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| A lot of people! And a tiger and mouse! |
For the month of February, and to celebrate our 3rd Valentine's Day together, Chad and I headed to UP Town Center to have a piece of Mexican taste. Well basically it's a Fil-Mex Restaurant. This is not our first time in UTC. Before, I always see Silantro with big groups of people waiting outside. In my mind, I was curious what could be making the commotion, until my sister told me that they offer both high quality and quantity of food at a very affordable price. Who wouldn't want that? With those 3 in a restaurant, even I would be willing to wait outside to try it out.
Must-Knows
However, we're not the only ones who knows this piece of Gem exists. So to dine without hassle, here are the things you must know before you decide to dine here:
- Location: Second Floor, UP Town Center, Katipunan Avenue, Diliman, Quezon City
- They have other branches which may be close to you so you won't have to travel far to seek this place.
- They are crowded most of the time. We arrived at UTC at around 4:30pm and the restaurant is already full! Best thing to do is to sign yourselves up on the long queue before you go shopping or watch a movie because I heard the duration of waiting could be worse, especially for big groups.
- If there's only two of you then you could get seated faster than anyone else.
- They DON'T ACCEPT RESERVATIONS.
- They have really BIG SERVINGS so you might what to check on first of what you're ordering before you get another one.
The Place
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| Canteen Setup with a sneaking Panda and an octopus and bear :)) |
There's nothing special about this restaurant. At least when it comes to their environment. Having so many diners, very busy waiters, and simple chairs and tables, the setup really looks like a Canteen. It's very crowded. We just acquired a very little space in the corner. This is not really a good place when you want to have peaceful conversations but a very good place when you just want to eat and run. Maybe they should expand their place already to allow more people to dine in an instance. In my estimate, I think there are 20 to 30 people whom we're with at their small space. However, the aroma of the food they are cooking is seducing. Good thing we didn't smell like nachos or barbecue when we got out.
The Service
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| Aww look at their happy faces char! Haha. |
Well I'm satisfied to say that even though this is a very busy restaurant, their service is quick! Maybe because they also took our orders beforehand. The waiters are very attentive. We don't even have to ask for water most of the time because they always serve it before we can even ask for it. Maybe that's the advantage of a small place, they can easily all those who were dining and what they need.
The Food
This is what makes this restaurant so special for me. Despite not having artsy decorations or a wide space, what will make people coming back for it will always be the food they offer. Knowing they serve big quantities, we opt to just order 2 dishes to avoid ordering too much of what we could really eat.
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| Holy Moly Nachos with Guacamole! |
When their Beef Nachos arrived, both our eyes literally widened! Yes, even Chad's Chinese eyes(though he's not Chinese haha) became more visible. Definitely, NACHO ORDINARY NACHOS! Get that pun? haha. Every restaurant has a dish of crowning glory and for Silantro, I think it is their Beef Nachos oozing with Cheese and Guacamole. Dito palang mabubusog ka na! Lalo na kung dalawa lang kayo haha. They also have dips which you can use whichever dish you want. The amount of beef and cheese is in proportion with the Nacho chips so you won't worry about running out of beef while still having so many chips.
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| Ribs, the Silantro Way |
For the second one, we ordered their Rib Fingers. I'm not really sure though if these really came from the ribs part of the pig or it's just a metaphor because it's boneless. It is meat served on a sizzling plate with mashed potatoes on the side and a gravy sauce. The meat is very hard to chew which I think is because of the fat parts. It tastes okay for me. However, I really liked the gravy sauce and mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes are soft and I really liked putting the gravy sauce on top of it much like KFC style of eating mashed potatoes.
While were almost done eating, we felt this feeling of getting tired of eating the nachos. What Chad did is to order a coke in can just to get off the umay feeling. It's very cold and you know that Coke is best when it's cold. It washed away the umay feeling so I guess what we can suggest when you dine here is to get some softdrinks to avoid feeling the same.
There's no better way of celebrating Valentine's Day than having a very hearty meal and Silantro just gave that to us. Though we can't stay that long because it's very noisy and a lot of people were waiting outside. Waiting to be seated in Silantro is really worth it. When it comes to food, Silantro never fails at giving their customers all quality, quantity, and value for money. Next time you head on to UTC, do visit this crowd favorite. 2/12! ;)
