Ty Matejowsky's new book skillfully weaves together his personal experiences of eating and researching fast food in provincial Philippines, with powerful arguments about the region's uncanny ability to co-opt outside influences, including corporate fast food businesses. Readers will relate to this very engaging book, and at the same time, find in it an intellectually challenging analysis of how global economic processes have impacted local life in Southeast Asia.

Penny Van Esterik, Professor Emerita, York University; University of Guelph

A fascinating case study of a peculiar locality with astounding global implications, this book focuses on the spread of fast food and its consequences in the Philippines, but it also explains the odd rivalry between Jollibee and McDonalds in my own Californian city, and indeed the interaction of indigenous foodways with corporate burgers everywhere on the planet.

Ken Albala, University of the Pacific

Anyone who has ever taken refuge in a foreign country at a Western-style fast food eatery to escape the heat, the grime or the loud cacophany of urban Asia will find this book a satisfying analysis. By exploring the ethnographic terrain between the universal features of corporate fast food and how they diverge, mesh and otherwise are transformed by local popular cultures and tastes, Ty Matejowsky has written a book that any undergraduate in the U.S. will find a compelling read.

Susan Russell, Northern Illinois University

This carefully observed ethnographic study moves beyond the well-known presence of fast food chains such as McDonald’s in global cities and tourist destinations around the world to examine the negotiation of food and modernity in provincial towns of the Philippines. In doing so it makes a highly original contribution to the scholarship on globalization.

Jeffrey M. Pilcher, University of Toronto