The Amazing World of the Undercover Chef

I seldom go to non-froogie related food events. My friend iya was invited to this by Spanky Enriquez, and I actually just tagged along.

All they told me was that chic-boy meant chicken and baboy. Okay, first of all, there I was in my semi-faker vegetarian mode in a food event dealing with liempo and chicken and thinking to myself—Hooha! Oh the hypocrisy of it all, but that’s not the point.

Having never been to this kind of thing in a long time(if not ever), I was initially really uneasy about the whole thing. I was with a group of people passionate about blogging. And my lazy ass was just totally feeling really, really, really, really irrelevant. haha! I don’t even think Spanky knew that I had a food blog, haha! But I got a kick getting introduced as the person who made toffees. haha! 🙂 Also, hello impetus to get back into writing!

So back to chic-boy. Chic-boy is this chicken-baboy place think the likes of yoohoo and mang inasal thrown in, but bigger, cleaner, better service and may I say, the food’s better.

Cost wise, i think it’s at par with Mang Inasal or Yoohoo. This ain’t fine dining, we’re talking the place you can sit your ass and try to out-eat that hangover that you know is coming after a night in the town. Yep, we’re talking about a 24 hour place in Jupiter, Makati ready to serve you good hot food at really, really, really, affordable prices.

When I arrived, they were taking pictures of Chic-boy’s chicken and liempo. I didn’t bring a camera, so I sat there and was really pretty apprehensive about taking pics using the camera phone when everyone had their dslrs and semi-pros out, but what hey! I got my friend iya to take pictures! haha! 🙂 If there’s a will, there’s a friend. haha!

Back to the food! First up–liempo! At the first bite I really did think it was salty. So being a consummate checker, I took a bite again, it was still salty to me. So I was actually apprehensive about this, i wanted to tell people I found it salty, but really, that could have gotten me thrown out (haha!), so i just shut up.

And then I realized… this stuff’s supposed to be eaten with rice!

SALTY LIEMPO + RICE + CONDIMENT = happyness!

or this equation would work too…

SALTY LIEMPO + BEER = happy lasing!

Actually come to think of it, it maybe because I purposely got parts of the liempo with the skin on them, maybe that was the salty part. hmm.. maybe I shall come back and try that again.

The liempo was cooked Cebu-style, meaning it was cooked in between layers of tanglad and other spices. Personally, i’ve always equated cebu-style lechon with tanglad and tamarind. I didn’t taste any tamarind with the liempo, but it sure was tasty! The pieces were crunchy, and the whole liempo order was purty big!

The chicken was yummy as well! It had the same salty finish as the liempo. I particularly enjoyed it with their lechon sauce.

That lechon sauce was good! If you’ve eaten in yoo-hoo bbq, i hate/abhor what they call a lechon sauce that they give you to eat with their chicken. Chic-boy’s was good though! It has a refreshing after mouthfeel to it, that just went really well with the chicken. You could still taste the liver, spices, and whatever thing that they add to it to make it refreshing.

If you’re asking for my opinion, I would basically eat the liempo and the chicken with vinegar and drizzle the lechon sauce on my rice. The former because I can eat anything with vinegar (including ice cream) and the latter, because I am barbaro that way.

After the specialty tasting, we were given the delightful words “order anything you want!”

Eureka!

Iya ordered sinigang na salmon belly and kangkong. I ordered lechon sisig and the talong. Iya looked pretty happy with what she ordered and I had a piece of salmon belly and some sinigang soup, and I agree for the price, it’s pretty good.

As for the lechon sisig, seriously only an idiot can mess up something with the words SISIG and LECHON, the good news is that chic-boy totally nailed this one.

If I wasn’t in my semi-faker but still dieting mode and/or if I was depressed, I would have not ordered the value meal, I’d have ordered the whole sizzling plate with two cups of rice! But alas! We are dieting so I ate all the lechon sisig and just… 1/2 of my rice! (Hehehe!)

And if I knew that chicken oil and garlic bits were available if you ask for it for free, i would have kissed my semi-faker-no eating rice mode goodbye! (But God is good and I only found out about it after I finished my meal! hehe!)

To end the meal, the choices were: leche flan and turon de leche.

I wasn’t really that excited about the leche flan. When I tasted their leche flan, it was good, but was more flan than leche, if you know what I mean (?), don’t get me wrong, it disappeared fast, it was good! Come to think of it, for that price, I think I’m lucky that I ate decent leche flan.

But I have to tell you, I got excited with the turon de leche. The selling point was that it was regular turon but dipped in condensed milk and then fried. I’ve never done that. Upon tasting though, initial impression was it was decent turon, but I didn’t really see any difference with the dipping it in condensed milk part. So thoughts: 1) being once involved in a lumpia cooking book, I loved how even and nicely wrapped the turon was (sue me, I find it difficult to wrap lumpia), 2) the condensed/leche part dipping sauce was the best part of the whole thing! and 3) I think they should serve the turon, and the sauce with ice cream.

All in all Chic-boy’s really a great place to eat in. I can see myself crawling (!) my way towards there at the wee hours of the morning to get my rice-lechon fix with all my drunken friends (haha!)! If I was a regular employee, i would eat there, if i was a callcenter agent, i would eat there, if I was a driver, i wouldn’t, i’d be scared because of all the cars in front (yes, there’s a pretty sizeable carpark in front), but really I should eat there too!

The truth is most chic-boys would really just break your heart.
Kumain na lang tayo sa chic-boy’s, heart will be intact, not to mention it won’t break our wallet.