In one of the most exciting polls we ran last week, we asked our audience what the best food in internet shops is. I’m pretty sure we’ve spent our fair share of time in these establishments in our earlier years, and we definitely have our go-to meriendas during the breaks in our gaming sessions.
Best Food In Internet Shops – The Choices and Results
There are many food choices out there, and our team here at VRSUS has narrowed it down to a few popular options that we drew from our own time as former gaming addicts who frequented these internet shops: Pancit Canton, 3-in-1 Coffee, Tinapay Na May Burger, and Chichirya.
The results showed a clear winner among these four, but we might as well run through each of them for just the nostalgia and why they’re such great gaming foods.
Best Food In Internet Shops – Chichirya
Let’s start with chichirya, or chips. They come in many flavors and brands, are available nearly everywhere, and can fit any kind of budget, but they somehow only garnered a measly 5% of the votes.
Why, you ask? Well, it has something to do with the consumption process.
Let’s dive deep into it. You see, before even consuming the chips, you actually have to open it. We all have our own techniques on how to tear open a bag of chips, sure, but lord knows how hard it is to open the wrong side of the bag, which we can’t tell consistently because somehow, some way, WE ALWAYS END UP GRABBING THE WRONG SIDE. The only tried-and-true solution, of course, is to brute-force the whole thing.
See what happened there? That’s a couple of precious gaming minutes lost.
So we’ve opened the bag, right? What’s next? We actually have to use BOTH HANDS to eat it. So not only does chichirya lessen our game time, it doesn’t allow us to play in the first place. And then, of course, the flavoring powder gets stuck in our fingers. You can lick it off along with the dirt and grime of the keyboard that you’ve been playing on, sure, but good luck not getting banned at the internet shop once they learned you painted their WASD keys in Clover Chips orange.
Not all is lost, though. Chichiryas are great snacks when you are not playing, making them the ideal food for backseat gamers who are mostly all talk but no skill.
Best Food In Internet Shops – Tinapay Na May Burger
Next up is the Tinapay Na May Burger, or simply bread and burger. Now, our foreign readers out there might be wondering why we don’t just call this a burger straight up. I mean, it technically looks like a burger, it’s served like a burger, and it even might taste like a burger, but you see, there’s this one little factor that kind of changes everything.
That little factor is called the SERVING SIZE OF THE ACTUAL BURGER PATTY.
You see, one of the most exciting things to experience when you’re playing at a comshop is to check if the food they’re serving there (or nearby) is 1) edible and 2) is actually as advertised. Believe me, there are places that actually have the audacity to claim that they sell burgers, where, in fact, it’s just bread with some ketchup and mayo along with a piece of meat so small that you’d think it accidentally fell into it.
That’s where we draw the distinction. A burger explicitly suggests the idea that the meat is the highlight of the eating experience, and the bread and all of the other ingredients all play a supporting role in it. Tinapay na may burger, however, is all about the bread that somehow, by the grace of the cosmos, happened to contain a piece of burger patty inside that’s too big to be insignificant yet too small to impact the food’s overall identity.
Because they’re easy to make and the markup is so high, internet shops everywhere serve these. However, ordering one is like playing roulette, which determines the ratio of the actual Tinapay and Burger, so good luck if you’re getting one.
At least they let you add as much ketchup as you want.
Best Food In Internet Shops – 3-in-1 Coffee
Do you know the triangle of features where each point represents “good,” “fast,” or “cheap,” and you can only pick two because getting all three in a product is impossible?
Well, the people who believe that haven’t had 3-in-1 Coffee. For a measly cost, you have access to the fake gourmet taste of Coffee that’s tailor-made for the Filipino palette… which simply means it’s sweet and a little creamy. Surprisingly, these are great at any time of the day but best ordered in combination with one of those all-night unli gaming promos.
Nowadays, we might have become desensitized to caffeine, but you won’t ever forget the first time you brazenly dunked two packs of these and stayed awake for nearly a couple of days.
Best Food In Internet Shops – Pancit Canton
Finally, the big one. Pancit Canton has overshadowed every other food option and cruised to an easy win with a whopping 73%, and the comments section reflected that. No trip to the internet shop is truly complete without ordering a plateful of these because, let’s all admit it, it’s an integral part of the internet shop experience.
What makes it the perfect gamer food? Let’s explore. The Pancit Canton blows the Good, Cheap, Fast chart out of the water and checks all of its boxes. It’s affordable, easy to prepare (because we know you asked the kuya or ate at the shop to prepare it for you and serve it to your station like the spoiled baby that you are), and every spoonful is bursting with the artificial flavor of your choice mixed with vegetable oil, soy sauce, and calamansi. You can even go fancy and add a couple of hardboiled eggs to your order if you’re rolling with cash that day.
Of course, we can totally ignore the sodium content and the almost complete lack of any nutrients – what’s important is it’s tasty as heck and we get our fill in time for the next game or round. Healthy living can always wait until later.
Besides, it does really beat every other option.
Unlike chichiryas, you can totally eat Pancit Canton with one hand while playing. Dying and waiting to respawn will give you just enough time to down a couple of spoonfuls, and you can actually finish the whole plate if you’re dumb enough to get killed late-game without any buyback.
Unless you’re an absolute troglodyte who doesn’t use utensils, it doesn’t stain the keyboard or mouse. It won’t have the danger of spilling, unlike 3-in-1 Coffee. And finally, it has a concrete identity that easily and consistently meets your expectations, unlike any fake burgers.
No wonder it won.
Dare we ask in our next survey which Pancit Canton is the best? But that’s probably a poll for another day.
Check out the results of our previous poll – which is better: ML or LoL?
