Cherry Garden Filipino Chinese Restaurant
- Hours:
Tue-Thu 11:00 a.m.-7:00 p.m.
Fri 11:00 a.m.-7:30 p.m.
Sat 9:00 a.m.-7:30 p.m.
Sun 8:30 a.m.-6:00 p.m. - Price Range: $
- Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
- Parking: Private Lot
- Attire: Casual
- Good for Groups: Yes
- Good for Kids: Yes
- Takes Reservations: Yes
- Delivers: Yes
- Take-out: Yes
- Waiter Service: Yes
- Wheelchair Accessible: Yes
- Outdoor Seating: No
- Good for: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner
22 reviews
Union City, CA
"I'd also give this place a 4.5. The food was delicious and beautifully presented. We ordered the chicken soup (tinola), garlic shrimp,…" read more »
34 Reviews for Cherry Garden Filipino Chinese Restaurant
Positives: They're filipino food is awesome and they deliver locally. Get the Kare Kare (enough for 4 people with rice, 2 without), the 'logs' or if you like blood pudding or blood sausage the Diniguan.
Negatives: Their chinese food is not that good, and there is lots of other better (and cheaper) places that deliver that in the area. Lumpia is a bit over-fried so I'd skip that. They close early for dinner ... 7pm?? wtfudge.
Not open Mondays?
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I went here one Sunday morning to eat breakfast. I tried their tocilog and tinapa. Yummy! Their tocino was the best I've tried so far.
Well, I haven't gotten an ROTD in the Silicon Valley yet, so I'm going to hope my luck changes with one of the biggest ROTD magnets there is up here, the ever-so-popular, Cherry Garden.
I wasn't able to make it to the UYE last year at this place, but I still wanted to give it a shot. I moved up here from San Diego 2 years ago (Hey Walter, look, I said it again) and I'm still trying to find the best Filipino restaurants. After reading some of the reviews from that UYE, I decided that I'd go sooner rather than later. My wife and I came here one morning looking for a good ole Filipino breakfast. No, not pan de sal and coffee. But a good ole "Silog" breakfast. Don't know what a silog breakfast is? Well, as stated in other reviews, it's basically just some kind of meat with garlic fried rice and eggs (and also a side of vinegar). Now, they have multiple kinds of meat to choose from such as Longanisa (Longsilog; a sweet sausage), Tocino (Tocilog; cured pork), Fried Chicken (Friedchixsilog), and Bangus (Bangsilog; fried fish). I've tried about 4 or 5 different ones and they've all been good. However, I am still waiting for KareKaresilog to get on the menu or even CarneAsadasilog to satisfy my Mexican food craving at the same time.
The service is always friendly there. Not to mention it's kinda cool to watch Wowowee, or whatever Filipino soap opera is on, at the same time you're eating. Makes me want to put on my tsinelas, sit with one foot on my chair, and dump the utensils! Oh by the way, don't forget to order your turon when you order the silog. It takes a while to cook and also you have to order a minimum of 5, which is never a problem for us.
Okay, the review is over. Please take this time now to vote either Useful, Funny, or Cool. Also, there will be no penalty for voting for all 3. In fact, if you do, something good will happen to you tomorrow at 2:17pm. But, if you don't vote for anything, your best friend's cousin's uncle will die in a horrible can crushing accident!
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Dined here last night, and the only reason I gave it a shot is because of the reviews on Yelp. From the outside, the place looks dingy, and inside, it was warm and stuffy. Ok, i don't really care about the interiors if the food is good, but this isn't the case for Cherry Garden. The tokwa't baboy was very bland, the tapsilog was horrible. The meat was to thick and tough. The rice was too wet, and the sinigang was not good at all. I mean, these are the most basic dishes, and very hard to screw up. I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone. Having been raised in Manila, maybe my standards are higher. Gerry's grill in Manila is way better, so is Lasa at the Podium, and a dozen other places...
I came here for the Yelp Filipino brunch organized by Arnold G. way back in August, and yeah, it took me long enough to write this review. (I was reminded today by Steph P.'s ROTD for Cherry Garden. Yay, Steph!)
I am ashamed to say, prior to Cherry Garden, I had never had Filipino food aside from adobo and lumpia. I'm not sure how I managed to be so unenlightened.
So here's the rundown on Cherry Garden's Filipino breakfast:
You can have chicken adobo, eggs and rice. You can have fried chicken, eggs and rice. You can have cured pork, eggs and rice. You can have pork sausage, eggs and rice. You can have dried fish, eggs and rice. You can have squid, eggs and rice. You can have corned beef, eggs and rice, and of course, you can have Spam, eggs and rice.
All of this supports my firm belief that adding eggs and rice to any meat dish will magically transform it into breakfast.
I had the chicken tocino, eggs and rice. It was sweet, salty, and very good. The fish, eggs and rice some other Yelpers were having looked good too, so next time maybe I will try that.
I like Filipino breakfast.
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yucks... food is greasy and expensive. the turon tastes like fried chicken/fish. They don't give much compared to the prices you pay.
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I guess my husband and I look too Chinese or something. When we sat down, the waiter immediately took away the Filipino menu. For that, 2 stars.
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I've lived in/around Fremont my entire life and I had no idea that this place existed.
I tried this place the other night after reading such great reviews. I have mixed feeling about it.
Positives: Large selection of 'silogs'. we had tapsilog, bangusilog, adobsilog, lumpia, braised tofu w/veggies, and pancit.
The fish, lumpia, and garlic fried rice were REALLY good. Then again, it is difficult to F - that up. The braised tofu and vegetables (Chinese menu) was pretty good.
Lots of parking (6:30 PM)
Negative:
The tapa was overcooked. The pancit and adobo were just okay nothing to rave about.
They close pretty early. We were rushing to get there before 7.
I'm going to give it another shot.
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I need a new stomach. My current one is doing too much complaining after I ate too much food at the Eugeapaloza followed by a foray into Filipino breakfast at Cherry Garden.
Arnold G. had been telling me about Cherry Garden ever since he had breakfast there, and I was so delighted he put together a Cherry Garden event that I took the BART all the way to Fremont. Oh, the power of food.
I had the bangsilog which is this beautiful plate with two mounds of the most wonderful garlic fried rice topped by two eggs with a fried fish lying next to the two mounds.
Don't let the word "breakfast" fool you. Really, think of it as 3 meals in one.
First meal: garlic fried rice with an egg over easy (I chose to have my egg over easy despite the concerns of the waitress who mentioned salmonella and the potential ensuing diarrhea...but for those of you who choose not to live so dangerously, you could have the eggs cooked medium to ward off the evils of salmonella, but then you'd be missing out on the loveliness of egg yolk running into your rice).
Second meal: garlic fried rice with another egg over easy and the wonderful fried fish.
Third meal: more rice with the deep fried pork leg that Steph P. and I decided must be ordered as an extra. Yummmm, deep fried pork leg. I love munching on pork hooves...what can I say, there's a deeply ingrained cavewoman inside of me. In other words, I am Asian.
Yes, I was staggering after the meal. But, hmmm, there's a Nation's across the parking lot. I got a slice of their banana cream pie...which is a meal in itself.
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A very SEXY Filipino brunch. What do you expect if you can get bangsilog first thing in the morning? Fast, tasty, and greasy food, just the way I like it in the morning. Two boobies of rice decorated with pasties of a fried or runny yolked egg. Comes with a side of the meat of your choice, if you get my drift. To get you further in the mood, this is accompanied by images of hot looking men & women getting jiggy with it on the telly. Wish I could have stayed longer at the fun orgy food fest with my fellow yelpers . . .
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This place has a grip of 'silogs to choose from. Serious. I think it's the best list of 'silogs that I have seen any place. They don't let you create a custom "combisilog" but you can order one silog and the rest of the meat items as sides which is basically the same thing. I was a good boy and limited myself to the Embotidosilog with a side of tocino. Both were good although the tocino was saucy and I prefer it dry.
The sweet longanisa looked a bit different than what I'm used to. It was sliced lengthwise (which I actually request usually) but it looked like it was skinless and fried. I only saw it on someone else's plate so I can't tell if the taste was any different though.
Being that most of the 'silogs are priced at $6.95 with a couple at $7.95 I am sure to be back here for breakfast quite frequently.
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Thanks to Arnold G. For organizing the Filipino breakfast. Not since my high school days when I hung out with a Filipino Posse, that I got to eat this well. If you've never been to a Filipino family's house, be warned that you cannot enter and leave without getting force fed full meals no matter what time of day it is. When you're with a Yelp crew you know it's going to be no different.
I arrived a little late but as I sat down I was instantly offered two appetizers:
Crispy Pata - crispy fried pork leg
Chicharon Bulaklak - Crispy fried pork parts. I think I had some of the heart chunks
The recommendations by most were one of the "Silog" dishes which is basically an entree with rice and eggs. If you've ever had Hawaiian food it's like the tradition where they serve you rice and mac salad, and if you go "loco moco" you get eggs on top. Except here, there is no mac salad. After looking at the menu this fully reminded me of a statement made to me by a Spaniard from Valencia, that thought that anything but the original Paella from there was "arroz con cosas", or "rice with stuff". There was definitely a lot of rice with stuff here. So some of decided we'd do the family style thing with our dishes and if I can remember what I had correctly:
. Adobosilog (chicken adobo)
. Bangsilog (half boneless fried fish)
. Cornsilog (sauteed homemade corned beef with onions)
. Hotsilog (fried Filipino sausage)
. Litsilog (fried side-porkbelly)
. Fried Chixsilog (fried chicken)
. Longsilog (Filipino pork sausage)
. Tinapsilog (fried smoked fish)
In addition to that we got another fried pork leg and calamari appetizers. Holy cow, this was a lot of fried goodness. My favorite dish name had to be "Bang Silog". What's that? I get some dirty sex with my rice? HAHAHA! To top that all off and fill in the cracks, I got a dessert called Halo Halo (http://en.wikipedia.or...) which was a shaved ice drink with all sorts of goodies. Needless to say I was bursting at the seams after this was all over.
The restaurant isn't all that big and our group took over a good 1/4 of the place. The amusing thing was The Filipino Channel which showed some crazy variety show that had dancing, singing (they added subtitles for a karaoke component), and hot Filipino stars. I can only describe it as a mix of Deal or no Deal, karaoke, and Sabado Gigante rolled into one. We were waiting for something called "Countdown to Supadance!" which I can only imagine as some crazed megaparty, but alas it was going to take too long.
So I definitely got my fried cholesterol yuminess quota for the day and fell asleep for two hours after. Definitely worth a trip out to fill your tummy with Filipino food goodness.
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I felt like crapsilog after brunchsilog with my peeps-silog, one of whom is Jay V-silog. The famsilog grubbedsilog on:
. Adobosilog (pork/chicken adobo)
. Cornsilog (sauteed homemade corned beef with onions)
. Hotsilog (fried Filipino sausage)
. Fried Chixsilog (fried chicken)
. Longsilog (Filipino pork sausage)
. Spamsilog (fried spam)
. Tapsilog (beef tapa strips)
. Tocilog (cured pork slices)
Mark this review as UFCilog but if you go, don't forget your Maalox-silog or you'll spend the day in the cansilog.
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First off, you see this place and it looks like a crappy Chinese restaurant. And nowhere will you get a clue about the delicious Filipino breakfast treats that await you inside, except for a bitty sign outside.
And oh what tasty treats they are. I got the tosilog -- tocino served with two lucious mounds of fried rice with a fried easy-over egg on each. Now I swear it looked like a pair of chi-chi's but hey its been awhile. Ummm where was I?
I used to love the tocino that you can buy frozen from 99 Ranch 99... key word, "used to." But no more thanks to Arnold. After attending his always fantastic Yelp eating event here for Filipino breakfast now I know what good tocino tastes like... sweet, juicy, tasty pork love.
And that deep-fried patas was so deep-fried-delicious... I wanted to pig out and hog it all for myself. But alas I am civilized.
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Went here for the yelp brunch organized by Arnold (Thanks Arnold!). I really wanted to love this place due to the unprecedented number of "silogs" (some sort of meat with "sinangag"(garlic fried rice) and itlog (egg)) they offered, but I gotta say I was a bit disappointed. The staff was very nice and accomodating to our large group (even gave me some sliced tomatoes I requested for my silog), and I hate to bring ithis place down, but I just wasn't impressed by the food as much. Not sure if I'm just a filipino food snob or something, but I've just had much better silogs, both at home and at other restaurants.
I ordered the garlic longanisa silog, which was the non-sweet variety and they put a lot of garlic on it, then deep-fried it with some sort of breading. I gotta say I was intrigued by it, and thought it was pretty good, but having it sliced in half and deep-fried like that just seemed off to me, just because it doesn't have the juiciness I expect from longanisa.. I usually get either tocino or longanisa for my silogs since they are sweet and juicy, which help cut the greasiness of the fried rice and the richness of the egg.
My husband had the sweet longanisa, which is the variety served in most places and the type I prefer, but I thought that was just meh. I get much better sweet longanisa at the meat counter of marina food or pacific supermarket (get the fresh ones by the pound behind the counter, not the frozen ones already packaged.
Though the garlic longanisa had more than enough garlic, I felt like the fried rice could have used some more. I've had much better garlic fried rice at ling nam (south city), barrio fiesta (milpitas), and the best at bistro luneta (san mateo). I found myself mixing in some of the fried garlic from the garlic longanisa dish to make the rice more garlicky. I think that the garlic fried rice is such a critical part of the "silog" and it can make it or break it for me. I guess I just prefer my meat to be the less garlicky and the rice to be more so. As for the egg, not much to be said, it was ok as expected, but I would rank (1)meat, (2)garlic fried rice, and (3) egg in order of importance in a silog.
I feel bad giving this place only 3 stars, as it is the best silog I've had in the east bay, it just doesn't hold up to other places I've been to. For me to give a filipino restaurant 4 stars, they have to be able to offer either something I can't cook myself, cook it better than I can, or at least cook it well enough that I'd rather get takeout than cook it myself. I think this is not so hard for most places to meet since I'm not the greatest cook to begin with (hubby is better), and we're so lazy to cook that we usually get takeout or eat out most of the time and only cook once or twice during the week. Toppings Too got 4 stars for me since they can make filipino fried chicken better than I can, and I would rather order from their takeout menu rather than try it myself.
Though the idea of a restaurant near my house that serves silogs all day is very appealing, the flavor just isn't there, so at this point, I'd rather go to my local asian supermarket and buy tocino/longanisa and cook it myself.
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I was also one of the invitees yesterday with my sister, Just J (she already listed the types of plates, so no need for me to reiterate). The food was served in larger portions as opposed to other typical pilipino restaurants. However, what she didn't mention was that at least 2 of the people who ate there yesterday experienced diarrhea within hours after leaving the restaurant. There may be more as I'd have to check, but disappointed indeed. Not many of us in our group of 12 enjoyed the food there as it is.
UPDATE: Just make sure you don't order the eggs RUNNY or you'll get the RUNS just like I did. I don't mean to hate, but I just wish to inform.
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Forget Belgian waffles, fluffy buttermilk pancakes, brioche french toast, omelettes, country sausage and whatever else most people eat for breakfast. In my book, there's no better way to start the day than with a "silog," a Filipino breakfast of garlic fried rice, topped with a couple over-easy eggs and your choice of sweet or salty meats.
Filipinos love to combine words and names (don't you know someone somewhere named Marivic?). "Silog" is a suffix referring to the fried rice (sinangag) and the eggs (itlog), and the dishes are named accordingly: tapsilog (tapa, the original silog) tosilog (tocino), adobosilog (chicken adobo), longsilog (longanisa), SPAMsilog - (SPAM!), friedchixsilog (fried chicken), etc. etc.
I was skeptical of Cherry Garden because they say they're a Filipino Chinese restaurant and I'm not really into restaurants that specialize in more than one type of ethnic cuisine. And despite the fact that they have a full menu of Chinese food, I'd actually only go here because they serve Filipino breakfast all day long.
I had a hard time deciding between the tocino (sweet cured pork) and the longanisa (sausage akin to chorizo or linguica). I found out they had two types of longanisa, sweet or garlic. I had never had garlic longanisa before, so I ordered that. My wife ordered the adobosilog.
My breakfast was great. The garlicky, vinegary longanisa mixed perfectly with the runny egg yolks and garlic fried rice, which was a bit subtle in my opinion but still good (make that fried rice even more garlicky and you get the extra star!). It even came with extra vinegar on the side. My wife's adobosilog was pretty good, but she's really has to work on her spoon-and-fork technique if she's going to eat like us Filipinos. :-)
If you're a fan of Filipino soft drinks, you can get a 500ml bottle of Royal Tru Orange or Sarsi (Filipino root beer) with your meal, but it's a bit expensive at $2.75 a bottle. They also have a huge catering menu that has almost any Filipino food you can think of in case your entertaining a large group. I'd be interested in trying their fried chicken and see if it's as good as Maharlika's across town.
***UPDATE 5.5.07***
Cherry Garden got the fifth star today for their excellent Pancit Malabon. Ordered a party tray for a BBQ I was attending, and it was exactly what I was hoping for, complete with a generous sprinkling of chicharon all over the top of the noodles.
***UPDATE 5.17.07***
They will pair anything with silog--salmon, bacon, kare kare...
I had the fried chicken-silog and wow...that fried chicken was really good. Skin was perfect, meat was juicy. My wife had the pusitsilog, which is dried squid that's fried, and that was good, too, although, she prefers the bangsilog (bangus, i.e. milkfish) over the squid.
***UPDATE 8.5.07***
Cherry Garden welcomed 20 Yelpers with ease. I was worried that having this during the post-church lunch rush would be bad, but everything worked out great. Thanks, Mariel and the rest of the staff, for accommodating us and making sure everyone was taken care of! Maybe next time, we'll just take over the place and get our fill of food, drinks and karaoke!
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I was STARVING for some Filipino style breakfast and didn't want to settle for the nearby Jollibee... so off I went to find this Cherry Garden restaurant. I actually went into the wrong place... the Fremont Hub plaza (which was right across from it) but I found the restaurant eventually. It's tucked in this plaza next to an Original Pancake House and Falafel's Etc.
So I walk in, and there were only a few tables occupied, one of which sat some of the workers (having brunch I guess). One of the ladies at the table greeted me right away (which was good) and asked if i wanted Filipino or Chinese food. (I wonder what it mattered anyway...) and I told her I wanted Filipino. She continued to eat at the table for a while as I browsed the breakfast menu. I was torn between getting the tocilog and the sweet longisilog so being the glutton that I am, I ordered the tocilog ($6.95) w/ the longanisa on the side. My total came to $12.95 which I was a little surprised about but paid for nonetheless. I didn't get a receipt so I asked the cashier how much the longanisa was and she said it was $4.95. I thought that was pretty steep so then I asked how many sausages did that include and she said 4. So basically each sausage was $1.25.. a bit more than I usually pay for. I was THIS close to canceling the order but she had already put the order in and it was MY fault anyway for not asking before buying. I think she sensed what I was thinking about and said, "All of our sides are $4.95... except the bangus... it's $6.95".
Now to the food... I was really really looking forward to this after all the reviews on yelp so I had high expectations...
-Tocino.. 3/5 ... had a LOT of bacon-like fatty white parts =( ... it actually even sort of tasted like BACON that was just marinaded. (I always thought tocino was more like thinly sliced pork loin or pork chop??) and after the 4th or 5th bite, it started getting really salty and coated my throat. I was soooooo thirsty after this..... was it MSG?
-Longanisa... 4/5... plump and juicy. nice and sweet and not salty at all. [I guess it was worth the $1.25 since it was a good size]
-Garlic fried rice... 5/5.... delicious...
-Eggs... 4/5.... over easy and runny.... first time eating it that way (i usually have it scrambled)... it was pretty good.
Service.... 4/5.... i was in and out in probably less than 8 minutes. not bad i suppose. [considering the wait time at Jollibee's or Chow King]
Average rating: 3.3 stars
Would I come here again? Yeah, probably, cuz this is probably the closest place to me that serves silogs ALL day long. I'd try some of their other silogs though. However to just 'add' a side of meat costs a bit much I think (5-6 whole extra bucks?!).... they should lower the price to encourage add on sales. And also should maybe post the price on their menu... cuz i didn't see it posted.
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I only come here for the Filipino food - the folks are exremely nice and our family had a huge event catered by them before too. I highly recommend their full service catering - they provided food, plates, silverware, drinks, chafing dishes, and even manned the buffet line. Mariel is the owner I believe - she is extremely nice and even gave us samples of their turon when we were discussing their catering service. (Yes their turon was good!) Their full service catering package is a great deal - if I ever have a big party to cater, I will always use Cherry Garden.
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Mr says... just like home cooked meals "nothing spectacular"
Mrs says.... great portions and price is reasonable. i like the crispiness of lechon kawali which is to "die for". you'll be satisfied with the many garlic rice plates combo topped with egg.
5stars for the extra effort of getting me the "dangit" ... thanks!!!
This place is aaaaaalmost as good as my mom's home cooking. It definitely does the job since my mommy lives far away. I found out about this place on Friday on Yelp and immediately decided that I wanted to have dinner here the same night. It was very good - my BF and I were very impressed (he had the tocilog, medium fried eggs over white rice and I had the bangsilog, over easy eggs over garlic rice, and we shared a pork sisig). The servings are big and the people are very nice (that's the Filipino hospitality we all know and love).
Oh and its cheap too!
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Cherry Garden is kind of like me. We are both technically Filipino-Chinese, but it's pretty obvious that we probably know Filipino food better. Cherry Garden's specifically got the art of the Filipino breakfast (silogs) down!
The most generous mounds of awesome garlic rice (very good seasoning and flavor), topped with two fried eggs (don't be a wuss, get them over easy or at least over medium...the runny yolk mixed with rice is one of my favorite things ever), with a side of some MEAT! I got to try a bunch of the silog variations(see Arnold G's review for a more comprehensive silog list) - fried chixsilog, tocilog, bangsilog, longsilog (both the spicy and sweet kind). I have to say that my choice of the sweet longsilog was just wonderful. Those pork sausages were so delectably sweet and plump, even better than the Pampanga's Best from the store. The spicy longanisa was also good, with strong garlicky flavor. I also really enjoyed the tocino (marinated, sweet pork), which was sticky and delicious. Be sure to use the vinegar dipping sauce! It really takes it to another level! Let me tell you, the silog here is 10 times better than at Lucky Chances, which means that you don't have to be drunk/sobering up to think that it's amazing.
Sooj and I were a little late so we missed out on the chicharon bulaklak and the crispy pata...but I was NOT going to let my twin leave Cherry Garden without having tried the wonder that is deep fried pork leg! And DAMN it was GOOD! They fried it perfectly well, the skin so crispy and the meat juicy tender.
If I could give this place 6 stars, I would because they have TVs set up that are tuned to The Filipino Channel (TFC), which almost always has on some kind of variety show with celebrities singing. These days, the network has started to include the song lyrics on the screen....so you can KARAOKE from home (or in this case...from a restaurant?)!!! You might think that it's really strange to have karaoke at a restaurant, but then you probably don't know too many Filipinos. A lot of us REALLY love karaoke. You better believe that I was singing at my table.
Meat. Rice. Deep fried pork. Karaoke. I FREAKIN' LOVE MY PEOPLE!
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sometimes you just have to cross the bridge, drive extra miles, pay the toll fee to taste a typical filipino breakfst plates, which i could have it around my vicinity in a snap without even changing my pajamas...but sometimes change of environment is good!
so last sunday i did what was mentioned above, but i have to change into more appropriate attire to go to fremont.
the chairs and tables were quite different from what i'm used to back in daly city. they have more "brand-new" chairs and tables and cleaner atmosphere.
the longsilog (sweet pork sausage) was plumped, juicy and has the right amount of sweetness to it. the tocilog (cured pork) was super-tasty, a tad of pork fat can be seen, they don't do the nitrate thing too much, because the meat was not "pink".
the garlic fried rice was amazingly delicious and they give you two scoops of it, topped with 2 fried eggs! the portions were just HUGE.
to complement the garlicky taste of your dish, a small dish of vinegar was included for dipping or in my case, i used it to drizzle it over my fried rice.
overall, we came out gorged with awesome fatty, greasy, MSG loaded of filipino foods giving me a slight case of food coma, headache and lots of extra change in HIS pocket (it was cheap!)
no regrets!
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Okay, granted the Filipino menu is limited compared to the wide selection of Chinese dishes; but, if a restaurant serves "silog" breakfasts all day long, I'm so there.
Thanks to the Yelp recommendations, J and I ventured out to the other side of the Bay to try this place out. We were not disappointed. I ordored the adobosilog, and J had the tocilog. The portions were generous--two scoops of yummy garlic fried rice topped with two overeasy eggs, and huge scoops of tocino and adobo. Sure, the adobo was a tad salty, but the tocino was cooked to perfection. Imagine downing the dish with a bottle of ice cold Sarsi!
Service was friendly, atomosphere is family-oriented, and the prices were inexepensive.
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I love this food. But this is not the food which you can eat every day. Once in a while very good. And will definitely visit this place.
My friend recommended this place because she's from the Philippines and said this is as close as you can get. They have a huge Chinese food menu and the Filipino food menu is the last 2 pages. The restaurant is simple looking, not much fancy decor. Just tables, chairs, some faux wooden flooring in the corner (for dancing?), a karaoke machine & a TV which was playing a Filipino version of Ricki Lake.
I had the Adobosilog - chicken adobo, 2 huge scoops of garlic fried rice with an overeasy egg on top of each. After finishing it, I was in desperate need of a salad. It is heavy food. The chicken was tender, it fell off the bone nice except I had one piece that was overcooked which is still not bad because that's 1 out of 6 little pieces. It wasn't too vinegary and the rice wasn't too garlic-y. All subtle but flavorful.
I had some bites of my friends dish which is practically the same as mine but with cured pork (Tocinosilog). The waitress recommended it. I like it a lot better than mine because the sweetness of the marinade reminded me of Korean bulgogi.
The waitress was super friendly. Nobody was in the restaurant so she was folding silverware and telling us about how our dishes were what Filipino people eat for breakfast and often times any other time of the day also.
I'd go here again if I was really hungry and in need of some comfort food. If you're in this little area, feel free to try out Munchner Haus (German deli) or Falafel, etc. (Middle Eastern) which surround Cherry Garden. They're all excellent lunch places!
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Wide selection for Filipino/Chinese food. Portions are big enough to share. They did not have my favorite combination on their menu, but they were able to accommodate me. BIG PLUS!
I was craving for the traditional filipino breakfasts so I found this place on Yelp for my bf and I to try. We ordered the calamari, tapsilog and also the adobosilog. The proportions are bigger than what I'm used to for filipino breakfasts. Unfortunately the garlic salt and the msg that they used on their fried rice almost wanted to make me gag. My mom also makes a better adobo, although I must admit the chicken for their adobo was tender. My bf's tapsilog was more tolerable. I ended up picking more on his food instead of mine.
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Like Filipino food? Although this use to be a purely Chinese food restaurant, it now serves good Filipino breakfasts (available all day)
that's big enough for two. Anything ... silog. Meaning fish, sausage, cured meats, with 2 scoops of fried rice( the si- in silog) and 2 fried eggs (-ilog). Bring a cholesterol pill but YUMMY!
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This rating is based on the FILIPINO FOOD ONLY.
This places makes me miss my dad's garlic fried rice for breakfast. They have a variety of silog's here and definitely satisfies your cravings (what can I say, I grew up on this stuff!).
Another pretty decent thing here is the empanadas. They may not be the prettiest things, but, pretty darn tastey!
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Supposedly the only chinese filipino restraunt in Fremont. Well that maybe true - but Union City, Milpitas, and Newark are less than 10 miles away. The menu here is limited and the filipino items here are not up to par with comprable restaurants in the region - everything here was meat based. Also everything just seemed too salty - and i love salty foods.
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One word.
Sisig.
...and that's all you need to know.
Ok, maybe more things you might want to know:
-Hospitable service
-little family kids riding a big wheel around
-Fast order/pickup interval
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i love breakfast and here is another place that i frequent. i like the silog, just live everyone else... huge chinese food menu too.
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Have the Filipino food, not the Chinese. The breakfast deals for 6.95 is good all day. And it's so filling. We had the chicken adobo breakfast and the pork tocino breakfast. Both came with 2 huge mounds of garlic rice and over easy eggs. The service was really friendly and the prices are pretty reasonable. Take it to go but go before 8:00.
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