Maginhawa Chronicles: Caution Hot! Spicy Noodle House

A taste of the world in one place. 

You may have missed half of your college life in UP if you haven't been to Maginhawa, Quezon City, where it offers a variety of Filipino, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and even Persian cuisine. And so, my good friend Kat and I have decided that we would explore every corner of Maginhawa before we graduate from UP. 

Kat recommended that we start with Caution Hot! Spicy Noodle House in Teachers' Village, because they offer authentic spicy Chinese noodles which comes in different flavors and degree of hotness.

The menu is very simplified and easy to understand: you will first choose your toppings--all-veggie, pork, beef or seafood. Then you get to choose your broth: Szechuan, which is a southwestern Chinese spicy broth made with Szechuan peppercorn and chili pepper; Asam Laksa, which is a Penang-style sour and spicy fish-paste broth; and Classic, which is a non-spicy savory pork bone broth.

For the next step, you get to choose what type of noodles you would like to match with your toppings and broth: either Wheat Noodles, which are firm regular-sized noodles or Egg Noo

dles, which are thin wheat-and-egg noodles with the vibrant flavor of egg.

Finally, you can choose the degree of hotness for your spicy noodles: it was amusing that they likened it with the "degree burn". For starters, you can choose first-degree burn and for those who are in for a challenge of their palette, there is the Ultimate Burn.

Kat and I ordered Pork-Asam Laksa-Wheat Noodles with a first degree burn spicy noodles. I am not a very big fan of spicy food, but I enjoyed eating the noodles, which was garnished with onions cucumber strips, pineapple bits, greens and boiled egg. You could see the level of hotness of the noodles by just looking at its bright red-colored soup. The pork was tender and juicy at the same time and the pineapple bits neutralized the spiciness of the noodles. 

For my "fire extinguisher", I ordered Soya (P45/ P70-unlimited). It was refreshing and it really calmed down my burning mouth that I almost sip my Soya every after I ate the noodles. I just couldn't imagine if we ordered the Ultimate Burn level of spiciness of the Chinese noodles.

We also ordered Kuchay-Pork Dumplings (5 pcs-P60/ 10pcs- P110), which are made of minced Chinese chives and pork. It is quite different from the regular dumplings because there were more Chineses chives mixed with the pork in the dumpling. 

Finally, to cool down our burning faces from the Spicy noodles, we ordered their signature dessert Bao Bing (P95), which is a classic Chinese shaved ice dessert, topped with fig and grass jelly, fruits like lychee, drizzled with condensed milk, and topped with a generous scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was truly a refreshing way to end the meal. I particularly enjoyed the fig and grass jelly along with the lychee fruit bits which gave the right sweetness of the dessert. And the shaved ice was truly authentic.

Caution Hot! Spicy Noodle House is a must-try especially to those who loves spicy food and noodles. I will definitely come back for more and try their other noodle combos. 

You may like their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/cautionhotmnl?fref=ts.

The Single Swan Feather

MOVIE REVIEW: THE JOY LUCK CLUB


We ask ourselves," What the hell's wrong with mom?" But then we don't really want to know the answer.


This anger and complete misunderstanding may not be our fault to some extent; it must be this sensitive puberty stage, where emotions violently clash and erupt in what we think are the most lethal moments of our life.


But at the end of the day, we stil have to face the question and discover the truth, because after all, accepting mom as she is, is accepting who we really are.

The Joy Luck  Club

Like June Woo in The Joy Luck Club (from the best-selling novel by Amy Tan), I also wondered why my mom pushed me too hard in my studies. She became too drunk from others' compliments whenever I get an award and a P20-gold-painted medal. I, on the other hand, became too drunk with studying so hard I wasn't able to distinguish whether mom was still pushing me or it already became a habit of mine to make a fool of myself.


I would remember how she nailed me to my seat, saying I couldn't play outside unless I memorize the computer keys. But then I would also remember how she made a twist and thrilled us (me and my sister) with a game about the letters of the alphabet. Whoever won got a horde of Pochi candies.


Looking back at her stories when she was younger, I realized she, too, got huge hopes for me. She had bitterly recalled how her mom (my lola) compared her to her beautiful cousin because the latter got better grades. She would always tell us how she wondered why lola always seemed so angry at her and used to scold her everytime.

But then she had bragged to lola what she had become, with daughters always at the top of their class. Then she would degrade her beautiful cousin to us who didn't even graduate from college back then.


I realized that's how she was brought up, and I could never blame her for that. I believe she never expects anything more from me; she only hopes I would live a life better than hers.

Sometimes I would also wonder how powerful she could be as a mother. It became hard for me to ask permission to buy something or go out with friends. I always thought she would never agree or would scold me first. Just like Waverly, I've become too uneasy around mom and even once had this obsession of finally making her happy and proud of me in any way I could, even if it seemed physically impossible.


But then it must be the cruelty of her childhood she was not able to cut off from herself that she unconsciously passed it on to us. All that comparison issue, lola's unexplained hostility towards her, and the responsibility she shouldered as an eldest sister. So then I couldn't blame her all the more.


Somehow there were also some things she passed on to us on purpose. When she was younger, she also received ocassional physical punishments spelled with only one word: dos-por-dos. She has told us she promised herself not to inflict the same pain to us. Like Auntie Ying-Ying, although there were things she was not able to give to her daughter, she was ready at any cost to cut any curse her ancestry had etched so her own family would not be the same again.

I liked An-Mei's story the most, how her mom killed her own self and "gave up her own weak spirit just so she could give her daughter a stronger one." Her story also made me realize I should know my worth by now. I am very like my mom after all: we both want to cut the curse and pass the opposite trait to the next generation, just like what An-Mei tried to teach to her tragedy-stricken daughter Lena.


It must be a bitter truth that every generation experiences the same fate, the same mistakes, the same curse, the same judgements. Watching The Joy Luck Club, I realized, what I am today is not my mom's fault; it's lola's fault, and not even her; it's her mom's fault, and her mother's mother...


The blame goes on, but it shouldn't matter. What should matter is any daughter's belief that her mom had also given her the single swan feather: it may look worthless, but it comes from afar, and with it carries all her good intentions...


I love you mom.