For your taste only

In order to sell burgers, pizza, doughnuts and even Chinese take-out these days, manufacturers of these food products have to resort to heavy TV advertising. Surely, this wasn’t the case 20 or 30 years ago – before the arrival of McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Greenwich, Dunkin’ Donuts, Mr. Donut, Chowking and other fast food chains.

The Filipino population two or three decades ago, however, still had their share of burgers, pizza, doughnuts and dimsum in spite of the absence of these giant fast food outlets. Let’s start, for instance, with burgers.

McDonald’s didn’t get to the Philippines until late 1981 when it opened its first Philippine franchise in Morayta. Prior to that, Filipinos who could afford to travel had to fly to the US or Hong Kong to have a taste of these McDonald’s burgers. Less affluent Filipinos had to make do with local burgers sold in canteens, restaurants and even in hole-in-the-wall eateries. (Filipinos obviously had always been big consumers of humburgers.)

There was a time, in fact, when these burgers didn’t come in the now very familiar buns, but were instead sandwiched between two slices of toasted pan Americano cut in triangular shapes. (Maybe this is still how they serve it in some local restaurants. I have no way of telling since a hamburger is the last thing I will order in a restaurant – what with all these burger joints around us today.)

In our home back then, we had a funny way of eating hamburgers – with rice. Yes, it was served as a viand dipped in ketchup. When we ate out, I remember that it would still be hamburger for me – hamburger steak, smothered in gravy and with French fries on the side, which I would soak in ketchup.

Strangely enough, it was ketchup – not burgers – that was being heavily advertised on television in the late ’60s and ’70s. On the high end then were Del Monte and Libby’s – both tomato ketchups. Most Filipinos then, however, were more inclined toward the cheaper banana ketchup (it was less sour and less assaulting to the stomach – so they said) and the popular brands then were Mafran and Papa Catsup.

Before pizza manufacturers resorted to TV advertising, pizza was never called just "pizza" it was always "pizza pie" – complete with the "pie." There were also some Filipinos – and these were those in high positions – who would even mispronounce it and say "pisa pie." But with pizza being sold on television these days, pizza (but not pizza pie) has become part of our every day language.

In those days before pizza was marketed on TV, Filipinos were already aware of pizza – but still through television. There was this one Popeye episode, you see, where the cartoon sailorman and his nemesis, Brutus, were shown making pizza dough which they were comically throwing up into the air. When my Mom, therefore, started to make pizza in her kitchen (this was only for family consumption), I thought that she did it wrong because she didn’t make her pizza dough the way Popeye and Brutus did in the cartoon series. (And now that I think about it, maybe it was also Wimpy in the Popeye cartoon series that influence our taste for hamburgers.)

Outside our home, I still tried other pizzas – usually in kiosks in popular supermarkets. My favorite was the one sold in Cherry Foodarama in Mandaluyong. It only had tomato sauce and cheese on it, but on a child’s palate, it tasted heavenly. One time, Susan Roces (this was a few years after she had married) happened to pass by the pizza kiosk and the lady vendor called out to her, "Miss Roces, bili naman kayo ng pizza pie." Although obviously in a rush, Susan – ever so courteous – smiled sweetly and said, "Sa ibang araw na lang, ha." To me, that was a big lesson on politeness. She was able to say no, but without being offensive.

But going back to pizza talk, I understand that Shakey’s had long been standing in its original Katipunan bunch long before it aggressively marketed itself on TV. Before Shakey’s became popular, however, the leading pizza pie brand was 3M and its most popular outlet was in Cubao – near Quezon Theater.

No, 3M didn’t offer a wide selection of toppings (unlike Shakey’s and Pizza Hut today). The regular 3M pizza was just tomato sauce and cheese. The special 3M pizza had tomato sauce, cheese – plus a few slices of spiced ham cut into squares as topping.

The doughnuts of long ago – starting with those sold (along with mais and mongo con hielo) in the Japanese refreshment parlors before the war – were even less elaborate. Unlike the fancy doughnuts now available in Dunkin’ Donuts and Mr. Donut, the doughnuts then were just flour mixture formed into round dough with a hole in the middle (for this, you used the cap of cooking oil bottle – the long neck), deep fried in lard and rolled in sugar. (This type of doughnut is still available in most neighborhood bakeries.)

In the mid-’70s, a bakeshop in Claro Recto, started selling doughnuts glazed with chocolate and sprinkled with ground peanuts. Unfortunately, I no longer recall the name of the bakeshop that sold this type of doughnuts – maybe because it didn’t bother to advertise on television.

Among the Chinese fast food outlets today, it’s only Chowking that is aggressive when it comes to TV advertising. Back in the old days, it was impractical for Chinese eateries to spend money on advertising (print and radio) because these establishments didn’t have branches and franchises anyway. There was only one Panciteria Moderna and one Panciteria Antigua – both of which were in Plaza Sta. Cruz.

Competition, however, was fierces among Chinese restaurateurs back then because every other restaurant in town was Chinese. But the establishments with the best food and excellent service (fast and efficient) still got the most number of customers.

And that was how these restaurants maintained its steady stream of clients – through pure merit and not through the power and influence of advertising. Their food products were their best advertisements.

(Next: Products of old that relied heavily and advertising.)