24s
Warren Ellis found Richard Kadrey’s sentiments about restaurants which are open 24 hours:
The best restaurants in any town are the ones that are open 24 hours. It doesn’t matter if the restaurant is clean or attractive, if the food is good or even edible. What makes 24-hour places special is that whatever is going on inside them at any moment–eating, crashing from a night high and wild, a secret lovers’ rendezvous, a drug deal, a traveler getting her bearings in a new town– will continue to go on there until the place burns down or goes out of business.
These places sell time, not food. All 24-hour restaurants are social neutral zones, outside the normal boundaries of time and space, which exist for most of us in neatly packaged eight-hour segments: one for sleep, one for work and one for life. These diners are the alien bases in our midst. Area 51 with curly fries and a Coke.
Manila - or at least the Metro Manila I know- doesn’t have too many 24 hour restaurants. There used to be Inka Cafe at the V.Luna Ext at Sikatuna which was near our place but it closed down years ago. It’s a cozy little place where my friends and I would meet for cheap grub, coffee and the occasional beer. The books on the shelves, which were for sale, gave that distinct feeling that we were just hanging out in someone’s sala. We’d go there after catching the last screening of a movie and every decent food place was closed. Musicians from 70s Bistro and Freedom Bar would go there after their gigs just to mellow out. Brought a girl there once. She loved the place. I’ve been hanging out with her since.
Another 24 hour place was Roxy’s Diner over at Malate. While I wasn’t a frequent visitor, I remember it distinctly because it topped our Milkshake Test: stick a straw right in the middle of the milkshake and see how long it takes before it goes it hits the rim of the glass. Some places cheat by putting scoops of ice cream and swishing it about with a spoon, with bothering to put it in a blender. You’ll get an aneurism trying to suck up ice cream through a plastic straw. Others would have way too much milk. It’s more like a milk float than a milkshake. Roxy’s milkshakes are perfect and were served in generous proportions. They had these tall glasses for the shake but they’d leave the shaker on the table because all the ingredients to get that consistency couldn’t possible fill one glass-full. Roxy’s gone now and I’m still looking for the perfect vanilla shake in Metro Manila.
Filling Station is also a diner which, last I visited, was open 24 hours. They’re over at the red light area of Makati Ave. Unlike Roxy’s well-lit interiors, Filling Station is too dark for my taste. It’s a bit uncomfortable eating bulalo at 3 am with colored lights and 70s disco music in the background. The milkshakes weren’t memorable either.
There are only a handful of Goodahs! left. My usual haunts were the ones at Greenhills, Shaw Boulevard and Katipunan. Those are gone too. There’s two still standing that I know of: one near Malacanang, and the other at Libis. But these are strictly pang-tanggal ng amats - a place to get hot food after a night of drinking alcohol.
Other such places are the Whistle Stops at Tomas Morato, Shangri-La Ortigas and Libis. The food’s a bit pricey though and they’re too dark to while away the hours till sunrise. I have distinct memories for each one of them though, which does not involve the specialties of the house. They’re usually of late night, after event-debriefings, drive-by relationship counselling, and sometimes used as a rendezvous point for a tactical retreat from a night in the town before deciding to head out again.
While the time spent at Whistle Stop might be for just an hour or two, we did spend an inordinate amount of time at Mister Donut Greenhills. There, we thought up of hare-brained schemes at 3am, just be silly and be a bother to the med students who are buried in their books and running on caffeine. We’d stay there until the elderly people start going into the store from their morning jog and give us the strange looks. Mister Donut is well-lit and they had nice tables and they did eventually, got rid of the giant rat but there’s a limited items on the menu.
I love 24 hour places. There’s a strange feeling of comfort knowing you can just drive out to these places and just sit there with little or no people around you to intrude on your thoughts - and be assured that goto or arroz caldo is just a hand wave away.
***
BTW, did you know the 680 Home Appliances near Makati Ave is 24 hours (last I checked)? So if you need a toaster at 3am, you know where to go.
***
I made the mistake of doing a half-hearted marathon on the second season dvds of 24 last weekend. I’m in 12 hours…and I’m dying to find out how it turns out.
9 Comments, Comment or Ping
dakila
There’s this diner at Makati Avenue that we used to frequent when we were in high school. I think its name was Arnold’s. I love their nachos with salsa. Too bad it closed down. I still visit the area, but it’s North Park now.
Oct 30th, 2003
nic
mismo! i always say one of the best indicators of whether a city is cool or not are the places you eat in at 4 in the morning.
grey’s papaya dogs are alright, kebabs in london or amsterdam are pretty much staple early morning fares too, but it’s tough to beat goodah in bf, or even better, the tapsilog in donggalo (tapang kabayo daw, but i don’t think so).
funny how it’s so normal to us, but the thought of eating garlic fried rice with beef after a long night gives shudders to everybody else.
Oct 31st, 2003
lailani
i’ve been driving past goodah for almost three years now and i’m always always perplexed by their sign. what does it mean when they say “open 25 hours”? can someone please enlighten me. i’m just curious.
Oct 31st, 2003
xkg
u know that place in makati ave that sells tapsilog etc? quick stomach or big stomach something. i always thought they were open 24 hrs. the aristocrat in malate is 24 hrs din yata.
i miss the goodah over at west ave. we used to go there or kowloon after shoots out of town and nothing else is open.
whistle stops are also nice. but their beer is too pricey and it’s the only thing i could think of eating at 4 am. that and bibingka.
Oct 31st, 2003
Budjette
You can also go to the various permutations of HAP CHANG / HAF CHANG / HAPH CHANG are almost open 24 hours.
Then there are the Caltext Star-marts, but not really great as a place to hang-out.
Nov 1st, 2003
Budjette
OLD SWISS INN is your other alternative.
Open 24 hours. And they’ve got great chocolate fondue. YUMMM! Chocolate!!!
Nov 2nd, 2003
Shiloah
Funny you should blog about this. I was just telling my friends, at 4am of course, how much I love my Wendy’s cheese baked potato fix at that hour.
Nov 2nd, 2003
Markmomukhamo
Ah Wendy’s! We’ve had countless nights fueled by cheese and cheese potato. Too bad Wendy’s Kamias closed down.
Goodah came out when Jimmy Santos was making his name doing his carabo English schtick. Tito, Vic and Joey even made a movie set in Goodah. They had these signs which said ‘Matsala’ (Salamat in reverse of course) along with the ‘Open 25 Hours’ sign. During that time the idea of a food chain open for 24 hours was unheard of (before the explosion of 7-11s and Mini-Stops). I guess they needed to drive home the point that they were open all hours of the day.
Nov 3rd, 2003
JR Rodriguez IV
Too bad I found this news group article thingy just now, almost a year after it was originally posted.
Though it’s been that long, I still want to enlighten whosoever may still drop by and read this.
GoodAh was established March 14 1983, and we haven’t changed our concept in over 20 years. Last 2003 we started to create a new concept, and during this 21st year we have aleady implemented it.
We opened a NEW WEST restaurant just a few feet away from the old one. This time it’s air conditioned and with more and better food.
We also opened a NEW LIBIS restaurant just behind the CitiBank building. The Libis restaurant has a bigger outdoor area and the tables were designed to accommodate small group meetings.
Our coffee is free. We have bottomless drinks. We’re still as cheap as ever.
We’ve added beer, though some stores sells beer only at night, but Libis has it 25 hours a day.
My father coined all the funny terms like “Matsala sa yoi”, Pagkaing good for everyall”, “barbie q hahn”, “what’s your step”, “open 25 hours”, even the words “Tapsi, Tosi, Longsi, Adsi, and all the …si foods you see today in almost every restaurant was originally from us. We also implemented the NO MSG policy that again a lot of restaurants copies these days.
Open 25 Hours means that we work one hour more than any other 24 hour restaurant in the world. Other 24 hour restaurants close down during some holidays, but we don’t. Actually, sometimes we do close if maintenance work is needed, but we rarely stay closed for over 12 hours a year.
As mentioned in newspapers like Business Week, we’re starting to franchise. You can grab a free CitiGuide from your nearest StarBucks if you want to know all our addresses, but here they are anyway:
Libis QC - Behind CitiBank
West Ave - Stone’s throw away from the old branch
EDSA Central - Beside Mercury Drug in the bus stop, soon in the new EDSA Central new mall
Sucat - across McDo President Ave
Soon to open:
Somewhere near Malacanang
Somewhere in Pampanga
Somewhere in Bataan
Somewhere in Cebu
etc
Please feel free to comment in this site which I will check once in a while from now on, or e-mail me at goodahfoodhouse@hotmail.com
Regards to all our loyal fans, and thank you.
Yours truly,
JR Rodriguez IV
President - GoodAh!!! Foodhouse Corporation
Sep 2nd, 2004
Reply to “24s”