Every sin has a name, and this one's called popcorn.

(note: I'm starting to believe that this blog is my mental floss. Or my very own "yosi" equivalent. It is breaktime here in the office, and I have approximately 15 minutes to write down stuff (aka useless, uninteresting mind-farts).


I've always had a fascination for popcorn. I remember how my now-senile Lola Pacing used to cook kettle corn for me during afternoons in place of real merienda (and she figured out early that the best way to shut up a giggly, chatty, inquisitive three year-old is to shove buckets of salty, buttery goodness she called papkern into the latter's mouth), and when she migrated to the states, she sent me balikbayan boxes filled with cartons of microwavable Orville Redenbacher's "Gourmet" Popcorn because, as she said, she can't be here to make merienda for me (aww). There was Jolly Time and ACE (also Popperoo, local ba yun?) but nothing compares to my darling Orville.

Lola's fault: why I got into my popcorn fixation

However, my puppy love Orville just does not cut it anymore, so I went in search of the best popcorn around the metro. I first found:

Freshly-popped. Sweet and Salty. Minimal grease. Very cheap. Rating: 3/5.

Holy Kettle Corn came at the time when I was too tamad to microwave (meron pa bang mas tatamad sa "too tamad to microwave???") Orville and Lola Pacing turned...... too senile.....to remember my home address for those boxes upon boxes of state-side popcorn. Holy Chettle Chorn is definitely better than Goldilocks' and Oishi Caramel Popcorn and Mr. Naglalako-ng-Popcorn-sa-kalsada's pink and green and blue popcorn.

By the time I was old enough to date a-storm, I had been having this every movie date:

Every sin comes with a name, and this one's White Cheddar Cheese plus three scoops of butter. Price: P45/small bag. This is going to clog your arteries. Finger-lickin' good, I rate this... 3/5 (a tad too salty, a tad too greasy [duh, pa-add ka ba naman ng isang stick ng butter eh]) but makes you smile like an idiot 4 seconds into your first munch!).

Then I started having this, because it was Taters' "healthier" cousin:

Can't find a picture of their popcorn. However, they serve the same flavors, though they've been claiming they're Neo-Vegan. They pop their kernels with olive oil (or so they claim). Same price, but their Greenbelt counter is easy on the eye (with that cool color pallette [ah so ano to, interior design critique blog?! gumaganyan ka pa sheenalogy ha!]) so I like buying my popcorn here than Taters. Verdict: same as Taters, 3/5

I tried MuscleBeach (because they're an international brand and they were in Charlie's Angels, [beach scene, Cameron, Lucy, and Drew disguised themselves as Muscle Beach store tenders while scoping out Demi's character]) but it tasted like kanto pop-corn (Verdict: 2/5), so when I had my first bucket of this,:

I felt like crying. There are whole walnuts inside and each pop is round, like a ball, and coated with white-chocolate goodness. It tasted like a solid, crunchy version of a Starbucks frappe (which flavor, my tongue cannot identify, basta). But then its too sweet and you get "umay" after a while. But it's too expensive, like maybe more than P150, and often times more expensive than a movie ticket. Verdict: 4/5.

One day, there's a shop that opened at the stall where Mag:Net used to stand, Chicago Popcorn Shops. It has a funny typograph as a sign for the stall that contrasts with the pretty italics of the shiny, beautiful, oh-so-lusty red and copper canisters stacked on the counters (sorry I have a thing for canisters, specifically TINS).:

...I was completely won over. Well, I know their Chicago Mix tastes like ordinary caramel popcorn mixed with ordinary cheddar cheese popcorn, but the chocolate-drizzled ones were swoon-worthy (or OA lang talaga ako). At P180 per mini-tin, you get to keep the tin and you can have it refilled for P110. Yep, expensive. But they make the effort to individually coat each caramel pop-corn with choco-drizzle, so for me that's okay (ambabaw ng dahilan!). Plus, this brand makes you feel that eating pop-corn is so "haute", and taking home a piece of luxury everyday is possible (ANO DAW?!) Verdict:4/5.

So, walang 5/5? Wala. The search for a better brand of my sin goes on.

note: none of the photos I used are from my archives. I Google-searched each pop-corn brand and voila, these pics came up and I had them posted here.