Twenty-Eight, Pork On The Plate

If the night at Checkers wasn't enough to satisfy our pork cravings, the following night at El Cerdo did! As the Chief had already planned for last Saturday to celebrate our birthday, we celebrated mum's and our birthday with the family on Sunday instead. As it is, it seems that family celebrations are normally on Sunday...So dad somehow heard about El Cerdo, we thinks it was mum who'd told him about it as she'd been there before with her friends.

Got there, led to our table, and after a cursory glance at the menu dad got one of the Myanmarnese waiters to recommend dishes for the three of us. And that's how we ended up having a Cesar's Salad, potato wedges, mini-sausage (Farmer, Thuringer, German Pepper & Spicy Lyonner, not that we knew what each was when we ate 'em) platter, grill-roasted short pork ribs, and half a roasted suckling piglet (read: siew yoke).

Oh, and a Weihenstephan for ourself. Haven't had one since Bangkok last year.

In short, the peppery sausages were good, the ribs had excellent seasoning but lacked much meat (and for once we ate using our hands, and burned our fingers), the suckling piglet is siew yoke.

So it's sorta known that El Cerdo has this tradition of breaking plates after meals or something like that. Turns out that it's only applicable if you order the roasted suckling piglet. How does it go?

1. Order suckling pig.
2. Staff will tell you pig is so tender that it can be chopped using a plate.
3. Staff will ask for one of the diners to assist in chopping the pigl- pork dish. Chop-chop-chop.
4. After chopping the pork, staff introduces the plate-breaking tradition.
5. Staff will ask to choose between 'money' or 'relationship'.
6. The choice determines the way the plate is held before it is thrown into a bucket for luck.
7. Staff will stand opposite diner and throw plate for luck of the other choice for diner.
8. staff takes the dish back to the kitchen to slice up into bite-size pieces before serving.

So dad did the honours of chopping the pork and breaking the plate for money (since both mum and dad agreed that the relationship part is settled...). The suckling pig is whisked away, chopped up and brought back...

Only to have it facing us.

Already El Cerdo had lots and lots of pictures of cute piggies (take a look at their website!). Pigs actually can look very cute on photos, and that already didn't do much for our appetite, but to have half a pig look at you as you're eating it...

Pork. Must remind self that it is pork and no longer pig.

After mains dad surprised us both by having the staff come up with a birthday dessert cake, enthusiastically singing, "Happy Birthday to you, oink oink!"

They gave us two piggie toys as well as presents.

Given that dinner was just the three of us, naturally we all didn't finish the roast suckling piglet. Leftovers were packed in a nice paperbag meant for Monday's dinner.

We're certainly had one filling birthday babi bash!