Barbecued Bird Behinds on a Stick: Adventures in Filipino Eating
by Rod Garcia

A few years ago, at my relatives' home in Quezon City lived a mynah bird named Francis. Perched in his cage by the corner of the veranda, he would surprise a visitor from behind with a solicitous "Kumain ka na? (Have you eaten?)" A guest would turn around to behold him in all his black-feathered glory - skinny angular face, cartoon-thin sticks for legs, head cocked as if waiting for a reply. I would test Francis every now and again by saying, "Hindi pa (No, not yet)." But you would never hear the bird say, "Sori ka na lang. (Well, tough.)"

It is the vaunted Filipino hospitality, in that home and in just about every Filipino household, which makes a response of that nature unthinkable, unspeakable, not subject to mimic. Even in bad economic times and with meager finances, a Filipino host will find a way to say, "Please have some thing to eat, we insist…" Not hypocrisy, but as they say, "hospitality to a fault."

In the Filipino culture, nothing less than the offer of food marks the standard salutation from host to guest. But acceptance of the offer involves a complicated protocol. Filipino etiquette functions as meaningful ceremony, a mannered dance, a thrust and parry, in which the host offers and the guest demurs in order to deflect the appearance of unseemly eagerness. Busog pa ako. Sige na, tapos na ako. Linguistic translation yields: It's alright. Thank you, I've eaten. But culturally decoded it means, I have not eaten; ask me again, be persistent and I'll finally relent because I'm actually starving and would like nothing less than to gorge myself on whatever's on your table, the entire contents of your fridge and even this yappy bird (in garlic sauce on a slow fire).

Not every offer and acceptance is quite so laced with graceful fineries. My brother-in-law Rico - all 265 pounds of him and one well acquainted with Philippine cuisine within our family - is a notorious proponent and agitator for pet food. No, not food for - but of - a pet, albeit half in jest. It's the other half not quite in jest (but rather ingest) that would worry a westerner. Driving us from the airport in Manila, Rico and my otherwise American born-and-bred pre-teen son would engage in barbaric repartee: Rico's first interrogative would be, "What pet would you like to eat today?" And Rocky would say something like, "What's left to eat?"

Rocky was nakikisakay, riding along with the joke. Sometimes, there is no joke, but a huge cultural disconnect. A few years ago, an uncle in a farm in Tarlac hosted a family reunion. One of his guests was his Filipino - American granddaughter who came from Michigan. The young girl's upbringing was one deeply steeped in upper class, mid-west sensibilities; and clueless about such rough-and-ready Filipino "good eats" as pulutan (finger food to go with alcoholic drinks, in its variations, forms and sources), dinuguan and balut.

And so it was that in the afternoon, her lolo was pulling along a piglet on one side and a calf on the other, with their handlers behind them. The lolo asked the thirteen year old in broken English, "What you like?" And in response to such an open-ended question she gladly designated the piglet as her new best friend, and she meant it, literally. She even gave a name for her rotund little porker, and over the course of the afternoon toward dusk, pig and child got to know each other as intimately as was appropriate. She spoke no Tagalog, and the piglet no Human (although, I'm told, some rudimentary Kapampangan).

Still, the girl could communicate with the piglet, much more than she could relate to her local cousins. She thought the piglet responded well to the name she gave him and she appreciated that he displayed human-like sensitivity to her emotions and the confidences she shared. She was going through the usual teenage world-ending crises would-be boy-friends, zits, mean teachers and curfews. Here was a girth-blest buddy who could provide unconditional love, and she began to consider the practical questions of where to put him on their return to Michigan, how to introduce him to her friends, how to appease their potentially jealous dog, and other reasonably anticipated practicalities.

By dusk, the teenybopper brought Ivan (yes, Ivan) back to the helper who, smiling, put a noose around the animal and led him away, presumably for safe-keeping through the night. They feasted on poultry at dinner and started talking about what to have for breakfast. In the morning she sprung up, bounced and bounded her way to the shed where the piglet was busy devouring unusually large quantities of leftovers. And she thought what they would be able to feed such a glutton in their Michigan estate.

The whole family took a day trip to Manila and by evening was happy to be back from all the traffic, in time for the great family reunion, with a culinary bounty waiting for all. She bolted out of the car to the shed to greet her piglet and of course, as you might know, the piglet was not there but in the main house resting - on the dinner table, surrounded by food, having morphed into succulent lechon.

If only he was reduced to unrecognizable cutlets! But to have him sitting on a large plate-his whole, tanned, crisp visage staring out longingly with an apple in his mouth - this was too much for the girl. She bawled and sobbed and bawled again and accused her lolo of murder, "You butchered Ivan, you heartless ogre!"

The child took quite a while to recover, and upon returning to the US, popped her zits, reunited with her feckless boyfriend, lobbied for more time on the mall, and became a Vegan.

I'm told pigs are even smarter than dogs, and yet as a Filipino, I've had no second thoughts having my fill of lechon, not to mention the less sentient palaka and the banana-Q (which is not self-aware at all, at least not the dust-filled ones sold on many a side street of Pasig).

I've had my unguarded guilt-filled moments daydreaming about "exotic" Filipino fare. However, I was merely curious when I had the Ilocano "jumping" salad - essentially raw, live prawn: You bite the head off then dip the rest of the shrimp in suka then swallow it whole, its wriggling appendages tickling down your esophagus on its way to your gut.

But I've never had chicken asses on a stick. Someone espied a sign in Quezon City a few years ago that announced the availability of those impaled morsels of rooster rump (of course the claim is of chicken), and I am made to understand they are sold still. I wonder if the delectable derrieres are treated somewhat akin to the Cebuano-style lechon, requiring no extrinsic sauce. Or is the skin similar to the crispiness in lechon manok? Or is the cooking similar to baked turkey tails --which offer even bigger mass for consumption?

I muse about edible bird-behinds or more traditional fare as kare-kare, adobo, tinola, because I share a trait with most other "normal" Filipinos: We love to eat and think of eating, we love to eat together, and we love to offer each other food, sometimes even when the animal is still alive (inter-species relations notwithstanding). And in the bad times, many of us make-do with bagoong and manggang hilaw, and even, actually, chicken ass. Could it be that some of our more amusing culinary inventions have less to do with style and choice than with survival and resourcefulness? Nothing is wasted. And could it be that our culinary hospitality springs from a collective, unconscious defiance of poverty and hunger? A smile to a guest and an in-your-face bad-finger to prevalent deprivation?

This brings me back to Francis the mynah bird. He passed on a few years ago, but was quickly replaced by another mynah bird, who did not quite have that ready-to-please tone to his query, Kumain ka na? but rather a tone welling up from deep inside - brave, gallant and proud. I think the dollar-peso exchange rate at that time was more than 60-to-1, a threat of coup attempt had driven many investors away, and the price of a kaban of rice was ridiculous.

Rod Garcia

Note:
This version appeared in the Philippine American Foundation for Charities souvenir program. I had to change the title and tone down some parts to appease certain sensibilities, but it survives in the book "Taste Of Home" basically as is.

Peace,
Rod