By Rex Catubig

 

THEY begin sprouting around the market area towards sundown–the pale gold sunrays shooting through the smoke of charcoal grills.

Past the billowing smoke of barbeque pork, isao, and other exotic chicken parts, one encounters the delightful sight of a pancake stand with perfectly round pancakes cooking on a makeshift griddle–which is no more than an inverted talyasi set upon a gas stove. Talk about Pinoy ingenuity.

And as one walks into a field of ukay-ukay and baratillo garments, one is drawn to the sizzle of frying in a sea of bubbling oil. It’s the ever popular sliced pig liver that’s frying. And keeping it company are a mouth-watering spread of lumpia, tokneneng, chicken feet, the all-time national street food–fishball, and surprise–chicken skin in plastic cups!

I am almost tempted to try a cup at P10 but I got wary about the hygiene of the preparation.

I am assured the oil used is bought in tubs and gallons in stores and used frying oil is properly disposed of back where they live. But I could not shake off my dread about the food stuff themselves.

But to appease my paranoia, I picture the throng of a motley assortment of people queuing up and gobbling these food with gusto. And I remind myself that I haven’t watched any news on Balitang Amianan about anybody getting sick or getting food poisoned from them.

Maybe, it’s just a matter of time and chutzpah before I join the bandwagon of street food habitues.

In the meantime, I wish the CHO of Dr Ophie, would organize a Food Police Patrol, a POSO-like sanitary inspectors team who will not only monitor the food being sold, but to orient the hawkers on proper food handling. One of the itinerant food hawkers informed me that in Sta Barbara, there are daily inspectors who monitor the area food vendors occupy and inspect the food they sell.

That might be a pipe dream for now as the city struggles with the unconscionable and irrational juggernaut of the lawmakers who are doing all their might to hinder the passage of the city budget—which is tantamount to denying an ailing patient a much-needed blood transfusion.

So while waiting for this to happen, let us just be grateful for these street food hawkers, who even when food and cooking cost keeps skyrocketing, manage to quell the rumbling stomach of the heavily burdened marginalized folks with tasty and affordable gourmet nourishment and the much needed protein fix.

Never mind that street food is at the loathed pinnacle of the food pyramid. What matters is it’s food that makes them happy and forget that they cannot sauté the food they crave because they cannot afford a head of onion.

It’s the food of salvation.

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