The Cost of Traveling to Manila: Coffee in the Morning

When two or more travelers meet, "where are you from?" inevitably gets asked. I am from the Philippines. And I spend most of my time in Manila. Some people I've met traveling are fairly young (under 30) and have not had the opportunity to travel to my country. They know of the country mostly from the internet and TV or from Filipino migrants to their country. A good number expressed interest in one day traveling to the Philippines and often ask practical questions, including variations of "How much will it cost me?"

Being a charter member of the coffee-before-talkie club whether at home or while traveling, I don't want to have to think about where to get a good cup of coffee when I wake up in the morning. Or in the afternoon. So this is for those travellers for whom a morning cup is imperative.

Breakfast at Figaro

An 8 oz cup of brewed coffee………………………... ₱ 85      $1.94    €1.42

BLT Ciabatta……………………………………………  ₱189     $4.32    €3.17

Breakfast at Coffee Bean
Small cup of Today's Fresh Brew coffee……………. ₱105      $2.40    €1,76
Bagel with cream cheese……………………………    ₱135      $3.09    €2,26

Breakfast at a Starbucks

A tall cup of brewed coffee or cafe misto………….. ₱100     $2.29     €1.67

A pastry, like a blueberry scone………………………₱90       $2.06     €1.51

Of these three, Figaro is the only one that's a Filipino brand. Their branches are a bit harder to find than the other two though—a crying shame. By the way, they also serve some pretty delicious Filipino food items alongside their pastries and pasta. (I'll probably get around to writing about them in the future.) And of the three, they are the only one with free no-strings-attached wi-fi.

I recommended these places because they can be counted upon to serve decent brewed coffee. Sadly, the Philippines fulfills the criteria of a "shithole." Our government is corrupt, the roads are slow, and most tragic of all, the coffee is instant. (∼85% of the coffee grown in the country is Robusta, which is used for instant coffee.) Even in fairly decent food places, the coffee is likely to be instant. And while one may argue that one must eat like a local for one's wanderlust to be authentic, instant coffee is the gateway drug for food-like substances. Just don't!

Alhambra/The Constant Princess (1)

On the plane, I like to read fiction set in the location I'm going to. Fiction is in many ways more useful than a guidebook, because it gives you those little details, a sense of the way a place smells, an emotional sense of the place. So, I'll bring Graham Greene's The Quiet American if I'm going to Vietnam. It's good to feel romantic about a destination before you arrive.

Anthony Bourdain, US chef and travel host 

While there's a persistent stereotype of the geeky bookworm as some sort of homebody, some of the most joyful travelers I've met are also big fans of the written word. And it's not unusual that the question "What brings you here?" has an answer in the form of a title of a book. The combination of travel and fiction is particularly heady as wandering about satisfies the senses while the story gives the intellect a framework on which to build. Put the two together and they become synergistically satisfying. So today, to celebrate my first month as a blogger, I'd like to put together a double helping of happiness by combining two favorites: Spain and historical fiction.

Alhambra, from the Arabic al-hamra (the red), is named for its red walls.

Granada in the Andalusia province in the south of Spain has a rich and historic past. It is here that the Nasrids built the Alhambra, a palace of pools and gardens. King Boabdil eventually surrendered the palace to Isabel and Ferdinand.

The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory is a novel that revolves around Catalina, the youngest daughter of Isabel and Ferdinand, Spain's Catholic Monarchs. The narrative begins during Catalina's childhood, when her parents ruled on horseback, and continues as  she sails to England to wed Arthur, Prince of Wales, and then eventually his brother Henry VIII. Compared to other novels by Philippa Gregory about the Plantagenets and the Tudors, this has received fairly little attention. (The Other Boleyn Girl was adapted into a Hollywood film starring Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johansson. The White Queen and two other novels about the Cousins' War, aka The War of the Roses, form the basis of a miniseries by Starz.) This is lamentable because of her novels that I've read, this one is the most descriptively lush. When Catalina and her family move into the Alhambra and again when she is homesick in Britain, descriptions of the beautiful rooms and gardens are woven into the narrative.

The Justice Gate, partially obscured by the a very tall tree. (Photo taken by an amateur. Lol!)

An excerpt from the novel reads:

"The Spanish family with their officers ahead and the royal guard behind, glorious as sultans, entered the fort through the enormous saquera tower known as the Justice Gate. As the shadow of the first arch of the tower fell on Isabella’s upturned face, the trumpeters played a great shout of defiance, like Joshua before the walls of Jericho, as if they would frighten away the lingering devils of the infidel. At once there was an echo to the blast of sound, a shuddering sigh, from everyone gathered inside the gateway, pressed back against the golden walls, the women half veiled in their robes, the men standing tall and proud and silent, watching, to see what the conquerors would do next. Catalina looked above the sea of heads and saw the flowing shapes of Arabic script engraved on the gleaming walls."

(To be continued.)

Starbucks Reserve: Finca Nuevo Mexico

Mere weeks after I was gifted with a cup of Ethiopia Yirgacheffe, I went to one of only two Starbucks Reserve stores in Metro Manila to find that no, they were no longer serving that. They had run out of stock and probably for good. So goodbye, fruity coffee! I shall definitely miss your cherry-berry vibe. 

This time I went for an American coffee, the Finca Nuevo Mexico. This is a coffee with a reputation that precedes it. It's been four years since I first heard of this arabica bean grown in the highest and driest part of Mexico by a Mexican family of German origins. This coffee is supposed to be "very very good," according to people whose raptures feature epithets like "ethically grown" and "sustainably farmed" but lack adjectives such as "delicious." I had some ideas how virtuous this coffee was but no idea if I would enjoy it.     

As your coffee drips, the Cofee Master tells you why it's so special.

Well, I guess this is why Starbucks have those leveled-up baristas called "Coffee Masters." After I've made my choice, the coffee master congratulated me on my choice and began supplying me with the details of the legend of Don Ricardo Baumann and his magically sustainable coffee beans while preparing the coffee. As soon as lime odor began wafting off the funnel, he began going more into the characteristics of the coffee itself and concluded by recommending that I get a chocolate- or citrus-based dessert to go with the coffee. (If you have the time and are so inclined, do get a cup at a Reserve store and let the CM show you the works. There's just enough ritual there to recall a tea ceremony but it's chatty and you're standing so you'd neither be bored nor cramped. The steps are as I had described previously here.)

I took my cup to one of the counter seats. Its opening taste was bright and, as promised, very citrusy. It reminded me more of calamansi or dayap than of oranges—acidic, indeed. It was light and crisp and almost clean, leaving only the merest taste of brown sugar. If I had it at home, I'd probably drink it with a nutty müesli steeping in orange juice. All in all, a good breakfast coffee.

Three of a Thing: Salted Caramel

[W]hen sugar, salt and fat are ramped up in combination with another, the foodstuff in question has an effect on the human brain rather like drugs. In a heady combination, they stimulate neurons, which release dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with the pleasure centre, which in turn makes us want to eat more. There is an explosiveness to this combination that does get the pulse racing and the adrenaline flowing. Part of this is down to the immoderate intensity of the flavours: the combination is somehow so surprising, and yet so compelling.

Nigella Lawson, English  food critic

Salted caramel is presently the toast of popular tastemakers. Although there are few local sources of actual salted caramels, almost every food brand or store worth its salt (see what I did there?) is offering a salted caramel something or another. The appeal is not difficult to understand. As Nigella Lawson points out, the salted caramel is the trifecta of sugar, salt, and fat of which manic episodes are made.

Here, I am reviewing three salted caramel products. One of these does contain an actual salted caramel. Two of these live up to the promise of the trifecta of tastes. All three of these are consumer products. These three are:

Clockwise: (1) Dark chocolate-covered salted caramel from Candy Corner, (2) Salted caramel gelato with candied pecans from Bigoli, (3) Starbucks salted caramel hot cocoa

Dark chocolate covered salted caramel from Candy Corner
Short version: dark chocolate, good. Caramel, good, Sea salt, not the sexy flaky kind but good enough. 

TL;DR version  That Candy Corner is carrying loads more dark chocolate-covered goodies is excellent news. Lately I've found myself loading up on goodies for a movie, knotting up the leftovers and carrying them in my purse in case of dementor attack because in this function, these babies truly deliver. In the throes of sudden hopelessness, a bite into one of these delivers a punch of bittersweet and then a burst of salty that smears the tongue, inner cheeks and palate with velvet. In ennui, letting one melt in your mouth gives the successive caresses of the bittersweet then the smoky buttersweet followed by a momentary salty flick, one that tells you to get on your feet and be gone from this abject place. If you are at any risk of exposure to the sort of misery that sticks to your clothes and clogs your pores, do keep these in your person at all times.

My one complaint with Candy Corner is that they do on occasion give a homogeneous bag. In last the 200-gram bag of supposedly all dark chocolate covered salted caramels I got, there were a few stray pieces of almond, espresso bean, raisin, and strawberry—all also covered in dark chocolate and all stuff that I might also order but I had wanted a bag of salted caramels, not some motley collection of pirates' pieces of eight. Perhaps a bit more care to prevent such inadvertent mixing?

Salted caramel gelato with candied pecans from Ristorante Bigoli
Salted caramel in ice cream form is no longer the novel treat it used to be. For the most part, however, companies just dress up their vanilla ice cream with ribbons of caramel sauce and throw in a few spare bath salt crystals. (No, Nestle and McDonald's! I'm not gonna name names!) Not so with Ristorante Bigoli. The ice cream base is sweet and smoky and luscious, somewhere between a spectacularly buttery caramelo and a dulce de leche. Even the mouthfeel is gorgeous. No sharp icicles here. Only the occasional surprise of flaky salt. 

By itself, the gelato was very good but adding the candied pecans made it memorable. With the pecans, it was no longer just a premium version of a popular ice cream flavor. It was suddenly a dessert to hang a memory on, the way one would hang a memory on pie one had at Grandma's.

Salted caramel chocolate drink from Starbucks
Starbucks first offered their salted caramel hot chocolates for the fall season years ago. Now that they are placing their products in every grocery, they are also hawking a hot cocoa mix that promises to replicate that experience in the relative safety of one's home and at any season. All you need to add is 8 oz of hot milk per packet.

I followed their instructions for the hot chocolate to the letter and, well, it's fine. Chocolatey, sweet, milky. Close enough to the Signature Hot Chocolate you can get at their store, I guess. But then again, I was never a fan. 

The box clearly promises caramel and sea salt and I suppose if you wish hard enough you could conjure a smokiness at the tip of your tongue. The milk fat (because you did not cheat the recipe by using skim!) might even recall the richness of butter in a real salted caramel. Or you could just admit it's more marshmallow than caramel. There is the slightest hint of salt at the end of each swallow, just noticeable if you were looking for it.

What is perfectly noticeable, however, are the hard white bits of opaque sugar that sink to the bottom of the cup and are resistant to solution with 75˚C water. They yielded only after I dragged them up the sides of the mug and crushed them with the back of a coffeespoon. 

The box also has instructions for a caffe mocha. The barely-there caramel taste is nearly lost in the coffee—I used dark-roasted arábica from Figaro, a local coffee chain, prepared in a Bialetti. Still pretty good but I probably could have gotten similar results with just a regular hot cocoa mix, like the dark chocolate one from Swiss Miss. 

Allow me to say again that is not a bad product. In fact, it is a pretty good hot chocolate. It just doesn't deliver on being a salted caramel.


For sure there are salted caramel products out there. Some will be better than these three, some will be worse. Any recommendations?

Slashed!

On a recent trip to Binondo (aka Manila's Chinatown), this happened to one of my favorite bags:

I'm finding it hard to give this bag up. I used it nearly everyday for over a year and it never failed me. I loved it inside and out. I loved the two straps that gave me the option to carry it on my shoulder or cross-body. I loved the large hoops that accommodated all my various carabiners. I loved the dark blue textured cloth that always looked plush despite the hard use. I loved the purple inside lining with the one zippered pocket opposite another two unevenly sized unzipped ones. It held all my things and, in a way, kept my secrets. 

To the very end, it was loyal. Despite the gaping slash it suffered on the outside, less that 2 cm of the inner lining was cut and nothing of mine was stolen. Much of cutpurse's brute force must have spent itself on the felt that helped the bag keep its shape. Inspecting the cut, I can imagine the care and craftsmanship the good people at Coach put into the bag—
neatly trimmed edges and evenly stitched hems even in the parts unseen. They put their own brand of love into this bag too.  

So goodbye, dear friend. We've had some good times, you and I.