Where to begin with this place that offers any number of options from either asian or pacific islander cusine.
When I looked up this place, it had relatively good reviews, the interior looked clean and cozy and I thought to myself why not?
Upon entering the entire place has a woodsy sort of vibe. Lots of hardwood, nothing wrong about that. There are some festive pillows off to the side on the pew-like seats that adorn the wall. Likely they haven't been washed ever as the white has now turned an interesting shade of light grey. But I will say the interior was clean. The odd thing though is think to yourself the staples of asian cooking. Garlic, ginger, scallion, shallot, msg, soy sauce, oyster sauce, any number of fermented pastes. These smells were.... absent from the area. Entirely. It's not as if they used air freshener to eliminate it, it was just gone.
A harbinger of the 5th horsemen of culinary apocolypse.
My asian ancestors would roll over in their grave at the sight of some of this food. The lumpia was freshly fried but was $10. The fried spring rolls that are made and served en-masse during holidays. Were 10 dollars. I get the economy and the state of the food industry but this is tragic.
The real food crime was their brunch "everything but the kitchen sink bowl"
It was served on coconut rice, which had the world's faintest taste of coconut. It was as if you killed a real coconut and through some necromantic spell, imparted the barest essence of coconut into the rice. There are haunted houses with stronger presences than this rice had coconut.
In this bowl was rice, egg, (good start and debatably the most asian of the ingredients presented), spam (a staple of asian food, but sadly there was only a very thin slice, cut in half to make it seem as if there was more), two small pieces of pork belly (slightly dry and wish there was more), some potato/chipped meat hash (super... ethnic hash?), and most bafflingly of all, queso and gravy.
Now I have eaten a good number of asian foods from different cultures and places and never have I ever seen an asian place try to place gravy or queso on its food and this place had both. It instantly smothered out any other flavors that would have been present and worse of all, I couldn't distinguish them from each other. Even blind tasting them, they visually looked identical just that one had more... color? Seasonings in it?
I would challenge you to name a single asian ingredient. Sesame seeds, soy sauce, garlic, ginger, scallion, shallot, hell even honey, mushrooms, spring onion. Not a single one was present, or distinguishable in this food. It is disingenuous to call this at all asian or island inspired and quite frankly it disgusts me. Avatar the Last Airbender is more asian than this cuisine. The live action. There I said it. I had to admit that I watched that movie and that's the second worst thing about this post cause the worst is the bowl I was served. I would say dishonor upon your family and family cow but there was no beef in this dish.
Worse of all my server was absent for most of the meal, attending to "another thing she had to do" but no other tables were being waited by her and she checked in with me once to take my order and once to give me the check. No water, no check after food was served to see if everything was alright. More absent than a high school senior's mind in April.
I shall not be going back as this would likely incur the wrath of the entire nation of the Philipines for giving this any more attention it deserves. read more