on Sunday afternoon, got my rental car, and drove up to Fremont to have dinner with a friend. On the way to this delicious little Chinese cafe in Union City, we passed by this odd little place in a stripmall called Jollibee. I found it curious; it was a chain I’d never heard of before.
After dinner, driving back, we pass by it again, and I ask my dining companion what the heck Jollibee is. And she can’t really tell me, aside from the news that they have “a really weird menu…you can order burgers, but you can also order chicken and spaghetti.” I nod my head, making a mental note to look it up online when I got home, and then promptly forgetting said note. (This is why I carry a PDA. Which I’d also forgotten to make a note in.)
Fast forward to Thursday afternoon, and I’m in San Jose, where I would spend the rest of my trip, getting some cash out of the ATM at my bank. And in driving away, I see another Jollibee. Now I’m doubly curious, and I make a note to Google this when I get to the motel I’d booked with the complimentary wireless Internet.
And the wireless Internet at the motel is down, won’t give me an IP address, and would not work the whole three days I was there. (That’s the fabulous Vagabond Inn, screwing travellers out of advertised ameneties since 1958. Don’t go there.)
So I’m left curious. And now we get to Saturday, and I have a jonesing for Wienerschnitzel, because it’s something I can’t get in Washington. So down we head to Tully Road, and I discover that my Wienerschnitzel has turned into a Hawaiian BBQ. (And I think we all know how painful that can be.) So I get a bright idea: there’s this funky place I keep seeing called Jollibee, all I’ve been told is that the menu is weird, but there must be something edible on it, it’s just down the road, so let’s go there! My companion agrees, and off we go.
You’ll note I haven’t linked to the restaurant’s Web site yet, mainly because I wanted to set up the story and have The Four Of You experience it just as I did, when I first walked in. As it happens, Jollibee is the most popular fast food restaurant in the Philippines, and now you can see what I did…a menu consisting of burgers, fried chicken, a hot dog, spaghetti, a mound of rice, hamburger patties, and gravy not that far afield from what the Hawaiians call locomoco, and something called palabok, which from the picture on the menu (and please remember that this is the picture taken specifically to make me want to eat it) looked not at all unlike what would happen if someone ate ground beef, hard-cooked eggs, and shrimp, and then puked it up onto a pile of rice noodles.
Esoteric enough, right? Well, now we get to the item names: Yumburgers. Jolly Spaghetti. Palabok Fiesta. The Jolly Hotdog. Burger Steak. And, finally, the name that is haunting me to this day…”Chickenjoy”. But I’ll get to that later.
So we order our food, first my dining companion, and then myself. She goes for a Yumburger and fries, and I opt for the Burger Steak, since I had locomoco on the brain since seeing the Hawaiian place. It is delivered to me on the ubiquitous orange fast food tray, and off I go into the dining area.
Upon arrival, my companion alerts me to the yellow Wet Floor sign that we’ve all seen a million times. And I am indeed mindful, and yet the second my feet hit that section of the tile floor, they fly out from under me and I’m on the ground.
Miraculously, I have managed to do all of this without spilling either my Burger Steak or my drink, and I’ve hurt nothing but my pride, but approximately 47 people are there to help me up at this point, despite all attempts on my part to wave them off and reassure them that I was fine…
…and apparently each and every one of those 47 people decide they need to stop by our table while we’re attempting to enjoy our lunch to reconfirm that I am in fact unharmed. In the meantime, I’m looking for a nearby hole to crawl into. I realize now that they’re all petrified that I’m going to sue them…
…and this suspicion is confirmed when the manager shows up with a clipboard, upon which is what must have been a hastily-written and no-way-in-nine-blue-hells-legally-binding release. At first I balk at signing it, irritated at the constant badgering, but then decide that I’d like very much for them to go away and let us finish our lunch, and since I had no intention of pursuing any legal action anyhow, scrawled my name and handed it back.
(Upon retrospect, I realize two things: 1) They had no idea who I was. I could have signed “Fred Smythe”, “Dick Hertz”, or taken some inspiration from our good friend “Mike Litoris“, and they would have been none the wiser. And, 2) I shouldn’t have signed it. They were saying that if I didn’t they would insist on taking me to the hospital, but short of sending out half of the WWE’s tag-team division, they weren’t making me go anywhere that I didn’t want to, and if they did, that would have been the makings of a fine lawsuit unto itself. But I didn’t want to embarrass my companion by making a scene, so no harm, no foul.)
Anyhow, back to our meal, which I think we’re going to be able to finish in peace. But here comes the manager again, and now she wants to give us free food to take with us. Specifically, she wants us to try the “Chickenjoy” and hopefully spread the good word about their restaurant. (I’m guessing she didn’t realize that ship had already sailed when she shoved the pen under my nose in the midst of a forkful of Burger Steak.) And I reassure her that everything is fine and we’d just like to finish our lunch and be on our way, but she’s having none of it.
And that’s how it came to pass that we had two pieces of Original and two pieces of Spicy Chickenjoy in the fridge back at the motel later that day, some of which was consumed the following morning while we were getting our things together to check out.
It wasn’t bad.
OMG, Fred; I have not laughed that hard at a blog in weeks. Maybe months. Thank you!
(You are okay, right?)
One of Four
Oh, I’m fine. My right knee is still a _teeny_ bit sore (‘cuz I actually managed to slip _again_ at the Shark Tank that night), but that’s quickly getting better and I’ll be back to 100% in a jiffy, I’m sure. :)
Yum… Crispylicious Chickenjoy… goes great with lawsuits!
So, the wet floor thing is a nice cover, but it is clear that you’re just drinking too much again. Or something.
I’m getting to the party a bit late, I realize, but…
I’ve stopped at the Jollibee in that mall off of 880 a few times for a change of pace. The most memorable thing I’ve had there is the spaghetti. It’s already a strange thing to order spaghetti at a drive through and — this should have been obvious — not something you should try to eat in a car, parked or otherwise. But when I flipped the carton open, I immediately noticed #1 that it was smothered in cheddar cheese and #2 there were little round disks of something sprinkled generously throughough it. I thought it might be cooked carrot, as it did seem a bit orange bathed under the parking lot lights, but it turned out to be…. hot dog.
Hot dog and cheddar cheese spaghetti. I don’t know how representative of Filipino cuisine Jollibee truly is, but if I were to have to guess from this dish alone, I’d have to assume they all eat like bachelors.
Actually, it was pretty tasty in a make-a-meal-out-of-the-last-things-in-the-fridge sort of way, but I don’t think I’d do it again.
I’ve tried a few other things, and found it’s generally pretty good, but their food tends on the sweet side, even the hamburger spread was sweeter that ketchup.