On a vacation in the Philippines, my cousins and I went to the beautiful San Fabian Beach. It was almost dinner, and the drive home was 3 hours, so we checked Google Maps to find a nearby place to eat.
After a while, we found a nearby shopping centre called SM. We checked if there were restaurants there, and there were. We drove for 5 minutes, finally arrived at the shopping centre, walked around for a while, and found the food court.
Our oldest cousin decided that we should check out some of the restaurants here. We went to four different restaurants, and I will tell you about them and why we couldn’t eat there. It turns out that trying new food is not so bad after all.
First, we went to KFC. Our oldest cousin asked for some suggestions, and my little sister suggested KFC. Since no one else could think of another restaurant, we headed straight to KFC. Luckily, we were able to find a seat for all of us. But when we checked what was on the menu, all the chicken was spicy. Half of us didn’t like spicy food. So we asked the lady at the counter if they could customise the chicken but she said no.
Since we were very disappointed that we couldn’t find any food in KFC, we sat there until one of our cousins had an idea. He suggested Greenwich. We kind of had no choice, so we just went along with it.
We walked all the way to the other side of the shopping centre to find where Greenwich was. Unfortunately, we couldn’t eat there again. It was full of people, and the biggest table was being cleaned. We even asked the cleaner if we could sit there, but they said no. We were unlucky that we couldn’t find a place to eat because we were already hungry. So, once again, everyone thought very hard.
Then we went to McDonald’s. Everyone was starving, so we walked as fast as we could. We thought we were lucky because we found a big table for everyone. We were so happy to finally find a place to eat. But little did we know that ordering would take longer than we expected. It turned out that the restaurant was packed, and they still had to do a lot of takeaway orders. They said our food would take 45 minutes to prepare, but we had to leave in one hour! We were so hungry, but we had nowhere to eat.
Finally, we went to Jollibee. We didn’t want to go there; we just had to because we had nowhere to eat. We couldn’t stand it anymore, so we just went in, found a seat, and waited for our turn to order. We didn’t think about what to order; we just wanted to eat. Our stomachs started grumbling as we got closer. But we realized something when it was almost our turn to order. We already had Jollibee two days in a row and are going to a Jollibee party the day after. We were so disappointed. Why was it so hard to find dinner!?
With nothing in our stomachs, we slowly returned to the food court where our parents ate. Surprisingly, they already finished their food. We haven’t tried any of the restaurants there, but it was really tempting to have some food from one. Our parents suggested trying Sizzling Plate.
Since we didn’t have many options, we just ordered whatever. We ordered what looked yummy to us and just waited for our food. We didn’t have to wait long for our food to be ready. We ate everything in five minutes as soon as we got our meal. Food has never tasted so good before! Looks like trying new things isn’t that bad after all.
We had quite the adventure that day. Looking through all those restaurants made me think about all the people who have to hunt for food. After all, it was a food hunt. It took us five tries to find a place to eat, and I’m just glad we could find some food. After that day, I always attended every meal, not even snack time. Next time, I won’t hesitate to try something new.
About the Author
Marianna is a 10-year-old Grade 5 student. Aside from reading & writing, she also loves swimming, singing, dancing, and just goofing around with her younger siblings. A lover of nature and animals, she wants to be a vet when she grows up.