| Article Index |
|---|
| Turo-Turo: Fastfood’s Predecessor in Pinoy Culinary History |
| Page 2 |
| All Pages |
Roadside diners
I also discovered the pleasures of roadside restaurant dining after college. During the early 70s, roadside diners became a rage in Manila. My friends and I would go to a nondescript roadside diner in San Juan to savor its most talked-about entreé-- kare-kare. It was called, well, Roadside, and it gained a cult following because of its inimitable kare-kare. Kare-kare is a stew of ox tails and beef innards, including stomach and intestines, and vegetables in peanut sauce.
The turo-turo (point-point) concept of dining may have pre-dated the fast food craze in the Philippines as evidenced by the proliferation of what we call carinderias (literally, diners) in the towns and cities in rural and and in some urban areas in the country. These small, unpretentious eateries displayed ready-to-eat, or ready-to-go comfort food. Depending on its location, the carinderia offered dishes from their respective regions. For instance, a carinderia in the Ilocos region would offer pinakbet, a humble entree of sauteed native vegetables like bitter melon, squash, eggplant, topped with shrimp paste (bagoong). In Metro Manila and in Central Luzon, carinderias served caldereta, a mildly spicy beef (or goat) stew, and adobo, a delicious concoction of stewed pork in garlic, vinegar and soy sauce. In the Bicol region, spicy ingredients, like peppers and coconut milk (gata) predominantly define the cuisine. Spicy numbers like the popular Bicol Express is a trademark.
Urbanization
The turo-turo’s popularity and acceptance came about because of increased urbanization, where working people increasingly found it necessary to swing by a favorite carinderia, or panciteria (usually Chinese-owned) to buy a dinner to take home. But that’s not all, increasingly, owners of traditional sit-down restaurants converted sections of their establishment to a turo-turo counter, where ready-to-eat and ready-to-go entrees arrayed in steam-heated trays, are always ready to be eye-balled by hungry and harried customers. If you wait more than 20 minutes to get your food, it’s not considered as a turo-turo restaurant. Of course, there’s room for dine-in customers who wish to eat in a leisurely pace.
When we arrived in California in the early 1980s, the turo-turo style restaurants were already firmly established. One particularly adventurous entrepreneur even went to great lengths to call his restaurant, “Point-Point.” The very first restaurant was located at a strip mall on Wilshire Blvd., at Wilton. Today, almost all the familiar Filipino restaurants in the Los Angeles Basin have turo-turo counters. (www.asianjournal.com)
(Published July 9, 2008 p.mgzn4 LAMDWK)
Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites
| Comments |
|
3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
