mmm....since the "Overpriced/Overhyped Restaurants and Fastfood" thread was closed, I've decided to continue that thread (19 pages long already) but with more balance in mind to avoid unnecessarily disparaging the reputations of certain restaurants. Following the traditional customer feedback sheet given by some restaurants to patrons, the suggested template for this new thread: Name of Restaurant (including branch or location)/ Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent)/ Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent)/ Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent)/ Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent)/ Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent)/ Price (Rating scale: 1 (Poor/Expensive) to 5 (Excellent/Affordable)/ Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent)/ Comments or Opinions __________________. Please be fair and objective. We all like to dine out so make this thread as useful as possible to guide us with our choice. If you are, in any way, shape or form, connected with the restaurant that you are reviewing, PLEASE make a personal disclosure at the end of your review. Write away. Thanks. P.S. Pictures are encouraged. By restaurants, I mean ALL types of eating outlets across all price points (turo-turo, student meal places, food trucks, hole-in-the-wall and, yes, Michelin-starred restaurants <--- if you dare! Lol!)). Exclusions: Buffet places since there is already an existing thread and food carts.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Songkran, Valero St. Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 - it is a notch above a hole-in-a-wall. They do sell "Thai street food" after all. The aircon is a bit weak. Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 3 Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments or Opinions: In the past 2 days I've sampled 6 out of their 39 or so dishes on their menu. The stand-outs for me: Green Chicken Curry. You can request this dish to be spicy but you'll sweat a lot. The grilled beef salad is also good. The cilantro, lime, and fish sauce gives it that cleansing + savory flavor. The Tom Yum soup is also a hit. It can be ordered in half portions if you're eating alone. The crispy pork salad is bit of a miss. The pork resembles bagnet but the one I got is not that crispy. The Yellow fish curry is good but the green chicken curry still scores a notch higher for me. The shrimp cakes are ok but the sauce is much too sweet for my taste.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Charlie's Grind and Grill Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 - always served fresh Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 - there's more to them than burgers Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 - fast and attentive personnel Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 - Ronac's 5 and Kapitolyo's 3 evens out the spread Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 - same as above Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 3 - priced just right Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 burgre worth craving for Comments or Opinions: I hope their dogs are more readily available.
mmm....I definitely agree with this review. The humongous burgers are enough to tame even the most carnivorous appetite. The only problem is the street-side parking which is lacking since Kapitolyo is a busy area.
Nice! This looks like a promising thread for people that love to dine out. raypin gave a great format but if I may suggest an improvement to the price rating since expensive and inexpensive are very relative. Original format: Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive) Suggested format: Price Range per person: (P50-P200), (P201-P500), (P501-P1000), (P1001-P2000), (P2001 and up: please specify the price)
mmm.....I'm cool with that. Just to qualify, the price range is for a typical meal (drinks, entrée, dessert) per person?
Yeah. Typically, it should represent the amount a person would shell out when he/she eats at that restaurant.
Name of Restaurant: Chuck’s Deli in Eastwood City Food Quality (Rating scale: 1(poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3.5 Food Variety (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 2 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Poor/Expensive) to 5 (Excellent/Affordable): 2 Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments: The sandwiches (the star of the show,so to speak) is absolutely delicious. The bread that they use has that greatjust-baked flavor and texture. The filling for roast beef sandwich is on thegenerous side. It is a bit expensive (Price range: Php500 to 1000 per person) but it included hand-cut french fries(fat ones) and drink, and the portion size is good for sharing. The potato chipis freshly made (really nice).
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Chuck's Deli Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 - the bread they use here is really good. Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 - Just the right mix Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 2 Great Price/Generous serving size Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments or Opinions: I'm not a big fan of sandwiches but I love Chucks Deli =)
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Rub Rib's (Sct. Rallos branch) Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 4 Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments or Opinions: This restaurant,for me, offers the best value-for-money ribs in Manila. Two large slabs of ribs cost around Php700 with 2 side dishes of your choice. They have grilled chicken and fish for those who want viands other than pork. The place is small---wait, more like cramped. They don't have their own parking space so you have to park along Sct. Rallos where patrons of other restos in the area park as well. They have a branch in Kapitolyo as well but I frequent the Sct. Rallos branch due to proximity.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Jang Ga Nae (Aguirre Ave., BF Homes, Parañaque City) Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3.5 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 — The owner herself works the dining area. Lots of attentive staff. Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 — Korean customers smoke inside the restaurant. Choose your table wisely. Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 — passable. The toilet does not smell but a bit old. Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 4 — Lots of good bargains. You can gorge on the various banchan (side dishes) for free (with refills if you wish). Expensive for two: figure on P600 per head; more reasonable if in a group of 4 or more. Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3.5 — Maybe great to visit once a month at most. Comments or Opinions: I suggest the stewed beef ribs (ask for the leaner cuts), the grilled mackerel (so good!), skip the soups, barbecue beef ribs or pork cuts wrapped in lettuce leaves, the meat-free bibimbap. Remember that many of the restaurants along Aguirre St. are former residences so fixtures may not be up to snuff for public/commercial use. Parking is decent even on a busy day.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Hanakazu (Aguirre cor Elizalde BF Homes, Parañaque City) Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 — (Disclosure) I'm a regular so I get good service. Other noobs in the resto seem to enjoy their wait staff's service. Several of the wait staff worked at Tsukiji. Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 — Super clean, nice tatami rooms, zen-like surroundings. When you're inside, you're isolated from the lifeless, impersonal and humid streets of BF Parañaque. Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 — Clean and well-appointed toilets. Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 4 — The lunch teishoku are a great bargain. Ask the wait staff for the English translated menu du jour. More expensive for dinners and weekends. Expect to shell out P600 for the plentiful lunch teishoku and P800 for the a la carte offerings. Dessert is free fruit. Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 — You get what you pay for. They fly in their fish and other fresh ingredients from Japan everyday (like Tsukiji does). In fact, you can examine the sanma in the iced chest before you order it. Comments or Opinions: The owner is the Mr Otsuka, former sushi chef of Tsukiji when Mr Katayama still ran that Makati resto. Closed on Mondays. No lunch specials on weekends and holidays (a la carte only). Parking is plentiful and exclusive to Hanakazu (Tip the parking guy; he will escort you inside the resto with an umbrella if you come on a hot day.) My comfort food there is hokke (grilled smoked fish; related to mackerel but WITHOUT the excess fish oil or oily after taste even hours after lunch, sukiyaki served the Japanese way (with fresh raw egg dipping), hiyayakko (cold tofu side dish), mixed oshinko (pickled lettuce et al), wakame salad with yuzu.
Name of Restaurant: Deli Boys Location: Northeast Square - Greenhills (along Connecticut St.) Budget: 400-500/pax (because you might end up buying cold cuts and cheese for take out) Food Quality (Rating scale: 1(poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 Food Variety (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3.5 Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (Poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Poor/Expensive) to 5 (Excellent/Affordable): 4 Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4.5 Comments: Deliboys is a quiet little casual place nestled in Greenhills. What I like about it is that they don't just serve very, very good sandwiches, they serve good steak and pasta, too, among others. The chef/part owner prepares the meals personally, and the place is quite small with only him, his brothers/business partners and a cashier to divide up the work. Be prepared to wait for some time especially if you order a number of items. My personal favorite is their turkey pastrami sandwich - for about P200+ you get a delicious sandwich packed with generous servings of cold cuts, cheese and veggies. Actually, any sandwich of theirs is good. If you want to make your sandwich yourself, you can just buy cold cuts, bread and cheese from them. They'll recommend good chese and cold cuts combos. Cold cuts, cheese and bread are surprisingly cheap, in my opinion - you can walk away with enough to last you a week for less than P500. :redface:
This is how you do it. When I closed the other thread, some members actually wrote to me via PM, requesting that I reopen it. I gave the same reply that I posted when I closed the thread: that the thread used relative and also pretty strong words, which lead to strong and sometimes heated opinions. And although the previous discussion has started to cool down, I closed it anyway because I didn't want a recurrence of the heated exchanges. Given the thread title's wording, it was bound to be repeated. But I also told these members that I was not closing the doors to the "spirit" of the thread. I said if anyone can reboot the discussion with a better-titled thread and without the strong words, I'm all for it. Executed right, such a thread could certainly be informative. However, executed wrong or use the wrong wording and we'll have flare-ups every now and then. I think this is how that thread should be rebooted. I think this is how it should be done. Many thanks to raypin. Carry on, folks.
That's true Jo. This way we can avoid pithy comments like, "It sucks!" without having to explain why it does.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Brew-Kus (Valero, Makati) Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 4 (around P150 - P200/person) Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments or Opinions: I've been a returning customer of Brew-Kus for quite some time. It is a great place to enjoy your food with friends or pick a couch and table in one of the corners, prop your laptop and surf the web while eating. The resto seems small from the outside but it is quite big--lots of seating area and the tables are placed in such a way that diners won't feel cramped. They have a wide variety of offerings in their menu: pasta, rice dishes, sandwiches, desserts and their specialty which is tea. My personal favourites are the Wild Mushroom Pasta (cream-based pasta with an assortment of mushroom, prosciutto and truffle oil) and their Shrimply Loaded sandwich. I have to say that I'm not a fan of their tea which tastes too floral for me. Maybe that's just me. But overall, I love this restaurant. Oh, and they have free wifi as well.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): Poco Deli, Kapitolyo Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 5 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3. Too slow during lunch time crowd Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4. I like the big wooden tables especially in the inner room. Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 4 (around P300 - P500/person) - Not your typical lunch budget (for me at least) Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments or Opinions: For some reason I just keep on going back for their sausage and cheese platter, bacon slab with eggs and bacon rice, sliced steak on new york bagel (although can be too "malitid" sometimes). My officemates love their truffle oil pasta but just ok for me. Like other Kapitolyo restos, parking is really difficult.
Name of Restaurant (including branch): The Vegetarian Kitchen, Mother Ignacia Ave, QC Food Quality (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Food Variety(Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Service (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Ambiance (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 3 Cleanliness (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Price (Rating scale: 1 (Inexpensive) to 5 (Expensive): 4 (around P200 - P300/person) Overall Value (Rating scale: 1 (poor) to 5 (Excellent): 4 Comments or Opinions: My wife and I have come to love this little place. The cook does amazing things with vege-meat and is pretty handy with a variety of spices. Portions are very generous, and can actually be shared by two. The Meatless Meat Loaf is very flavorful and well textured. I also liked their Korean Spareribs and and Spanish Calderetta. Pretty much everything we've tasted there has been pretty good. Restos like this are a blessing when one is making an effort to cut down the meat volume in one's diet.
