Blackbeard's Seafood Island - El Nido Palawan — Restaurant in El Nido

We were asked to pay 50 pesos per hour for electricity! Backstory: There's a typhoon in El Nido the past few days which affected our work. We were looking for a place to work around town. We are ordering just drinks cos we just really needed a place to work and we mentioned this to the waiters when we were ordering drinks. We order 2 or more drinks and stay for a few hours to work. Our MacBooks charge 30 mins to completely charge. We did that once when we went there. All of a sudden, a waiter came in to ask us to order food. Or they will charge 50 per hour for electricity. After another came. I politely asked if there was a policy before that says we have to order food or they will charge 50 per hour, and the waitress said No. Before leaving, I talked to the director of the place and asked why they were forcing us to order food and she said "We will waive it for you", I told her she shouldn't even say that, cos it was not even on the bill that we will be charged 50 per hour just for ordering drinks, also when nothing was communicated to us that there's a fee for staying and just ordering drinks. Nobody told us that there is even a minimum order requirement.

We were treated like non-paying customers when we ordered a couple of drinks or more. Plus the service charge. We even give tips! The restaurant is empty. Only 1 table was occupied on the ground floor, and no customers on the 2nd floor. Fans and lights were also closed upstairs when we were there. So it just doesn't make sense.

There is no specific nationwide law in the Philippines that mandates customers to order food when visiting a restaurant. Customers should have the option to order drinks only if they wish to do so. Not only that, the Consumer Protection Act of the Philippines says you cannot harass or coerce a customer to buy something more than what they want.

Before the waiters came, I had planned what to order for dinner there but we were waiting to finish work first. But given that they were asking us to pay 50 pesos per hour for staying because we used their outlets for charging for 30 mins. Then, I decided not to support this business anymore.

Suggestion for the business: Have clear and FAIR policies and COMMUNICATE them to your customers. Don't threaten your customers that you will be charged per hour of electricity. It would have been better if we were told that you have a food order requirement. We will be happy to follow policies if it was communicated. Don't say you will waive the fee if there's not even a policy written to be seen by customers about these new "FEES". Or better yet, remove your drinks section so only customers who want to eat can go there. Don't keep sending waiters to harass us to order more than...

TL;DR Not worth the price

Staff The waiter for our table was nice and tried to accommodate our requests. However, the lady handing out the bill and taking payments was a bit difficult to work with, and didn't try to find a way to give back proper change. She also almost got all our change had we not noticed.

Menu Almost half the things we wanted from the menu were not available.

Food The food we ended up getting was OK except for the "Linapay" which was REALLY GOOD and oddly the cheapest. Grilled liempo served was raw. Halo-halo ingredients were only 3 or 4 with 0 fruits and their reason was that they already ran out of ingredients. They should've told us beforehand and we didn't have to order the expensive...

I have 0 negative comments about the resto!!! DEF A MUST TRY WHEN GOING TO EL NIDO!!!! The service is superb!!! And you get more then what you paid for!! My husband and I went here for our last dinner in el nido. And it's fhe best dinner that we had!!! We ordered Magellan's boodle feasft for 2, we thought we couldnt finish it, but we did!! The kuya that assisted as was also so nice. The staffs are so friendly and accomodating. They also serve the food hot. Will definitely go here again if we visit el nido in the future. Hoping that I can try the crabs in the bucket kn the future, we didnt order it coz my husband dont eat crabs HAHAHHAA. But ahhhhhh thank you again for the nice fooooood....