Chicken Ati-atihan, Ormoc

Okay folks I was done with Sabin, went back to my room at Sugarland Suites, had shower and… I was starving hehe! So I went down to the second floor restaurant for dinner. Argh! Everything was kinda expensive. Why? Because theirs is an a la carte restaurant, and all items in the menu are either good for two or three! Even if I may have been able to afford anything, I still didn’t consider it practical since I was sure there’d be left-overs. And am not the kind who’d take left-overs to my room so I can binge on them the following day. Never, especially that my room had no fridge!

So, I went out walking the city streets again, this time in search for dinner! I did have an idea on where to find them as I have seen some restaurants and fastfoods during the day, plus, I saw some recommendations on the web. First up I went to a place named Beeho’s. Fine but I wondered why there not any(more) diners. It was just 8:39PM. So ‘not this’ I told myself. Nearby is another called Pardi’s and it looked like a cross between a Goodah and a school canteen. Clean and fast. However, most folks were not eating but drinking red horse.

I turned back and saw Chicken Ati-atihan! So I said ‘ok, I can try that one’. I have tried branches of this restaurant in many places like Tubigon, Tagbilaran, Bayawan, Kalibo, CDO. etc., All are like inconsistent attempts to copy Jo’s Chicken Inato. But I was running out of choices as the stomach was some kind of already mounting a ‘revolution’ hehe! So chicken Ati-atihan it was this time. Come what may!

Hmm, before I could even cross the street, Chicken Ati-atihan already made me smile. What with a big tarpaulin signage on its frontage announcing it was under “the” new management! In my mind I said “talagang meron pang “the” ha?! And everything in this branch looked like it was the swankiest of all Chicken Ati-atihan restaurants I have been to! Clean, nice decor, nice lights, attentive crews with crisp-looking uniforms. Even the diners looked a bit of a cut from above all I have seen (especially that branch in Tubigon hehe)!

The diners? Ahm well, am not really sure if it was just co-incidence but most of them were Caucasian foreigners married to or had Filipina girlfriends. Some were even just foreigners all of them in a table. I wondered. Is this their haunt when in Ormoc? Or maybe just because the place was new? Anyway, I was happy to have been in this place as it confirmed I was observing my #2 ‘principle’ when traveling, and that is “where budget conscious travelers dine, you are sure its a good value for money”!

Well, there was an oldie in blue checkered shirt and a wide-brimmed cowboy hat who seemed one bottle bit too drunk hehe. Pasaway! He kept drawing my attention instead of concentrating on my Tinola (isda) and listening to the band. A band? Well yes, an acoustics group dishing out songs as people dined. And yes, I was in a Chicken Ati-atihan Branch! See these: