FatGirls Restaurant: Love of Food in the Time of a Pandemic
FatGirls Restaurant is one of the products of quarantine. We opened our business on the 2nd week of April in the first declared Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) in Bacolod due to COVID. But for a long time now, I have been thinking of opening up a dine-in resto just beside our house. But then COVID happened and everything stopped for everyone. I wish I could have prepared for it like these guys in Present Day Preppers.
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First, why FatGirls?
Because I am one FATGIRL. And being a FatGirl does not only mean literally fat. But it may also mean that you love food, that you are a foodie, or you are someone who appreciates food. Include body positivity, abundance, and love.
A few of my closest friends from my previous company sent me a lot of help when I started. They too are FatGirls at heart. So we then decided to include in our logo: FatGirls… sa isip, sa salita at sa gawa. Because in us all, lives a little FatGirl inside.
New Logo by Edbon Sevilleno
Start with One
I decided to do just one dish. My personal all-time favorite and my family’s most-requested food, our Creamy Spaghetti with hotdogs, mushrooms, and herbed meatballs. Filipinos love our sweet and spicy, hotdog-loaded spaghetti. So the Sevillenos have our own version.
I was sure that people would love it because we have always shared this with neighbors and friends and have served this at our parties and family occasions. We have always received good reviews and some close friends even request it. Hahaha… Yes, party guests can request food at my house.
Read this DNX News Exchange food review of our Creamy Spaghetti: Easy-on-the-Pocket Reviews: Food treats for the Hungry You
Call me Funny and Unique
As soon as we started delivering our food to customers, people kept on giving us very positive feedback on our sole offer which is the Creamy Spag. Most of our menu items have the quirkiest names, if not silly. To mention a few are Echozzz Beef Nachos, Soyshalan Soy Garlic Chicken with Kimchi Rice, ChoriNOTChori Burger with Chorva Sauce, and the most-loved Samosas sang Chizmozzzas.
Read this DNX News Exchange food review of our Soyshalan Soy Garlic Chicken with Kimchi Rice: Easy on the Pocket Reviews: Good eats for Home Quarantine
ChoriNOTChori Burgers: How It Came To Be
I have to tell you the story about our Chori Burgers. For a while now, I have been missing the Chori Burgers of Boracay. Since we can’t always be on that island, so I guess we have to make our own. So we started sourcing out the bread and our sausage. But our supplier couldn’t give us stocks because they have to close down during the ECQ. So we just decided we are going to make our own patties.
And the sauce… we wanted to have a different kind of sauce that would counter the sweetness of the hamonado-style chorizo patty. Since we cannot reveal what is in the sauce, we decided to call it the CHORVA sauce. Here are our ChoriNOTChori Burgers and even if you haven’t gone to Boracay, you can still enjoy it with our other menu items.
By the way, shoutout to the many Grab Express and Maxim drivers we have booked for our customers. Thank you for helping us with our business!
Basta Pasta, Sadya!
Then, we started rolling out our other dishes one by one. We made sure that we get to do R&D with our food first and the cost per servings. Of course, we have to taste it again and again (this I am always excited to do!).
We have now four kinds of pasta dishes: Creamy Spag, Romantico Italiano Penne Pasta, Pasta Carbonara, and Quarantinni Pasta.
Sizes for Creamy Spaghetti,
Romantico Italiano Penne Pasta,
Pasta Carbonara, and Quarantinni Pasta:
Small Box good for 2-4 pax = Php 200
Big Box good for 5-8 pax = Php 300
White Tray good for 10-12pax = Php 600
Party Tray good for 12-16 pax = Php 1200
Family Favorites
Most of the dishes we offer were already tested and proven by my family for all the years that we have served them. Our Tatay’s aunt Renee Familiaran or we fondly call “Nanay Laon” was the one who taught me to cook. She makes the best Dinuguan and we wanted to feature this dish. We did our Dinuguan in different versions to cater to people’s preferences.
Dinuguan comes in 2 versions. The all-pork belly version is what we call the Belly Dancing Dinuguan. And my favorite version is the gout-inducing and uric acid-threatening All-Out Dinuguan with all the pork entrails, pork belly, liver, and all the lovely innards you can find.
Another family favorite is my sister’s dessert. She has been making this for the past 30 years and I always request this from here during our family occasions or holidays.
We call it Brazos ni Inday. My sister is lovingly called Inday Lyn by everyone. Basta sa mga Ilonggo, Inday means respected in the family. Our Inday is well-respected along with her layers of Brazos de Mercedes.
Watch this video of Sunstar featuring us:
Other Dishes that We Love
I personally love learning how to cook other kinds of food from other countries. Aside from the Samosas, we also have Japchae with a Heart, our spin on the Korean Glass Noodles that even non-Koreans love. We thought of doing it without any kind of meat so that everyone can enjoy it.
Sizes for Japchae:
Small Box good for 2-4 pax = Php 200
Big Box good for 5-8 pax = Php 400
White Tray good for 10-12 = Php pax 800
Party Tray good for 15-20 pax = Php 1200
For special days, we offer our version of the infamous Thai spicy sour dish Tom Yum and we call it TOM YUM XTRA. Ours is Tom Yum with extra balls of different shapes and a few more extras. We love it with coconut milk and we used our own fresh leaves of our Kaffir Lime tree. The fresh shrimps, galangal, cilantro, lemongrass, ginger, and the other ingredients were locally sourced.
I love Thai food and I have learned to cook them from scratch. Also, we tried recreating the Bangkok street food experience and included a bunch of fresh long bean sprouts, slices of lime, and Prik Nam Pla (fish sauce and chopped chilis).
We also made it just a little bit spicy so we can say we kinda Filipinized this dish. We were told that even little kids like our version. That, we are super happy to know that our food gets to be enjoyed by the whole family!
Coming from a big family, cooking for them on a regular lunch always feel like catering for a party of fifty. So this business was not a shock to the system but just another day in the Sevilleno kitchen.
Happy eating and always eat with the FatGirls!
XXXXXXXXL,
The FatGoddess
Update: You can find FATGIRLS Food at Artfull Gallery starting March 2021.
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UPDATED MENU as of January 2023
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