So Cindy and I are at Elvie’s, a popular filipino restaurant in the East Village, last weekend. We ordered a delightful assortment of pork adobo, chicken in a coconut sauce, and a pork skewer. We only got one portion of rice because I’m cutting back and Cindy doesn’t eat much herself.
Our apparent deficit of rice was very disconcerting to the guy busing tables. Every time he passed by, he would say, "Hey, you need more rice!" or "Have some more rice, it’s free!" or "I’ll bring you some more rice." Each time we had to tell him that we were fine with our portion, which seemed to distress him further.
As I’ve said before, in Filipino the verb "to eat" really means "to eat rice." You can see by the typical plate of filipino food above what the proportion of rice to the rest of the meal is. So weaning myself down to less rice or even — gasp! — no rice has been a tough challenge. Still, two weeks in, I’m doing pretty good.
[Image from Flickr used under a CC sharealike license by AJ Gazmen Guccibear]