Manila Bay Cuisine

So another delicious lunch with my coworker. Grab a tray tell her you want one item or two, pick one item her to move down the line pay. Grab a glass of water. Sitdown and eat. Kare Kate is boneless delicious bite after bite. The have cantaloupe juice but I would call them first so they could reserve you one before you get there and find out there’s none for you.
They also have sweets typical Filipino desserts. Turon and banana Bbq. Caramel crispiness to the max. If it looks good like they say try it you’ll like it.

Food was good, especially after a rain day. The place can use a little update but it’s the home feeling that lets you know the food is cooked the right way (:

I wanted to go to the L&L Hawaiian Barbecue but saw this place in the same shopping center. I got excited because I found Filipino food! There aren’t any Filipino restaurants where I live and I don’t cook. I’ve been having cravings too, I should just learn. Anyway, I had one item combo with rice and kare kare with bagoong. The kare kare was good, the sauce was thick, but no veggies or tripe? Portions were good and it was only $ 5. As for the ambiance, nothing fancy, looks like one of those «hole in the wall» places. It was a little dirty, they should have cleaned up the tables or have an area where people can leave dirty trays and dishes. The restroom was old and dirty and had no soap, just big bottle of hand sanitizer. Is hand sanitizer enough? I’d like to think that the people preparing my food are washing their hands with soap and water after using the restroom. I guess that just adds to the flavor of the food. Would have given this place 3 stars but minus 1 for that.

I love this place, I’m an OG, I’ve been coming here for what maybe 20yrs now, back then I lived nearby, I now reside in Stockton and whenever I’m in the area, this is the first place I go to for Good old fashion Filipino food, it’s delish! just like how mom used to make when I was still growing up. The employees have never been very friendly, they hardly ever smile, I remember back in 1997 I think I got the original owner to smile back at me, lol. But heck I’m there to eat good food not for a smile, if you can get passed the unfriendliness, and just enjoy the food then this is the place!

Very disappointed. Ordered the palabok, ate a few bites and some of it tasted spoiled or leftover palabok. I suspect they added the previous day’s leftovers. Stopped eating and threw it in the garbage can.

rude! grouchy old women!
1^st, they were bad mouthing the man who walked in and ordered food as if they had a problem with a homeless person whose BUYING FOOD, mind you. he didnt look dirty or smell like sewage. the man approached them with manners but they bittled him. that broke my heart.
2^nd, HIGHLY OVER PRICED FOR LEFT OVER DISH AND TINY PORTION. yes, we shouldn’t consume large amount of food but, this is just down right little… did I mention left overs… disheartening
3^rd, as for the taste from the scale of 1 – 5, i give their food 2. high on sodium.
I do not recommend this joint to anyone. period.

I was pretty excited when I stumbled across here. I was on my lunch break and didnt know what to eat. I saw filipino food and I was in. First thought of the place when I walked in– old, looks dirty, but I see people sitting down eating, so coudnt be too bad. The lady who helped me did not say hello nor did she smile. She didnt address me until I asked about that longanisa staring at me (i love longanisa). I ordered the longanisa and side of rice ($ 4) and a small size arroz caldo ($ 5). My son loved the longanisa and i liked it too, but I mean how hard is it to cook sausage, especially longanisa and make it taste bad. Anyways, I ate the arroz caldo and it smelt spoiled, I was thinking it could have been the fish sauce they put in it. So YES, I ate it. One thing I must say, I love ginger, but this arroz caldo had SOOOOOOOOO much ginger. It should have been called arroz ginger LOL! There were huge chucks of ginger in it and didnt give the soup a pleasant flavor.
I would consider coming back here only when I crave filipino breakfast, otherwise, I would definitely not come back here.

Food is good. It is a bit more pricey than I would like. Satisfied with my visit but not a place I would always come back to.

I’ve been eating here at lunch for such a long time (for almost a year) despite the bad reviews, but it’s only today at lunch that I felt really disgusted. I was happily enjoying my binagoongan when this rude old man who’s an employee decided to clean the table nxt to me. I dont mind, you know, BUT make sure you dont put your dirty plate container/​tub on the table I’m occupying for the simple reason that I’M STILL EATING!!! There are other tables with no customers that you could’ve cleaned! That’s why I hate all those old pinoy folks who bring there old disgusting Filipino ways to another country!

Panda express style filipino food. Totally true! As mentioned by one of the Unilocalers who left a review of this place. I come here when I am in a mood for filipino food for lunch. Quick fast and easy. Hard to say because all the people who come here are mostly Filipinos. If you don’t know filipino foods, you shall be lost since there’s no signs explaining what things are. Rely on asking the server. I call this «turo-​turo» aka you pick and choose your dish kind of a place. Pinoys love to call things twice, like my mom used to call me by my name’s first syllable repeated twice.

I agree with Lauren T’s review. Also, when I ate there it felt like the staff was laughing at us for eating their food. It was that bad.

I will never come to this place again. At first I was pleased with their variety of prepared food in comparison to other Filipino fast foods. The lady who helped us was nice. I ordered the 2 item combo with pinakbet and mechado. After paying, I went to the bathroom to wash my hands before eating. What a mistake. The ancient wooden doors to the bathroom were greasy as he’ll and stained all over. There’s only one bathroom for men and women. It looks like it’s NEVER been cleaned. I mean EVER. The smell in the hallway to the bathroom and kitchen was of rotten sewage. I was disgusted. While in the bathroom, I overheard the cooks in the kitchen coughing and sneezing non stop. Much to my surprise, the food was actually ok. The pinakbet was really good. But I just couldn’t get past the dirtiness of the place. While eating I noticed the lady was handling cash and moving on to serving the next persons food without washing we hands! That was the last straw. Never again. One star for the decent food. If I could give a zero for cleanliness I so would.

The food was bland and looks/​taste old. The lady that served us was not friendly. On the other hand, the cashier was nice. I would not have minded the bad customer service if the food compensated for it. I will not come back here.

do yourself a favor dont go here. the food is as nasty as the customer service. I asked the guy how much they charge per med container and he just gave me a sarcastic smile so I just chose… ordered few items charged me $ 35. this place is bloody expensive. go somewhere else for the same price, where food is fresh, quality and cook to order.

When I was a little girl, I would come home from school to a house filled with the smells of my mom cooking. It was a wonderful feeling to know that my mom took so much time and effort to make a meal that clearly was made with love and took the care to prepare it the way her parents made it for her a child. Through the years, my mom has since stopped cooking Filipino meals for our family– we’re all grown up and are fairly capable of cooking for ourselves. It’s a sad, sad time.
Since it has been years since my mom has created these homey, comforting meals, I have craved Filipino food the way that she used to make it. All of you Filipinos out there know and understand this pain of not being able to ever find the flavors that you so loved growing up.
Yes, I have found places that make good Filipino food. It’s pretty hard to mess up sinigang and chicken adobo or pancit. But restaurant and fast food Filipino is always so greasy and fatty. My mom used to trim most of the fat but somehow maintained all the deliciousness (she’s a pretty amazing cook).
I walked into Manila Bay with no expectations. I DIDN’T EVEN Unilocal IT!!! For shame!!!
But I’m SOOOOO glad that I walked in that afternoon. I was pleasantly surprised that everything was already made and that I would not have to wait for my meal. I perused the different dishes– fried fish, lumpia, fried rice, adobo — the usual suspects. Then… i saw the tentacles… PUSIT!!! I was ecstatic! I ordered a two-​item combo to go. Pusit and dinuguan (my favorite!). The food looked fresh, regardless of the empty dining room.
I got home and set my plates… hmm… smells delicious! At first bite… I was a little girl again. Every bite afterwards brought me back to my childhood. The food wasn’t very greasy. It was meaty. It wasn’t all fat. It was AMAZING.
I’ve been back since to try out their other dishes, and have yet to be disappointed. I always take my food to go, so I can’t say what the dining-​in experience is like… but the lady that serves the food is always very generous with the portions and is very pleasant.

A customer deserves at bare minimum from a restaurant: a dining facility that looks and smells kempt, staff members who act with tact, and food that’s freshly prepared and cooked. This bar simply wasn’t met.
I should not be paying $ 11 for a meal (lumpia shanghai, pancit palabok, and coconut juice) that completely embarrassed the Filipino flavor profile.
My story is as follows:
As I am in line deciding my order, I gaze upon my food options that simply lacked freshness and decipherable ingredients. I see hints of crustiness peaking from the different trays, perhaps from overheating or lack of attention to an appropriate serving temperature. My family was hungry, so we decide to stick with this restaurant, though visually I was already appalled.
As I ordered lumpia shanghai, pancit palabok, and a can of buko juice, I sensed a bit of grief from my server who was very curt in her interactions with me. Usually at Filipino restaurants, I like to snag an ube (taro) dessert or maybe some leche flan. However, I caught a glimpse of the familiar sort of dirty crustiness along the perimeter of each dessert item that I decided to spare myself the extra pain.
When grabbing utensils, I needed to reach for a second fork because it had less food remnants coating its prongs. I also noticed that instead of fresh lemons to squeeze on my palabok noodles, the server had placed two small packets of lemon juice on my tray.
I sit down at a table that’s just at the midpoint of the venue, however my brother-​in-​law apparently felt he was smelling sewage from the bathroom, which was a few tables away from us.
I taste the lumpia, which was over-​fried and shriveled as a result. It lacked the appropriate fat to meat ratio an authentic lumpia shanghai should have. The dipping sauce did not shine the tangy and sweet notes I grew up with. Instead it was rather one note, and a disgusting one at that.
Pancit palabok should always have a contrast of the crunch of chicharon and toasted garlic against a savory, al dente bed of noodles lovingly coated with a complex orange sauce. This restaurant served luke warm noodles that were shriveled up and soggy. I sincerely think the heating trays impacted the structural integrity of the dish.
You would think that something that’s already canned shouldn’t be disaster-​prone. Wrong. My coconut juice tasted stale, in fact much like aluminum. But at least this was more flavorful than my food.
In summary, I really should have gone to the Red Ribbon down the street if I was so desperate for better sub-​par Filipino food. I don’t care what Filipino provence this restaurant represents, they should NOT get lumpia wrong!
On a side note, I coincidentally went to this restaurant on Christmas Eve with my family because we were in the City for the day. Santa Claus must be frowning upon me, because I clearly ate lumpias of coal.

Filipino cuisine… cheap… enough to cure the shakes and sweats and other withdrawal symptoms you might have reoccurring since you moved out of your loving Filipino home. But I have a problem with places that plate up the dishes as they do. The rice is measured into little bowls then overturned onto the plate like little igloos. Then your entrée is served in the same little bowl and placed right next the igloos of rice. I HATE THAT!
Why wouldn’t you want the entrée served on top of the rice? The gravy and sauce goes on the rice! The Caldaretta, Beef Machado, Kare-​Kare… who eats that stuff with the rice on the side??? Did they learn that at home??? Just put the rice on the plate, and ladle the dinuguan, blood, guts and all, on top of it! geeze…
I didn’t want to say anything because the nice lady behind the counter reminded me of one of my aunts.

This was my go-​to place for lunch when I was working in South SF. It was convenient and I could be in and out of the place with my food in less than 10 minutes. The food is ok but I’ve only tried three items on the menu: pork sinigang, mechado, beef calderetta. The food is alright and portions are decent. It’s cheap — I believe their two-​item combo meal is around $ 8.
This is a «turo-​turo» (point-​point) style restaurant. Basically, you just point at the food you want to eat. LOL If you’re Filipino or familiar with Filipino food, it will be easy to know what is what… but since they don’t label each dish, I think it would be difficult to know what you want if this was your first time eating Pinoy food.

We just had to somewhere in that strip mall and didn’t want to go to Red Ribbon so to have a bigger selection. Well, this turo-​turo style place certainly should get 3 stars because it filled me up, but it certainly left me wondering how they thrive when the competition in the area has so much better food. The machado and caldereta were normal good, the sisig was passable just because I was starving, but in regular circumstances I would have been more circumspect based on appearance, sogginess and then funky-​ish taste. Also, the soup with the white fish in it should be called vinegar tub with ancient fish, yeurgh!
Service was friendly — perhaps it’s best to get there when the food is fresh!

Another place where I end up strolling into every few months or so and I’m not sure why. The food is very disappointing and leaves a sickly feeling in my stomach. Red Ribbon around the corner may be more of a «chain store» but has way better quality (although limited choices) of Filipino food. The lumpia here is very soggy and the sauce you buy at the store is a lot better than what they give out here. The only good thing about the caldereta is the hot dogs inside, otherwise the meat is very tough and not tender at all.
The upside is they have huge portions, but that doesn’t really matter so much when the food is disappointing. Maybe there are more redeeming items on the men, but I haven’t tried any. Better «turo-​turo» places would be Philippine Grocery and LechGo.