A Taste of My Other Homeland in My Homeland That’s Far Away from Home

I honestly didn’t put much thought into what I wanted to do while I was out in California. I had a preference for the Zoo, Mexico, and beach (score—I did all three) but there was one place I definitely had to visit and that was Jollibee.
2003; Lee, Emanuel, and me.

I’ve mentioned it before but when I was in the Philippines, I visited this chain a lot. You see, I had some pretty bad experiences with trying to eat some of the local dishes at the cafeterias on campus there. I mean, you can only choke down squid rings that you thought were onion rings for only so long. So yes, I frequented the westernized eateries quite a bit. Jollibee is like the Filipino version of McDonald's only—they’ve got McDonald's there too but they’ve got their own little twists on the menu.

Anyways, Jollibee is here in the United States but since I live in the Midwest, it would be quite a drive to get to the nearest one which I believe in New York. Unlike Harold and Kumar, I’m not going to put that much effort into obtaining some burger. But since I was heading to California, I was going make and effort there so that I could get a little mouthful of a yum burger—something that I haven’t tasted for years now.

Stacey isn't feeling the special sauce

So we make it there and I was wondering if I made a mistake in asking Kraig and Stacey to take me there. I thought that it would be reasonably filled with a variety people. Nope—all Filipino. We were being stared at and it was a little weird. Feeling like a foreigner in your own country is a weird! The menu wasn’t as varied as I remembered it but I was only intending to get a yum burger anyways. Stacey asked me about the palabok and I encouraged her to try it as well as the halo-halo. We all ended up with the yum burger combo which, as I thought it would, tasted just like it did back in the Phils. I was happy.