Fashion & Food: Friends or Foes?

(There are other things we can do with our forks! Image from Silver Fork Bracelets)


Unlike current popular belief which dictates that to be fashionable you should be stick thin & subsist on champagne & liquified vegetables, you CAN love fashion & love food—just look at the fashion capitals of France & Italy where the couture is as renowned as the cuisine. In fact, if you dig a little deeper, you will find that fashion and food have a lot more in common than previously thought.

First & foremost, the most important thing about both fashion and food is GOOD TASTE. Without it, neither one can exist.

Next is recognizing the importance of learning to MIX & MATCH the right ingredients in the right amounts. Balance is key.

Visual PRESENTATION is necessary whether you're showing a fashion collection or presenting a food tasting menu.

And last but not least, keeping things FRESH is paramount--both fashion & food stink when they're stale.

Both fashion & food are part of what satisfy our appetite for that wondrous thing called life. So let's live a little and learn to enjoy both equally! :)

Tet Offensive

While the rest of the Sino-influenced world ushers in the Year of the Rabbit, the Vietnamese Zodiac insists that it's the Year of the Cat (cue hippie Al Stewart song). I found this out on Friday, when the ambassador of Vietnam held a dinner celebrating Tết, or the lunar new year, at the Sheraton. Being half-Viet and fully unable to speak the language, I spent the night tweeting away politically incorrect observations like how the wine sucked and there were no gwapos in the room. That was a PNoy reference, by the way. Now I truly love Vietnamese food, I've spent the last three years searching for a comparable banh mi to the one from Hanco's, a little shop in Brooklyn I lived next to that was my go-to place whenever I was hungover or too lazy to cook, which meant all the time. The buffet dinner at this night of cats and caterwauling (you know what I mean if you've ever heard Vietnamese music) was heavy on the mystery meatloaf, which Viets are masters of. This one tray had an interesting array of gelatinous, layered slices, and despite my better judgment I sampled a piece, thinking it was some kind of French-inspired terrine. It was inedibly chewy and didn't taste like anything, but its texture was disturbing enough for my tongue to project bilious qualities it probably didn't possess. My mom hazarded a guess that it was made of tripe, offal, congealed blood and other pork by-products that are normally heavily disguised in other ethnic dishes. I think I'm over my Anthony Bourdain Nasty Bits phase where I'll try anything street. Just because an exotic foreign culture fries up a rat doesn't make it anything more than a fried rat.

My Girl

Being a single mom is hard, but sometimes, your 6 year old will do things to make you laugh and stop taking life so damn seriously.

Like dive into the fountain in Darling Harbour after she asked if she could dip her toes in.

So des ne! (The art of turning Japanese-ah!)

Japanese food is a true favorite of mine, and I daresay of many foodie filipinos. There is an abundance of Jap restaurants in the metropolis but there is a great concentration it seems in the areas near Makati Cinema Square. Little Tokyo is a little compound full of Yakiniku treats and the like. but today found me crossing through Little Tokyo and out into the Pasong Tamo area for always busy Kikufuji.
What's on the menu? A whole lot, and thankfully, with pictures to boot. It seems whoever put the actual menu together thought, a picture paints a thousand sushis. So, des, ka.
I'm not sure if I picked the business lunch meal, or the lunch set of the day but it came with a whole bunch of appetizers, which, if I was on one of my extreme diets again would have been enough for me.
There was a bit of sashimi, some tempura fish, cold veggie salad and even a warm veggie mix...and that was just for starters!
What was my dish of choice? Chirashi Don:

It even came with a generous helping of miso soup and I had hot Japanese tea to help ease them through my digestive system. Dessert was either iced coffee or fresh fruit. I went for the fruit which was a cleverly sliced banana, I should have taken a picture but it wasn't that photogenic. It was extremely sweet though and took away the lingering aftertaste of fish and soy sauce from my mouth.

I'm thinking that this would be a wonderful place to bring my Brunchie Brunch, we could get one of the more private sitting areas where we could sit on little cushions in traditional Jap style and chat away while we poke fun at each other and, knowing the way some our conversations begin to deteriorate into deviancy (is that even a word) probably make sexual innuendos pertaining to our meals. Sayonara for now everyone!

Have a Happy Meal

Photo by Tippi

The late American journalist John Gunther once said, “All happiness depends on a leisurely breakfast.”

I don’t know about ‘all’ happiness per se, but I do admit that a fantastic brunch can most times translate to a very good day. And good days and good times is the basis of our (this group of wannabe bloggers’) friendship. Having worked together in a magazine for two years, we have gotten to know each other well and have transitioned from colleagues to friends.

We love food (each in our own little ways). We come from different backgrounds and have diverse experiences. We all have definitive and distinct characters and creative voices. (Most are editors. One is a designer. One is a creative director. One is into nuni-nuni. One is a hipster-writer. One is a Bohemian flower child with a kid of her own. Some are panthers. Some are peacocks. Some are dolphins. I’m an Owl. Hopefully, I’ll get to explain all of these to you one of these days.) And we enjoy each other's company especially over a really good meal. That’s why we decided to meet up for Saturday brunch at least once a month to catch up on each other and try out different haunts in the metro.

So we thought, we have so much to talk about and so much to share, why not share it with more people? Which lead to this here online journal. Here, we will talk about topics that we would normally share with each other over our monthly gatherings (and more).

Basically, this is our brunch in blog form. We hope you like it as much we enjoy our monthly happy meals.