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“I love appetizers the best because they only hint at what’s coming after. It gives you something to look forward to, although many times it says nothing about what flavors and smells and textures will come after. It says only that there is an after, there is something unrevealed and hidden that is yet to come. That’s why I love appetizers.”

“What if the food’s lousy?” I ask.

“Well, that’s the good thing about appetizers. You never really know.”

“Hmm…” I tried to unconvincingly agree.

“And you never really care.”

“I don’t?”

“It doesn’t matter, actually. Your appetizer’s not about that. While you’re eating your appetizers you think, ‘what does my appetizer tell me about my dinner? will I find tastes, glimpses, hints of my dinner in my appetizer?’

“Okay.”

“Or will my appetizer add something to my main dish, or will it take away something? Is this meal going to be a train slowly building up momentum and speed, accelerating, ready to hit me with incredible, impactful dessert? Or is this great appetizer a let down, this meal a fall, a spiraling down into the ground? Does this appetizer tell me something, or does it tell me nothing at all? For me, that is my appetizer’s reward; it’s when my appetizer throws me into all these wonderful wonderings and silent seeking. In the end when I finish my appetizer, I wait for the rest of my meal in heightened anticipation.”

“You get all this from an appetizer?” I asked him evenly.

“From food,” he chuckles. “Food. Food has personality, it has character.”

“Haha, so what does sisig tell you?”

“What a pig looks like in mosaic. Oh what big ears Ms Piggy has.”

Haha.

“But don’t you know what your getting because you ordered the appetizer with the main dish? Isn’t this entire anticipation too contrived?”

“Yes, I do know what I’m getting. I did order my food with my appetizer. But contrived? Not at all. That’s what’s amazing with food. My anticipation is valid, it’s real. Food – they’re like people. They can be weird, they can be completely strange and unfamiliar. You think you know your sisig (I smile), but it can surprise you. It can strike you with a sour aftertaste, or its crunchy bits play with your tongue and imagination. Or it can be unbelievably bland, an insult to all sisig everywhere. Or hard, like it was keeping something in. Or it can grow on you.

“A pig’s face grow on you?”

Haha.

“It’s taste. You don’t like something and then it slowly grows on you.”

Pause.

“You never really know.”

“Don’t you pay for predictability? Don’t you like your food predictable?” I ask him.

“Yes, sometimes. Admittedly predictability has its place in my stomach. I will always love what ginataan does to me. If people have chocolate to awaken their senses, I have my ginataan. And it has to be prepared just right.”

“Ginataan, huh?”

“Yup. And it has to be prepared just right.”

And we grow quiet, and we go to a special place inside ourselves where we are alone with our most favorite meal and we laugh inside because it feels so good.

“But a nice turn of events,” he beams, “is welcome. It’s a sweet taste where I wasn’t expecting one. That’s the best. Or a pleasant mix of food you didn’t expect to blend well, like our sisig and chicken ala king. Amazing. Sometimes there’s no way to tell (I like these the best) because even when you try to orchestrate a gastronomic failure, say like mayonnaise and bagoong, it surprises you and becomes the best dip you’ve tasted. I like the surprise food gives me. And it all begins with the appetizer.”

“With the appetizer, huh?”

“With the appetizer,” he says. He smiles self-contentedly.

Some silence. I take a sip of water. I take a last bite of our appetizer. And I begin to wonder how my dinner is going to be like. I feel the beginnings of real excitement, the quickening of anticipation in my stomach.

“So, ‘musta trabaho?”

And we fall back into conversation, waiting expectantly, wondering, waiting, waiting for our meal to arrive.

March 26, 2006