Romulo Café — Restaurant in Makati

Very excited to fine at Romulo. The food was, for the most part, fantastic. We ordered Cheese & Vigan longganisa dumplings and crispy squid for entries followed by sinigang na liempo, kaldareta and adobo rice. For dessert we ordered the tugon and ube mouse cake.

The dumplings came as tiny deep fried triangles filled with longganisa meat and flecks of cheese throughout, sitting on a bed of fried crunchy noodles and accompanied by a lovely vinegar. Perfect!

The crispy squid was not what we expected. Thinly sliced, deep fried pieces of squid were tasty but not amazing. These need to be served with rice.

I'm not sure if its a Filipino thing or just at Romulo but our mains came out as we were still eating our entrees. In fact, it was only a minute or so after the crispy squid was placed on our table.

The sinigang was amazing and contained twice cooked liempo. We both like a good amount of sour and this dish certainly did not disappoint.

The kaldareta was also very nice. Tender pieces of beef in a delicious sauce. Probably the best one I've ever had.

The ube mousse cake was underwhelming. It was basically a spine cake with ube buttercream through the middle and around the outside to hold the white chocolate decoration in place. The white chocolate did overpower the dish.

The turon and ice cream was nice. Tiny fingers of turon accompanied by ice cream finished the evening off well.

While it may sound like my review is not selling the place, the food is quite good. I had extremely high expectations, probably too high, that weren't fully met but I would go back there again for sure!

The one thing I was disappointed with was the service. The Front of House staff occupied themselves with their phones in sight of guests, were too busy talking to each other and not paying attention to guests. I saw, and was one of, a number of guests who had to wave down a waiter to receive service. It was not busy and for the number of floor staff, service should have been impeccable. I know as I work in this exact field.

The business has a good name so improve your FOH service to help encourage guests...

Ambience (you can be forgiven for that crawling roach on the white walls) and the food (gising gising lived up to it's name, baby squid so tender and kinda creamy-or is it just me, and the always crispy lechong kawali!) makes this place worthwhile. But the best part is the fabulous ube cake!! Make sure to make room for this dessert! What needs improvement-service (or maybe I was not lucky enough to have been attended by the most alert staff) and the coffee (really guys...with the impact of your image i was expecting something more potent than what I had- or probably another unlucky day for me to have coffee here). The price is worth it. The serving is enough. The accoustics can be poor if you plan to have a meeting here (I can hear conversations from 3 tables away-or maybe another unlucky day for me to be seated in that part of tge resto)...but overall it has been a nice...

The Romulo Cafe may have been sitting along the busy street in the down town side of Makati business Center for quite some time for good reason. They have been serving popular Filipino dishes that have been a talk of the town. Curious I have become for many years until I got the chance to try it out.

It was a quiet Sunday morning when I got to the place. Parking can be challenging along the street right in front of the establishment. Watch out for the stairs as some tiles were broken. The building needs renovation.

There were no customers at that time because the whole place only accepts reservations for private events. It was my uncle's birthday and the whole clan was invited. The function room was able to accommodate 40 people. The food setup was nice. They served buffet and the food was great! The servers were quick...