Salakot Al fresco Dining & Cafe — Restaurant in Silang

We visited for the 1st time today. Arrived @ 2pm on a holiday (Labor Day). This was recommended by someone who knows the area well. We get there & parking looked challenging. Fortunately there were parking staff to guide us. From the street it looks like a small place but it is a lot bigger once you're in. We requested the coolest spot for my elderly parent & was given one w/c was perfect. The main dining area aesthetically reminds me of a fancy resort: VERY high ceiling & open air, lots of plants (mostly real w/a few artificial), rustic large wooden tables (ceramic tile decor), chairs, & benches (w/backs). Our server, Rio, was warm & accommodating. We asked for the most popular/recommended dishes: beef kare-kare, pork laing, 3-part pancit (not sure about name on this) & lumpiang ubod. Also ordered ripe mango fresh fruit shake, buko shake, fresh buko, & black gulaman. The drinks/shake were a lot to our liking. Really delish & refreshing mango shake! Now, the dishes however, were a hit or miss for OUR palate. We have noticed when eating out, there is a strongly prevailing & persistent trend w/c has really disheartened us -- sugar in dishes that originally (go back to say, 25 yrs ago) NEVER had them. The laing, kare-kare, & pancit all had a good dose of sugar in them. (I was recently informed that 80% of filipinos have diabetes.) The good news? We spoke to our server & then, eventually, bumped into the owner, Katee Veloso. She assured us that if we choose to return, we can specify that we do NOT want ANY sugar in our dishes. With dining al fresco, there were persistent flies dive bombing on our food; a bit of a chore to keep up shooing these away while eating. What I really enjoyed? The gift shop! I picked up a hat for myself & a loved one, also a couple of earrings & a summer bag. These are locally made says Mrs Veloso (except, of course, where it specifically says, "made in china"). What else did we love? The landscape architecture of the entire place. Really well done: beautifully chosen plants in every area that your eyes are drawn to. Certainly the huts & tree huts are quite charming & provide a unique ambiance for diners. Mrs Veloso graciously gave us a mini-tour and I can see how the place would look even better in the evenings w/all the lights on. I def recommend this place. It is a bit far for us to go more often but for those who are close (or on the way to or from Tagaytay), it is well worth the stop. This is the kind of place to spend some me-time: eat, read, journal, listen to your fave...

Delightful place to visit when you are looking for Al fresco Filipino-style dining.

Strategically located along Emilio Aguinaldo, Silang Cavite, the place embodies what Silang is known for -- lovely plants! Salakot is a Tagalog word for native pointed hat made of indigenous materials and the roof of most huts resemble a salakot. Most garden restaurants tend to have mosquitos problems but the restaurant solved this by integrating a fish net to their hut designs both to repel mosquitoes and provide some privacy.

Each hut is equipped with its own electric fan. A buzzer and bell is available to call for wait service. Clever!

Our group of 4 diners had a platter of rice, crispy pork kare-kare, sinampalukang manok, and gising-gising, and our bill round up to only P1200+. We enjoyed the gising gising the most. The kare-kare sauce was good but the crispy pork on the kare-kare was large slabs of pork which was mostly skin and fat. The rice was quite dry, and the sinampalukang manok was just sinigang manok with no young sampaloc leaves. Food on the menu are in sharing portions for 3-4 persons. There's option overload so best to ask the food server for bestseller recommendations.

The place is instagrammable and an enjoyable time to relax around fresh air and open spaces. No smoking signs are all around the property but monitoring and implementation could be stricter since someone next to our hut was smoking but I didn't hear the management and staff address enforcing it while we were there.

Best time to visit is more late afternoon when it's not too warm, and choose to stay a little bit towards the evening. The night lights around the restaurant makes the place ethereal!

Overall, the place is value for money and I would gladly visit and bring friends...

Our family went to Salakot Al Fresco Dining in Silang May 15, 2022 after having our beloved pet cremated. The reason I said so, is to apologize that I am not in the highest spirits when we dined here. Perhaps I will return so I can give a fairer observation of this restaurant. Having said that, i really did feel better when I entered the main pavilion, it is spacious, well ventilated (the ceiling is high), the decor is Philippine inspired. The chairs and table wooden. The tables long, the shortest can seat 8 persons. They also have elevated huts where people can dine kubo style. They also round huts that can seat i think up to 12 people. The chairs are the right size, it is not too low or high for the table. Now the food, we ordered the salted egg rice, bagnet kare kare, binagoongang bagnet, grilled squid, cheesy bangus bake (I don't think i recalled their exact names on the menu). I like the presentation of the cheesy bangus bake, grilled squid and binagoongang bagnet. They all tasted great, although the bangus for me tasted more cheese than fish. I do appreciate the fact that they serve free water. Some places don't serve water anymore which is just sad. We also ordered the lychee slush and ripe mango shake. I was kinda disappointed that they didn't serve the drinks in tall glass glasses, but instead opt to serve it in thin plastic take out glasses. The place have so many guests but they seem to serve them very well, the tables are cleared very fast and you don't have to wait so long for orders to arrive and you can always find a server/waiter to call when you need something. I just wish they have 2 rest rooms. For a place that big and with so many customers, it only has...