GETTING OVER THE FACT THAT KAM’S ROAST HAS NO ROAST GOOSE

doing a good one, because I had it there once when it had just opened, but they’ve never managed to reproduce the feat.)

Kam’s has a lechon with crisp skin which is as good as you’d get in any decent Chinese restaurant’s appetizer platter.

The ordinary char siu was rock hard and dry—more desiccated than the asado from Cosmos that my mom has unearthed from her freezer after six months.

Whether or not you should run to try it depends on your attitude towards traffic, rapacious Pasig traffic enforcers attempting to fleece you for nudging a few inches out of the lane, and the general mind-numbingness of going to Megamall.

I would advise you to walk, rather than run, and at a stately pace at that. Or perhaps wait until you’re at Megamall for some errand or other (I like going to the Book Sale in the basement, opposite the Bio Research where they sell live worms and P10,000 pet chickens), and have a bowl of rice topped with a few slices, and perhaps a side order of century egg and vegetables.

There was an ad in a magazine from a while back that showed two Mercedes Benzes (if I remember correctly) parked outside a hole-in-thewall restaurant with two dignified elderly men eating at stools, with the caption: “Everything has changed. Except the friendship and the roast goose.”

I am unlikely to own a Mercedes anytime soon, and the waiters at Kam’s seem to be skeptical about the likelihood of the restaurant actually serving roast goose any time soon.

At least we have our friendships, which are what makes living in this country bearable.