Hey food fans! Welcome to the second iteration of Food Comma Jumps. This time, we visit Snakyard; a little place located in J Centre Mall in Mandaue City. Although I love food, J Centre Mall isn't a place I often visit so my unfamiliarity with what is good to eat and not good to eat there became apparent. Fellow X-Geek JJ recommended this place after I had a disastrously bland gastronomic experience with another food place's noodles and dumplings. With her enthusiastic encouragement, she, Xericho and I made our way there to find out what the buzz was with this place.
Although it was still after 5PM, the place was nearly full and what greeted us at the door clearly caught my attention. Not often do you see the "We're Open" sign caution you about how addicting a restaurant's food can get. This only made my expectations of this place higher from JJ's previous recommendation.
We all stepped in and were presented with a simple overhead menu that had large print and reasonable prices. There was also a menu to the side that gives you slight variations to the overhead menu items. It was not yet dinnertime but there was a short queue of people placing their orders before us. To me, this was a good sign of people coming back regularly because they like the place or they've heard good things about it.
I couldn't help but chuckle at this tip box because of their clever pun use. I immediately pictured Sheryl Nome [of Macross Frontier covering Britney Spears's "Baby One More Time"] in a waitress costume. XD Of course, a tip was placed in the aforementioned box after paying for my meal.
The pun never ends. hahaha I chose their Hang-over Chop for my meal because I love spicy food. When the waiter was asked if this could actually induce a hang over, he smiled and said that the name came from the words "halang" which means spicy and "over" which is local slang that can be taken to mean as too much. I surmised that this would be an overly spicy meal indeed. The option to add a spicy Tanjari sauce was too tempting to pass up so as a chili-head, I went for it.
I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly they served our meals. X had the carbonara while JJ had a pork chop variant. And the pork chops, the pork chops!!! They were perfectly cooked so each bite I took was extremely tender and juicy. One thing I would change though would be to make the fatty part and skin a little bit more crispy. The sauce was neither too thin nor thick and full of flavor. The mushrooms in the sauce added a varance of texture that was a welcome difference from the tender meat and when I added the Tanjawa sauce, the flavor was elevated by an earthy spice coming from what I thought was Chipotle peppers. Now I would normally scarf down my food if it tastes delicious but this time I wanted to savor every bite; so much so that JJ and Xericho even finished before I did!
In summary, please visit Snakyard! I loved every minute I was there and truly enjoyed the food. Were I not full due to the noodle disaster, I would have ordered a second dish while I was there. I have found a reason to go back to J Centre Mall again. And if you were wondering if I got addicted to their pork chops, you guessed right; I did!!!
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