Crispy Kare-Kare At Hukad sa Golden Cowrie

Yesterday was the 4th day of my training and it was horridly stressful. A lot of tools and details were introduced to us and I can truly say that it’s a day of pure information overload. The 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. shift isn’t easy you know. Anyway, I was so tired and felt like my head’s having an internal hemorrhage, so I call it quits at exactly 7:00 a.m. and sleep. [As I mentioned before in my previous article, I’m working at home so there’s no problem for me to sleep in a snap]

I wasn’t able to sleep 6-8 hours straight due of multiple errands I need to finish throughout the very limited time of my day, so I said, I have to pay myself a good meal simply because I deserve it.

My partner and I were strolling in SM City Bacolod, looking for a good place to have lunch, when we saw a new restaurant which we haven’t tried yet. The place is called Hukad sa Golden Cowrie. We got in there and checked their menu. Basically, they’re serving native Filipino foods typically served during fiesta.

There’s a lot of dishes to choose from! Since it’s our first time to try their dish, we asked the waiter for their specialty, best seller, or the most interesting food they have on the menu. Typically the waiters will say that their specialty is ‘crispy pata’ but of course we don’t believe that ‘coz we all know that they’re just saying since it’s one of the most expensive dishes in the house, in general. Moving forward, the waiter suggested a lot of dishes but what really intrigued us were their Crispy Dinuguan and their Crispy Kare-Kare [as shown in image b. below]. I’ve never tried and never heard before, so we ordered both.

When we got our order, I gotta say I’m not a big fan of their Crispy Dinuguan. It’s outside the ordinary, however, it wasn’t extraordinary. But I also gotta say that I’m impressed with their Crispy Kare-Kare. The traditional Kare-Kare looks like this:

a. Traditional Kare-Kare with Oxtail and Beef Tripe

But look at what we’ve ordered:

b. Crispy Kare-Kare at Hukad

See the difference? So what they did was, they replaced oxtail and beef tripe with fried pork belly, and then, they deconstructed the whole idea of Kare-kare. Instead of having the veggies, meat, and the sauce altogether, they put it in a platter separately. As you can see, there’s fried pork and blanched veggies on the side, plus the undying presence of Bagoong [fermented shrimp in this case].

Was I surprised? Not really. I’ve seen this idea on TV years ago actually. I’ve seen deconstructed Kare-Kare and Sinigang na Baboy [Pork in Tamarind Based Soup] prepared by one of the celebrity Filipino chefs on TV. The idea wasn’t new but it’s cute. For the taste, I’ll give it an 8 out of 10, ‘coz I’ll give my mom’s recipe a 9 and mine’s a 10! Hah! Just kidding. But yes, I’ll give it a decent 8.5 score, just because I’m still hooked up with the traditional way of cooking it, and I love beef tripe which was actually missing in action in this case. Plus, I would like to have more crushed peanuts on the sauce. But in general, it’s really a good food and I recommend it especially to the tourist visiting Philippines. It’s not traditional but it’s good.

So my day ended up yesterday even if I wasn’t able to buy a Christmas tree, although I was suppose to. I was full and and satisfied with the good food we had. By the way, I also have to mention that their crew is very friendly and accommodating. Those guys deserve commendation. 🙂

How about you? Do you wanna try this out, too?