Saturday morning while on our way home from buying groceries at the Gaisano Fiesta Mall we dropped by the stall of Sr Pedro to buy roasted chicken. There were few chicken still turning brown on the charcoal roaster but the fellow manning the stall handed me a prepared styrobox of chopped chicken.
On returning to the tricycle, my wife told me about the story of the driver concerning some bad practice of the guys working at the stall. They would chop the chicken in an enclosed glass partition which was meant to prevent the chopped particles and oil to splatter all over the place. But somehow the glass partition has been covered with something opaque so that one could not really see how the chicken was chopped up.
This is where the guys do their clever trade. When they push the chopped up parts to the styrobox they drop some pieces to the side of the thick and wide chopping board. Either they sell the collected parts or have them for their meals.
I sort of defended the guys. I made a big speech about how a business would lose its customers by these tricks. And Sr Pedro is already a successful business with many stalls in Cebu.
During lunch, I picked out the wings which are usually the parts I eat otherwise I am mostly on a fish diet. I finished eating first and while I was on the phone talking to my brother, my wife called out and showed me two butts (isol in Cebuano) of the chicken and she was firm that she could not find the breast parts (pecho for Cebuanos).
I hope the management of Sr Pedro is not complicit with this malpractice. We have come to like the taste of Sr Pedro roasted chicken. Andok's chicken is just too pricey.
So we have decided that next time we'll just buy but roasted chicken straight from the roaster and chop it up ourselves.
