Situated on Salinas Drive (with a branch at SM City), this cozy little restaurant is seldom found without a waiting line. Although from outside the place looks no different from any other restaurant you’d come across, the question of “why is it always full?” hangs around. So, with a little enthusiasm and reason (driven from visiting family), we venture into the world of curiosity and cats.
One step into the place and you will instantly find that the “Filipino” aura projects from all corners of the wooden-floored and high-ceilinged room. Instantly giving one the notion that they’ve come home to Lola’s ancestral house, the surprisingly quick and prompt waiters guided us through the room to a vacant cross-sectioned tree of a table. Typically you would expect china but, alas, you get a banana leaf for a plate which works anyway (no wonder service is fast – they probably save a lot of time by not having to wash lots of plates).
Now comes the ordeal of figuring out what I want and what other people might want with me. Many would agree that the hardest thing to do at any good restaurant is ordering food. Being our first time, we had no idea what they had that was famous. Luckily, the menu said it for us.
Hastily the waiter took our orders of Crispy Pata(Deep fried whole pork leg), Chicken in Pandamus leaves (which, curiously, is a thai delicacy), Kinilaw (Cubed Fish Salad), various stir-fried vegetables and Sinigang na Hipon (Sour Prawn Soup).
Surprisingly, the order took less than 12 minutes to cook and it took us less than 2 minutes to agree with everyone who comes back to Golden Cowrie that there is a reason why it is always full. To the foreigners, the food was delicious as it was not too extreme for their tastes. However, to Filipinos, the food was simply superb. It was just like being back home with Nanay (mother) and Tita (Auntie) spending 3 hours in the kitchen cooking half the dishes while all the other Titos (obviously Uncles) and Tatay (take a guess!) spent 1 and a half hours in the veranda preparing the other half of the dishes with good old SMB.
For a restaurant that doesn’t charge as much as it would in other cities, I would give Golden Cowriefour out of five stars. Anyway, like I said earlier… it’s one of those restaurants where you’d simply have to try the food to understand why.
