JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

The chili pepper does not want to be your friend. It wants to hurt you so badly you turn it loose. Plants cannot bare teeth or run for the hills; they must protect themselves passively. Some are horribly bitter. Others, less forgiving, are poisonous. Capsaicin, the primary active ingredient in hot peppers, falls into the category of irritant, but that’s an insult to its power. (Chemical irritation, or chemical feel, is the third of the chemical senses, along with smell and taste.) Capsaicin in the eyes or airways is disabling to the extent that it is used as a nonlethal weapon—pepper spray. Bhut Jolokia grenades were developed several years ago by India’s Defence Research and Development Organization and used on protesters in Kashmir. (The grenades were shelved because the chili powder is prone to fungal rot.) Both the eyes and the airways are extremely sensitive, far more so than the skin or tongue. This is normally—outside of protests and riots—a good thing, because seeing and breathing are crucial to survival; the sensitivity of these organs and tissues motivates their owner to keep them safe.

Less immediate but no less excruciating are the effects on the digestive tract. As I’m about to see.

Read The Gut-Wrenching Science Behind the World’s Hottest Peppers by Mary Roach at Smithsonian.

Breakfast still-life by Pieter Claez

Instagramming Your Food May Signal Bigger Problem, Researcher Says.

Doing research on how Instagramming your food may signal a bigger problem is an even bigger problem.

And devoting space to an article about research on how Instagramming your food may signal a bigger problem is the biggest problem.

So there are people who feel compelled to share every detail of their daily lives as if the rest of the world gives a flying fig about their digestive systems. How does the media deal with this? By giving a flying fig. Try harder, people, you’ve got nothing.

That said, it is rude to delay meals by taking pictures of the food on the table. You can spend as much time as you want photographing your own food, but lay off our plate.

Whenever we meatatarians dine out, our token vegetable dish is either laing, adobong kangkong or gising-gising. Gising-gising is a dish of green beans, peppers, and ground pork in coconut milk—as the name says, it should be spicy enough to wake you up. We like the gising-gising at Recipes, at Bistro Remedios and Lorenzo’s Way. And at Via Mare, although these days we get the feeling Via Mare isn’t even trying anymore.

The other night we ordered gising-gising at Smoking Hot, a newish restaurant in Greenbelt 3. The chopped-up beans and peppers looked alike, so with each mouthful our friends felt like their tongues were being flayed. (We have the Bikolano gene so anghang has little effect on us.)

This reminded us of a fish stew we ate in Shanghai (the photo above). It was as if they had a serious peppercorn surplus and wanted to use as much as they could. The stew was delicious, and it made our pores weep in the dead of winter.

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Another restaurant chain in serious need of sprucing up is Dulcinea. We still like their churros and hot chocolate, but the pastries in the vitrine look like they’ve committed suicide. We’ve had eclairs, meringues and negritos (their politically-incorrect name for the chocolate beehive) with the consistency of fossils. Obviously they were several days old; if you dropped them on your feet they’d leave bruises.

Some weeks ago we ordered the lentejas and it tasted like someone had dropped a whole salt shaker in it.

The restaurants were renovated some years ago, but the interiors are dispiriting. It’s become the sort of place you go to when you feel like crap and don’t want anyone to see you. Dulcinea, we liked you. Wake up.

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Why do the newer restaurants have such terrible acoustics? You’re sitting two feet away from each other but you have to yell to make yourself heard. Meanwhile you can hear conversations from across the room among people you don’t know. Glass frontage plus hard, smooth surfaces and no insulation equals auditory chaos.

Last week we had dinner at Grace Park in One Rockwell, Makati. We thought it was a Korean restaurant; turns out it’s Margarita Fores’s new project (named after Grace Park, Caloocan). The menu is Cafe Bolang Sosyal (i.e. mahal), and the look is “Stuff unearthed from lola’s bodega”. We approve of unmatched tableware.

We ordered squash ribbon pasta with goat cheese, the fish of the day (apahap), and beef belly. Everything was delicious, but we had hoped for a greater variety in the menu. Okay, the place has just opened. Grace Park was packed on Tuesday night; there was a bit of a wait, but our very efficient waiter gave us updates on the estimated time of arrival of each dish. Afterwards we were served a slice of key lime pie, on the house.

The problem was the acoustics. It was like sitting inside a blender. It was so noisy, Raul was singing Bobby Darin’s version of Don’t Rain On My Parade at Raul volume, and we could barely hear him. Finally we moved to a table outside, where it was quieter. Another ten minutes inside and we would’ve had headaches.

Rating: Recommended, but bring ear plugs.

Or as much peace and quiet as one can find at a mall, assuming there’s no marching band on the premises. We like the casual, relaxed atmosphere at Brida’s cafe on the second floor of Power Plant Mall in Rockwell. It’s at the end of the hall, between Topshop and Smart, by the big windows. And beside The Spa, so it always smells nice.

We like sitting there with a book, a coffee, and Brida’s excellent pineapple upside down cake, or Tres Leches, or cheese roll.

Gigi the owner is frequently on hand to make recommendations. (Yes, this photo was taken on Ash Wednesday.) Our favorite lunch items are the chorizo pasta, the pulled pork sandwich, and the Brie, jam and fruit plate.

This cheesecake is intense.

We’ve always liked Mediterranean/Middle Eastern food so when we read a review of Combos Turkish Cafe and Bakery we put it on our to-try list. A hot and torpid Sunday afternoon was probably not the best time to dine there—it’s in the parking space of an apartment building. There’s no airconditioning.

The restaurant is charming, though, and there are plenty of electric fans. The meat is prepared on a grill on the side of the road. For starters we had hummus, which was excellent. Our main course was beef iskender—grilled meat on small squares of pita bread in a thin tomato sauce. Very tasty. One serving is good for two or three people.

Our sister had the beef shawarma, which looked like a soft taco with tomatoes. It was all right; we’re just not used to shawarma being soupy. Everything was swimming in the same thin tomato sauce.

For dessert we had baklava. We expected crunchy phyllo pastry with chopped nuts and honey; we got a soft, wet pastry with the consistency of mochi. It was delicious, though. We’d go back for the baklava and thick Turkish coffee; for the rest, maybe.

As the sign says “bakery” we asked the waiter where the baked goods were displayed. He said they didn’t have a counter, but we could order baguettes, Php35 each. The prices were a bit steep—Php500 for the beef iskender, Php300 for a shawarma, Php150 for two little squares of baklava, Php150 for an ice cream, Php75 for a coffee. True, Mediterranean/Middle Eastern food tends to be expensive, but their prices would probably have seemed more reasonable if we hadn’t spent the entire meal yearning for airconditioning.

Combos Turkish Cafe and Bakery is on Matilde Street in Poblacion, Makati. Coming from Rockwell Drive, turn right on Kalayaan Avenue then right again on the first corner (after Congo Grill).

Can anyone recommend a reasonably-priced Middle Eastern/Mediterranean restaurant? Besides Cafe Med at the mall, Hossein’s (expensive but reliable) and Behrouz (cheap but quality varies with location).

Egg pie! We haven’t had egg pie since the school cafeteria. When we spotted this at the supermarket we had to get it.

It tastes exactly as we remember: the slightly cloying flavor of custard encased in cardboard. We took a bite and remembered the small stationery store on the ground floor of our grade school building, where we went almost everyday to sniff erasers. And the chaos at the canteen at recess time, when hundreds of little girls would shout “Manang manang manang” at the beleaguered attendants behind the snack counters. And the ire of the teacher when we corrected her spelling of “yacht” and she tried to intimidate us by summoning the dictionary.

Other cut-rate madeleines: Hi-Ro, Hello, Mallows, Flat Tops, Curly Tops.

Actual madeleines are sold at Brasserie CiCou in Greenhills. Butch says there’s a Japanese bakery near Metropolitan Avenue Makati that makes madeleines, but they’re more Murakamian than Proustian.