Honestly speaking, I’m no fan of foodcourts — they’re packed, they’re loud, and you can’t help but rush because really, it’s not good manners to hog tables when other people have yet to be seated. However, foodcourts do have a startling advantage: food selection. From fast food to home-cooking to foreign cuisine, the wide array of food choices is their meanest card — trump card, and they’re out to win. Win customers, of course.
SM Bacoor Foodcourt, to which I owe yet another experience, is one of those things that will stay with me long after I’m done with food trips, not because of misplaced sentimentality but because of how I came to know of it: while having our house constructed years ago, SM Bacoor became sort of the mall to go to while my parents and contractor supervised the construction and SM Bacoor Foodcourt became that “hot spot” of weird cousin bonding with, well, my cousins and siblings. A good story to tell, that one, but I digress. This entry’s to talk about foodcourt dining experience, not the antics of crazy relatives after all.
Foodcourt dining is no dining experience to write home about, but the variety you are presented with deserves to go down in the history of food choices, if there were ever one. Of course, you can’t forget to take into consideration the simplest factor with which to judge food sold anywhere: taste. There’s just something so fundamentally right about simple food eaten at a simple location that the fanciest food establishment can’t possibly hope to imitate — some things just taste wonderfully different when consumed somewhere intrinsically Filipino. That’s not to say that foodcourt dining is exclusively Filipino, but, not to sound terribly cheesy, SM Bacoor Foodcourt dining is distinctly Filipino in that it cultivates an atmosphere filled with scents you grow up with and chatter that’s familiar due to years of having heard the tone in which it’s carried.
So, now that all those glitzy words and highfaluting phrasings are out of the way — dun dun dun, here come the drums, here come the drums — let’s talk about what we all love to talk about and indulge in: FOOD.
And first on the list is the most classic of classics — Tapsilog, with a side of banana, please and thank you. Tapsilog — tapa, sinangag, itlog — is supremely Filipino, and yep, SM Bacoor Food court has it with Pinoy Toppings providing the food.
Lechon, of course, is also high on the list. No meal is complete without that artery-clogging dish that’s distinctly Pinoy that foreigners think roasting pig the lechon way is a frontier not frequently visited. Lydia’s Lechon is quaintly settled in SM Bacoor Foodcourt for all and sundry to enjoy.
And whoever said that bibingka is primarily a Christmas delicacy? Of course not. And there’s goto, and Chinese food that’s been entrenched in the Filipino taste for as long as I can remember: siomai, siopao, and wanton noodles.
There are so much more to taste and to have, but sadly, I can only consume so much.
Today has been about a different kind of trip. I’m always lounging in coffee shops, ice cream parlours, and pastry houses, and experiencing “foodcourt foodtrip” once again is kind of nice. Kind of nice in that really nice way, with all the roundabout ways of describing it just to keep things interesting.
