Saturday, August 30, 2008 Dining in a quaint cafe By Jigs Arquiza
EVERYBODY knows that downtown cebu is full of restaurants with reasonable prices. Still, you would be hard pressed to find a restaurant with an impressive ala Carte menu in the downtown area. Imagine to my surprise when I came across one that not only serves a pretty good version of osso buco, but is reasonably priced as well.
“Osso buco? Really?” Sun.Star Cebu’s managing editor for special pages and features Cherry Ann T. Lim exclaimed unbelievingly when I told her about Shining Emerald Café, at the ground level of Golden Valley Hotel, right behind the University of San Carlos.
Yes, this quaint café in the downtown area serves not only osso buco, but also a wide variety of Asian and western dishes, from grilled skewered prawns to steak. It’s a far cry from the usual fare one is used to getting in Cebu’s old shopping district, and yes, the dishes are still priced reasonably.
It’s a good place to have a meal in, whether you’re a group of officemates looking to have a tasty lunch, or a businessman who wants to take some clients out to lunch. The café is the place to go to. Being part of the hotel also works for the café, as hotel guests, mostly Koreans and Japanese tourists and students, can just come down and have their meals there.
Among the dishes I have tasted at the café, a few stand out. The orange country ribs, the café’s version of baby back ribs,
is very good, served with bacon bits and mandarin orange sauce.
The grilled chicken teriyaki is also a good choice, with crispy noodles on the side. Like I said earlier, they have osso buco.
It’s a portion of beef shank smothered in a tomato-based sauce and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. It comes with mixed vegetables on the side, and is definitely worth a try.
The café’s fish dishes are also worth tasting, like the pan-fried Mahi fillet, Dory fillet with mustard cream sauce and the grilled salmon, but between the three, the Mahi fillet would serve as my recommendation. It has a light crust composed of breadcrumbs and almond bits, and it’s so tasty there’s really no need for tartar sauce. It’s served on a bed of pasta, and while the fillet is already good, it becomes more so together with the pasta.
It is true that Shining Emerald Café is just a small fish in the big pond that is Cebu. But small as they are, in my opinion, they can probably compete with some of the so-called “finer” restaurants in the city, especially in terms of taste.
Cherry Ann and I ended our conversation with her telling me she would visit Shining Emerald Café after she reads my article. Well, this article is already written, and when Cherry Ann does visit the café, I know she’ll agree with me when I say that Shining Emerald Café is a gem in the heart of downtown.
