Chow Chronicles, Cuisine, Filipino, General Santos

Ranchero, Re-visiting a Childhood Fave Resto In Gensan

Ranchero or widely known by Generals as Ranchero Grill opened their newest branch in Gensan just this second quarter of 2024 at National Highway, beside Burger King. For the Generals, it is a known homegrown restaurant that has stand through time and has garnered patronage from people in General Santos from all walks of life for the last decades.

Hearing the name, Ranchero, people will be taken back to time where parties and events were hosted in their original branch. It is remembered as the restaurant with a cowboy themed place that served delicious grilled meat such as their famous baby back ribs. Some people would remember it as the restaurant that served delicious and fresh honey dews and dragon fruits which were widely uncommon in General Santos at the time.

For years, Ranchero, has been the number one high-end restaurant and frequented by known people in General Santos City. People would flock and visit Ranchero on Sundays and is the go-to for events. Now, with more options in the food scene and competing with brand new generation of restaurateurs, aesthetics and innovative food options, how does it hold up?

Menu

Review

Ranchero is a famous restaurant name in General Santos City. I remember in the 1990s, it was a very expensive restaurant and one of the few that is frequented by the rich and elite people in Gensan. Growing up, it has been where my friends in college celebrated their birthdays and debuts, and my parents’ friend’s anniversaries and weddings.

As Gensan grew economically, so is the taste of the people in the City. More choices were offered to the market and Ranchero was less talked about over the years but still existing.

Now, that they opened their newest branch and redefining their whole aesthetics to suit the new generation of consumers, I went and revisited those food we used to order when I was a kid. At least, those suitable for a group of six people with varying preferences.

We tried the following dishes – Pochero ala Ranchero, Crispy Tilapia, Tuna Kinilaw, Karekare and their Ranchero Fried Rice.

To start my review, their restaurant location is nice as it is within the National Highway and mostly accessible to people with private vehicles but not so much for those commuting. Their location is big, wide, and well ventilated. Their service is fast as when you order food, it gets delivered quicker than the expected waiting time of 15-20 minutes. Though nice for hungry diners, my issue with it is that it sacrifices the quality of the food. Most of the food served were not hot. The pochero and kare kare was lukewarm bordering cold. The fried rice is cold as well. It downgrades the experience by some points. Though, I appreciate that their staff is really attentive and nice.

As to the food here are the following ratings and our overall comments. The rating of the food is rated averaging six people’s scores base on taste, value for price, presentation, and quality.

We start with Crispy Tilapia garnering a score of 6.8/10. The tilapia has a nice crispy texture. Nice crunch and validates the price. However, the score was low as it lacked flavor and was not seasoned enough. Apart from that, it was really dry. The good thing about it is that it doesn’t have the muddy taste you usually get from eating tilapia. The buro, fermented fish (similar to a bagoong), doesn’t compliment well with the tilapia and seems a Tagalog adjacent dip rather than Bisaya one.

Next is the tuna kinilaw with a score of 8/10. The vinegar mix is delicious but was lacking. We had to request additional vinegar mix so that you can soak the tuna well and let the vinegar cook the fish. The serving size is a little small but the fish cuts were bigger than other restos. I prefer small cuts for kinilaw so the fish flavor isn’t too overwhelming. The veggies in the kinilaw is also small in portion. Note, you can opt for their kinilaw with or without the mayonnaise. I am not a fan of mayo on kinilaw so we opt for the simplest mixture.

Going to the red meat, we rate their karekare a 7/10. The serving size is small for its price. It only had around 2-3 slices of meat. The peanut broth was more on the buttery side and the peanut stew doesn’t shine so well. The broth is thick but does not capture the essence of the karekare flavor we are looking.

Next is their Pochero ala Ranchero which we rate at 7/10. Their pochero style is a mixed of the tagalog pochero with tomato sauce and on the sweeter side. We tried to order this as they mentioned its their bestseller only to end up disappointed. Apart from being not a fan of sweet soups, the slices of meat is small with more bones than meat and only consist of 2-3 pieces. It also had less veggies. The ultimate downgrade on the rating though is that it is not served hot and bordering cold. Though we could have requested to re-heat the food, it still was not a nice experience having to send back food to the kitchen.

Lastly, we tried their Ranchero Fried rice. Despite it being tolerably cold, the rice was a delight and was flavorful enough to have a good experience while eating along their crispy tilapia. It is greasy though but is super packed with flavors. Not the best fried rice we’ve had but a really good experience at Ranchero. It’s 7.75/10 for us.

Ranchero may be a favorite for some but I can say it isn’t mine. I do feel like there were changes on food recipe or I might have overgrown my favorites. It didn’t help that majority of our food were served cold. However, if I am to go back at Ranchero, I would definitely try their baby back ribs and see if it can compete with the new food places in Gensan.

I can see that it’s still a lot of people in Gensan’s favorite but I have outgrown mine.

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