Kuya J SM Cabanatuan — Restaurant in Nueva Ecija

When we got to the entrance, the staff already handed us a list of what's available (maybe less than half of their menu) so we won't get "disappointed" but we gave it a chance. As we were ordering (from the very limited list) the staff had to go back and forth the counter/kitchen to see if what we ordered was available. I mean, what's that list for? So then, a few minutes after ordering, the staff came back (again) to tell us that 2 dishes from our order was on hold (even tho we already picked from that very limited list). We wanted to cancel and just go but the waiter told us that the kitchen had already started cooking our other orders, so, we said, okay. Christmas naman. Just replace them with whatever is available. But the nightmare didn't stop there. They served us plain rice when they said they only had garlic rice. The "platter" for sharing (2-3pax supposedly) was barely 2 cups, undercooked and smelled like it burned. The shareable dishes were served in little bowls, it was actually funny. Food tasted weird. Or maybe, we were already too upset to enjoy anything. The sinigang tasted like pares but sour. Worst, just when we were paying, we heard the waiter, (who told us that the dish we ordered wasn't available) recommending that same dish to the customers next to us. Like, nananadya ba kayo? Now, I'd been to kuya Js many times before, pero first time lang namin sa branch nato. My family said they'd never come back here because it ruined our post-xmas celebration and lagi na lang nila maaalala yung pangit...

I wasn't able to take a picture of the food because we are already hungry. The atmosphere was really great which is a great start. Now, the waiting time for our food was about 25 minutes. My friend ordered Kare-kare and Chicken sisig, while I ordered Beef kaldereta. Since it's my first time eating here I was excited. I was also contemplating if I ordered a group size since it was 300 pesos above. But when it was served to us, the quantity was almost for a kid's size, same with the rice. My friend told me that the kare-kare lacks peanuts aside from that it's good. My friend's chicken sisig was okay while mine is... not so good. For the record, the beef is really tender but the taste is very bland. It has only 3 pieces of meat in it but I still struggle to finish it. We also ordered some ice tea but we were already done eating when we received it. If we weren't following it up, probably it would probably not be served. Another thing, when we receive the receipt, we are expecting that we will see the price per order but when we receive the receipt, it's just the total amount. But overall, the staff are really nice. The atmosphere is...

Food and service was good and their service personnel was very helpful and polite but their check-out and execution of published birthday promos and senior discount was a flop. We had 2 birthday celebrants and 2 senior citizens in out group of 7 diners bit we were told our group may only avail either 1 birthday celebrant discount OR the senior citizen discount. They erroneously advised availing the senior discount would give us a better overall discount. We waited for like 10 minutes for bill check-out and had to follow-up since we were in a rush to leave. Our total bill was supposed to be P1805 without discount but ended up with final bill at P1770. Almost P2K bill with a P35 total discount for 2 senior citizen diners? Hmmm. They claim their branch is not a franchise but this is the first time we've encountered this since we have dined at 3 other branches extending duly appropriate senior citizen discount and...