Subdelicious

Fields Avenue, Pampanga

Subdelicious sounds like a really bad name for a restaurant. It sounds like the food is just this short of delicious. A totally unfair description of the food. Because the buffalo wings are really good. Something I always look forward to when we go to Pampanga. If we hear of anyone going to that area, we tell them to try out the wings. Even the locals did not know about it, and my husband has invited lots of them to the place. We were one of those happy consumers providing them free word of mouth advertising.

You can order the wings mild, regular, or spicy. Of course, we went for the spicy, which is tempered by the blue cheese cream dip. The restaurant is known more for its hoagies and submarine sandwiches, but I didn't care much about the Philly Cheese Steak Sub; not bad, but I prefer my beef rarer and sliced thicker.

It must be a happening place at night with the billiards and the jukebox. That lunchtime, though, there were just a few of us enjoying the place and the buffalo wings. We were on our last pieces... this after telling my husband that the 20-piece order was too much. And then, my husband accidentally dropped one onto the floor. And this is where the jukebox music suddenly jumps and screeches to a halt and the happy dream scene is over. Because seconds later a mouse runs from under my booth chair and grabs the piece of chicken. Of course, I let out a mini-scream, and just got as far away from that booth as possible. I tried not to make a scene and just waited for the bill to be paid. At this point, I was agonizing, thinking maybe I should just ignore the mickey sighting, and just give them a positive review because I really liked the food, and I didn't want to be nasty, I mean after all Ratatouille has opened the minds of people to rodents touching their fine cuisine. But the nightmare didn't end just then. The manager started asking, more like interrogating my husband about why I was taking pictures. Like this is the first time in history that people have taken pictures in restaurants. I don't want to bore you with the exchange, but I was trying to explain that I was promoting their restaurant so my friends would try them out, but she was mouthing all these obnoxious lines like, "We're all Filipinos here, okay. When QTV and GMA filmed here, they asked permission. We're not stupid; that is a professional camera." I really didn't, and still don't, understand what the fuss was about. It's not as if we can steal their secret recipes by taking photos. We were not doing anything wrong and this woman was blabbing on and on doing more damage to her restaurant than to us. In exasperation and disgust my husband mentioned the mouse, and this woman had the temerity to say with a straight face, "That's normal. All restaurants have rats." Okay, I'm trying not to get upset as I write this so I'll stop the happy reminiscing. Bottom line, I'm going to miss those wings because I'll never ever go to that place of substandard sanitation ever again. I'm not going to stop you from going, though. Just make sure that if you go, you don't drop any food on the floor, sit with your feet on the chair, and be ready with a mayor's permit if you want to take pictures.