No doubt you have noticed how raw ingredients for a meal have become so expensive.
In the barangay where I live, fresh goods like meat, fish, chicken and vegetables are bordering on prohibitive.
“Some people!” was Uncle Gustave’s expletive one morning after coming home from the street level village market. Some people call this lean-to market type as talipapa (Tagalog for wet market, mainly fish) or taboan (Cebuano, a moveable variety market that’s set up weekly). But the village market is a fixed set-up, so I call it street level or village market.
I let out a long ha-ha-ha on this one as it’s a no brainer, really. Call it what you will. The fact remains that food ingredients have become what celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay daubed Burger Brasserie’s iconic, uh, sandwich “disgustingly expensive” but “bloody delicious.”
My uncle was unhappy.
“Some people have become market vampires! They draw blood from our anemic pockets. They are like bloodless opportunists,” he said in delicious mixed metaphors.
My Aunt Tita Blitte joined us. “IKR, Tavie,” she said in “millennialese.”
She continued. “Tomatoes the size of ping pong balls or smaller are five for P20, and one-fourth kilo of pumpkin is P25.”
I heard from cousin Dona, too: At Cebu city’s aorta of fresh goods, Carbon Market, tamarong (big-eyed scad) for example ranges between P160 and P220 depending on fish size. Fishmongers in the village have to add P50 to the kilo to cover for the fare and porter fees.
A gamut of reasons were given by the hapless vendors: the pandemic, stormy days or if not that, the moon is full (“fish are afraid to come out,” one vendor said), or red tide (whenever it blooms), fuel price hike, or if “none of the above” applies, supplies came in late.
So how come Gordon Ramsay factors in this panicky story?
My cousin Amie showed me the online news about GR recently eating a $777 burger served at Burger Brasserie in Vegas. The American Wagyu patty was decked with foie gras, American goat cheese, lobster meat, pancetta and arugula. It was spiked with 100-year-old balsamic vinegar, and crowned with a bottle of Dom Perignon Champagne.
That’s roughly over P35K per burger, at only P50 to a dollar.
“That’s sacrilege,” said Peetong, Dona’s husband.
Uncle Gustave said, “But it’s privilege if you have the hardware, although I agree with you.”
My aunt said: “Don’t say that something expensive is a relative thing, please. We have to learn to discern when something is over the top.”
I bit into my P2 pan de sal at breakfast that day, and remembered a lousy joke: “Life is relative, if you have rich relatives who are generous.”