Soggy, murdered vegetables, overcooked meat and greasy sauces - let's face it, the Filipino food served in the average restaurant here will never win any awards, or doctors' endorsements. Would you care for spaghetti slathered with syrupy, sweet tomato sauce topped with bright red, chopped hot dogs?
Don't bolt; I'm just starting on a long list of fatty, bland dishes.
But snacks ... well, now, that's another thing altogether. We have that pegged as an art form. The most important thing about snack time - merienda - is that it's a social occasion. Merienda tayo - 'let's do coffee' - is an invitation repeated millions of times a day in schools and offices. Merienda is the reason some foreigners claim Filipinos eat up to five times a day. That's a lie: seven or eight would be more like it.
We have merienda not only in the morning and afternoon, but we have early and late editions for each half of the day. Then, in the evening, it's off to dinner followed by drinks with the gang, where the beer washes down a variety of chichirya - salty snacks, such as sizzling shrimp and garlic, peppery-sweet dried anchovies and pork crackling.
Of course, like the rest of the world, Filipinos munch on imported crisps, cookies and chocolate bars. But we have an overpowering array of traditional snacks, or kakanin. I could sit here typing all the names I can recall (macapuno, ube, puto, biko, suman, turon) and I wouldn't run out. Of course, I'd probably get hungrier with each keystroke.
Setting aside the exotic stuff - crunchy fried locusts, duck embryo and roasted chicken feet - I'd still have an army of delicacies wheeling tantalisingly over my head as I tried feebly to lunge at them. Pastilyas, a luscious, milk-based wrapped sweet; bibingka, a fluffy rice cake served with shavings of dried coconut; lumpia, a crispy, fried roll stuffed with shrimp, pork and bean sprouts, dipped in a sauce made of vinegar, crushed garlic and chillies.