Hercules: Choko's Cuisine - Filipino food and the best chicken salad in the East Bay

[rworange]

This pleasant Filipino restaurant with a helpful staff replaced the dreadful Vivian's Kusina.

It is mainly steam table and it was 10 minutes to closing so it was looking tired. There was a nice refrigerated glass carosel with plastic deli containers of wicked purple ube, pleaant green padnam, tall plastic cups with the start of halo halo and the chicken salad. I went with the chicken salad.

Very nice cubes of white chicken with macaroni and touches of raisin, pineapple, carrots and celery. There wasn't big pieces of the fruit and veggies so they didn't overwhelm or make the salad too sweet. I usually eat a little bit and have food for other meals. I polished off the chicken salad in one sitting and right now I'm craving more.

The halo halo was light and refreshing. The usual things on the bottom like beans, maybe flan and other identified to me stuff which was topped with a really good tapioca, crushed ice, ice cream and some excellent crunchy rice crispy little thingies.

The ice cream is ube or mango by Magnolia Tropical ice cream. They were nice and gave me a little of each. I really liked Magnolia. The mango was intensly flavored and the ube was actually good and more than just purple-colored. i liked the mango better though.

They open at 8:30 on Saturday and evesdropping on a conversation with another customer, it seems they do some special dishes on Saturday.

They also do catering and in addition to Filipino dishes they have American dishes like chicken rosemary, roasted rosemary pork, roast beef, Ribeye steak, baked macaroni, seafood fettucini alfredo, etc

I liked my first visit and will try to make a visit on Saturday ... BTW, Hercules has a Farmers Market on Saturday from 4 - 8 pm.

Choko's is the nicest-looking Filipino restaurant in this area and the chicken salad is the bomb ... in a good way.

Anyone else tried it?

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Choko's Cuisine
1511 Sycamore Ave, Hercules, CA 94547

[kare_raisu]

This chicken salad sounds awesome -- thanks for the tip. (tommorow a paleta in escondido!)

[rworange]

Mmm ... my favorite place ... eat a couple for me.

I forgot, Choko's has some Filipino sodas and canned drinks.Some orange soda starting with an "H"

Also there was a sign on the wall that said "Tapsilog - we're cooking as you order" Not sure what that was all about.

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Choko's Cuisine
1511 Sycamore Ave, Hercules, CA 94547

[vanillababy]

hi, im a filipino...and tapsilog is a typical fast food meal to us... tapsilog is a short name for three words. Tap, for "tapa" ( pronouced as ta-pa, it is like beef jerky in the states). Si, for "sinangag" ( si-na-ngag, it is fried rice with lots of garlic and a bit of salt). Log, for itlog. (pronouced as it-log, it is an filipino term for egg)
"We're cooking as you order" simply means that food there are served fresh and cooked as customers ordered, not precooked or fast food.

[rworange]

Thanks so much vinillababy. That was great info and a big help.

[Melanie Wong]

Hi, thanks for posting.

It sounds like Antarctic Widow has sinigang, a tart soupy dish, rather than the fried rice you're describing.

[DezzerSF]

That chicken salad sounds like my Filipino aunt's recipe. Funny how she would never give me the recipe!

[rworange]

Went to breakfast this morning. The garlic fried rice, sunnyside-up egg, tomato topped with house-made green mango chutney, tapsilog (beef) and sausages was good, but Marylou's still reigns supreme in the area of Filipino breakfasts
http://www.chowhound.com/topics/35801...

One problem was that the tapsilog wasn't fried to order and the steam table items were luke warm and not steamy. They seem to do mainly take-out business so this might not be a problem as a result. People are just heating things when they get home.

It is a lovely little restaurant so I ate there and they are very nice people. The sweet green mango chutney was pretty good and was popular. It sold out while I was there. A jar is $5.50.

The crazy purple ube was too much to resist, so I bought a small container to take home. It has a dense almost fudgy texture and cocolnut taste with a pleasant little tang. I wonder if people eat this plain or spread it on something like cream cheese ... bagels and ube anyone?

They didn't have baked goods and said they would probably start selling them near the holidays like Thanksgiving. They are new and at first they carried baked goods but until they build up the business, they don't want to make baked goods.

I think this is a promising business and will drop by from time to time to see what's new.

[AntarcticWidow]

After reading your original post, I stopped by for lunch yesterday while out running errands. I grew up eating "chocolate meat", but passed on the dinuguan only because I want to keep my cholesterol level in check. (I allow myself to eat it once a year but I have to have a truly powerful craving before I will order it.) But what I saw in the steam table looked good.

I ordered pretty simply - pork sinigang and ampalaya (bitter melon). It came with two (large) scoops of rice. The sinigang was rib meat and had a few vegetables like chinese long bean, onion, bok choy. The broth was pleasantly sour and the meat not too fatty. The ampalaya was not overly bitter but it was a tad salty. Still, pretty delish to me.

The food was hot and served in real plates and bowls. No plastic cutlery, metal fork and spoon was rolled up in a cloth napkin. A video of Sade performing a live concert was on the TV. There were three tables already seated when I got there, by the time I'd finished the room was full.

As much as I love Marylou's up the road, their dining are is pretty small so you pretty much have to get your food to go. Nice to know that when I don't want to bring my food back to the office, I can sit and eat in at Choko's.

[rworange]

Thanks for reporting back and hope you'll keep us updated on what's good there. That really is a pleasant little restaurant. I'm more of a take-out person but it was really nice just to sit down and have breakfast there.

I've gone at off hours so it is good to hear they have lots of sitdown business too.

I forgot, near the register is a little tray of sauces, fish sauce, vinegar, I think, and three others.

[pilinut]

Ube doesn't really have much of a flavor--more like a slightly fragrant sweet potato. And what did you mean by a "tang"? it shouldn't be sour at all. If it is, it's spoiled.

Halaya de ube (ube jam) is usually eaten straight. (At least in my family, as we are not big on delayed gratification.) Some people might spread it on bread or puto (steamed rice cake), but the most common uses are in halo-halo (a generous dollop along with all the other sweet stuff under the ice), or with ice cream, either as a topping (especially good on macapuno) or mixed into an ice cream base before freezing to make ube ice cream.

[rworange]

Thanks for the name and the info. I tried some more ot see what it was I meant by tang and didn't catch any until a slight after taste ... sort of like cream cheese but setting the slight tang factor in cream cheese at a 10, the ube is a 1. Could be coming from what I'm guessing is the coconut milk in it. There's a definate coconut flavor to it.

Though it is much more dense, the mouthfeel made me think it might be spread on something like cream cheese. I bet it would be very good in halo halo. I am so far enjoying like you, direct from container to mouth. I did try some on an Irish scone ... yeah, that didn't work. Scone broke apart and the baking soda in the scone doesn't work with taro.

[Gary Soup]

Taro? Ube is not taro.

[kc72]

think ube is a purple yam.

[juan07delacruz1966]

I live in el sobrante, but i usually go to vallejo if i have a craving for filipino dishes, so i was somewhat skeptical when i decided to try this filipino restaurant, i was suprised, the food is good, i purchased dinuguan (chocolate blood) and sauteed bitter lemon, the dinuguan was not fishy and the bitter lemon was sweet, the service was excellent and the serving size and price were not bad, i will be back.