Day 74: Salo Salo

THERE ARE NO LIGHT FOODS IN THE PHILLIPPINES

Like a number of nations whose histories have been written in part by colonization, the Philippines was left with a cuisine permanently altered, with food that pulls not just from its neighborly Malay base but also its now hereditary Spanish roots. So while Salo Salo Grill’s menu at first reads as foreign as any set before you, you’ll inevitably dig down to a more familiar level, to dishes like arroz la paella and longanisa, an island interpretation of chorizo.

Unlike some Asian cuisines renowned for their impeccable lightness, Filipino food hits with heavy flavors, a cuisine as fond of the fryer as it is bottles of thick dipping sauces. And Salo Salo Grill’s lechon sa kawali serves up both of those. The dish is a decadent pleasure: pan-roasted pork as crisp as that pig from memories past but also somehow still impossibly tender—you can halve the pieces of pork with just about no effort. They’re accompanied too by Mang Tomas lechon sauce—a ubiquitous liver-based commodity that’s poured onto just about everything. On the pork, it’s another layer of flavor to an already great dish.

Kare kare, a popular peanut-based stew, is another one of Salo Salo Grill’s heavier options, with its pool of gravy-like sauce ending up somewhere between peanut butter and a Thai curry. The dish keeps its protein heavy, too, as hunks of oxtails soak up the sauce with ease. But if you don’t read the menu carefully, you’ll miss another ingredient—tripe. The flimsy triangles of stomach lining hide almost too well in the kare kare, but give the pieces a quick poke and they’ll jiggle with an uncomfortable ease, the way a kind of limp fungus would. As texture and taste go, the tripe doesn’t add much to the dish’s uneven flavors—the oxtails carry the kare kare.

On the relatively lighter side of Salo Salo Grill’s heavy menu is the sizzling bangus, a fried milkfish filet served crackling under a few slices of onion and a practically boiling tamarind gravy. The fish is cooked perfectly and strikes an expert balance—a kind of filling fix that amazingly won’t weigh you down.

Still, Salo Salo Grill isn’t the kind of place you go for an easy meal. Here, just finishing most orders takes a nearly endless effort and returns an ultimately swollen stomach. The restaurant recalls what I most fondly remember about all those feasts years ago: plates and platters spilling out food in a constant cycle, never content to let any guest go a single minute without food.

Starting Weight: 230
Current Weight: 210

Workout: None rest day
Meals: I went to salo salo. That is all.

ITS OVER 9000!