Yummy Eats 2013

Who would say no to free food? Last Saturday, I put my diet aside (again) and went crazy going around and getting a taste of goodies from over 50 food concessionaires at Yummy Magazine’s most anticipated eating and cooking fair – Yummy Eats!

At 10am - 6PM at the NBC Tent at The Fort, I ate my heart out going around and having samples of delicious grub both new and familiar to me. Everything was there, from pasta, to drinks, lots of meat, and of course desserts - always the best part! I. LOVE. DESSERTS. The whole thing felt like one huge buffet and I had a tough time deciding how and where I was going to start!

By the way, you may notice that my pictures are more professionally shot than usual. This is because the foodie buddy I had with me on this palatable adventure was Emil Jaranilla - an amazing and very talented photographer who's also a good friend of mine. This dude is such a natural, he has been featured by Solar News as a Photographer of the Week (check out the video here), and his shots will soon be coming out on a UK Magazine! Leave me a message if you want to know how to get in touch with him!

Let me tell you first about my favorites:

Pepita’s Kitchen: Native Lechon de Leche with International Stuffing

Talk about bringing Filipino specialties to the world! Have a taste of their native Filipino lechon stuffed with Spanish, French, German, and even Japanese specialties! I had a taste of what I believe was the original Pinoy Lechon and boy, both lechon and rice was so good I actually got more samples than I should (ssshhh! Don’t tell!). Both lechon and rice tasted great, and every sample I got had the right crisp of roasted pork skin. Yummy!

M.A.D. MEATS

The Bacon Specialist offers true, dry cured, home smoked bacon. Actually the only thing that was running on my mind was "Free bacon!". I initially thought they were offering ham because the slices were thicker than the usual bacon I know, but I didn’t mind. It was good just as bacon should be.

Alchemy by Meryl

Okay to be honest, I didn’t give much attention to the lovely macarons at Alchemy’s display at first. I’ve tasted lots of French Macarons before and in general, they’re too sweet for my taste. However when tried one piece from Alchemy, I felt a strange confusion because I LOVED IT! This tasted better than the other macarons I’ve tried. The filling was chilled like soft ice cream and the whole thing was soft and chewy instead of the usual, crumbling varieties. This is now my standard for good Macarons.

GK Enchanted Farms

Who would’ve thought you can make a great-tasting drink from Kamote Leaves? The nice lady who gave us samples asked me try it first then guess the flavors. I had no idea what it was but all I knew was it was goooooood. And yep, GK here stands for Gawad Kalinga. What would make me love this more?

Hunt’s

The great thing about Hunt’s’ booth was they featured a new recipe every two hours, so you can really get a good grasp at how you can experiment with Hunt’s. On our first try we had Kiddie Rice and Tofu with Beans and on our second visit we had nuggets and a Spanish-Filipino fusion pasta. Loved it!

Mochiko

Aside from those cute kitties decorating Mochiko’s wall, their enthusiastic attendants brought them several notches up my approval scale. They introduced us to Mochiko’s newest flavors – Blueberry and Strawberry Cheesecakes. We had a generous sampling of both flavors and both were equally good! I can describe them as “Sweet Ice-cream Dumplings”.

Cupcake Lab

Who doesn’t love cupcakes? What more, cupcakes that have been carefully “engineered” to your taste? I would have wanted to know if these cupcakes tasted as good as they looked but they only gave us samples of small chocolate ones. They tasted great and it was what made me crave for the other flavors in the first place. But I couldn’t try them. Why torture me with my weakness? Why? Tell me whyyyy???

Here is the rest of the great food that made it to my list of favorties. I've actually met some of them before at Best Food Forward:

Eat My GF! Must tries are their burgers and virgin chips

Gold Leaf Concentrated Teas

Rub Ribs & BBQ. Click here for the more detailed review

Aeta Organics. Sorry about this but I can't decide which one was Yummier - IYKWIM

Negra Paella by Pio's Paella

Please don't mind my messy hair. It's also quite stressful with all these goodies around you, you know?!
Blue Torque's handcrafted desserts. Specially homemade