I (used to) Love Backyard BBQ

D'Mall, Boracay Island (Visayas)

Two years ago, I ate the most succulent delectable pork belly I have ever tasted. A few steps from the white powdery sands and clear blue water of Boracay, gorging myself on this gluttonous meal in this shack in paradise allowed me to experience nirvana for a brief moment. It was simply called “The Best Pork Belly” – and boy was it named appropriately! I vaguely remembered that it was grilled perfectly. I remembered that it was not lean, though not too fatty as well, just the way I like it. And I can somewhat recall that it was dressed with a mouth-watering sweet-spicy-tangy barbeque sauce.

Two years down the road and the taste has become vague to me. I knew that it was the best I ever had, I just don’t remember how it actually taste like.

A week ago, heaven gave me a chance to relive that feeling. I campaigned, quite easily, for our pack to eat lunch in that shack. On our first day, we went out of our way to have a table for five reserved for the following day. The waiter acknowledged our request. The feast was set. It was supposed to be epic!

Disappointing. My visit back to this place was a disaster. It was not due to the fact that I mistakenly ordered the wrong meal, “The Ultimate Belly”, a deep-fried (not grilled with barbeque sauce) pork belly dish, which perhaps due to my anticipation of my past experience, did not live up to my standards. The dish was not awful – it was just not nirvana. Although this turn of event disappointed me, what made this visit disastrous was the establishment’s dreadful concept of customer service.

A day after we placed our reservation, we went back to the grill salivating for what should be a great meal. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, our names were not listed in the list. They probably made a mistake, probably forgot to write our request down, but sh*t happens even to the most eloquent restaurants. What they, or one of their male waiters more particularly, did afterwards has left their establishment’s name tainted at least in our group’s mind.

The same waiter who got our reservation request not only denied the fact that he took our request the day before, he had the audacity to argue that he never had and will never make that kind of a mistake. The moron practically accused us, customers of their establishment, of being liars! It was noon time and the place was steaming hot, and we – I – had to muster all of my patience not to walk out of that infernal place. I was not going to make this jerk ruin my Boracay experience.

As his cherry on the top, he wrote down one of our orders wrong. It was funny that he verbally repeated our orders after we placed it (and yes, I listened to it carefully, word for word, and at that time he got them correctly), but the person behind the counter rang up the wrong order.

Two years ago I went inside this shack in paradise and left with a beaming smile and a round satisfied belly. Last week, I went out of that shack disappointed, knowing that I used to love Backyard BBQ.