Kalui Seafood Restaurant — Restaurant in Puerto Princesa

We have just come back from the KaLui restaurant. I don't want to be disrespectful with the opinions posted about this restaurant, but I felt mislead for those opinions. We went to that restaurant because of the great reviews but the experience was not that great. By trying to understand why the high review rates, I took a quick look at their public (mostly young and tourists) I have to say that KaLui public is still building their taste for food. KaLui is an average restaurant. Great environment, beautiful and unique decoration with really very very average food. Some pieces better than others. We order a main dish for 2 (it is the only shared dish on the menu) the presentation is okish and I have to said that the portions are quite small ( and I don't eat a lot, but if you are still hungry after the meal..then something is wrong) the taste is good but not spectacular. Some points for discussion: I don't understand why if that a dish for 2 people they brought us 3 shrimps. If it is a dish for 2 you can bring as minimal 2 or 4 shrimps. I think it is common sense. That is what happens in all restaurants were a dish for 2 is served. We asked them why and their answer was difficult to understand. Because it is a "big shrimp" or because it is "how we do it". Two waiters answering at the same time. There was no intention to make us feel better or comfortable with the dish. And I fully understand it..since their public is mostly very young people I think it is not often that they get this kind of question and therefore they don't have an answer to it. As we were still hungry the owner recommended us the seafood side dish. We took it...incredibly salty. All the taste of the seafood was lost because of the salt. A pity. Another thing is that when we paid the owner who was our waiter counted the money on the table. That is very low low and low level. A good point is that he saw our dissatisfaction and brought us a coconut...

A visit to Puerto Princesa will not be complete if you won’t try Kalui Restaurant. This multi-awarded restaurant specializes in Filipino food and aims to offer a unique dining experience. Its frontage is unremarkably unnoticeable but don’t let this deceive you. As you enter the restaurant, you will be greeted by their courteous waiters. Guests are requested to take off their footwear and are given a basket to store them. When I saw how pristine and shiny their wooden floor was I understood why we had to remove our footwear. The floor is slippery if you’re wearing socks or stockings so thread carefully. We didn’t have a reservation but luckily there was a vacant table for three. I immediately noticed that the setting is in a relaxing open-air dining room of a traditional and well maintained wooden house. The restaurant is decorated with a a smorgasbord of art pieces which probably the owner collected from his many travels abroad. The place is comfortably cool despite having no air-conditioning units whatsoever.

For our food, we ordered the lunch special (PhP1,500.00) which consisted of eggplant fries with a great dip, mixed seafood sinigang in coco water, tuna belly sinugba with lato seaweed as siding, sweet and sour prawns, seafood sisig, stingray curry and fruit cuts in a young coconut fruit topped with moscovado sugar.

I love the crispness of their eggplant dip, the tangy sweetness of their seafood sinigang (I discovered that they used coco water this the sweet taste) and got enamored with their stingray curry! The rest I just find so-so!

Service is above par. The waiters are courteous and there seem to be a precision in their actions. I have to take my hats off to the kitchen personnel for churning out their viands in a timely manner. Amazing work there!

Check them out but make sure you have reservations.

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ 💫...

Make reservations ahead of time, we were told. So we booked for 6PM. From the outside, it didn’t look like much, but as we went inside the restaurant, it felt entering into a different world. There were so many things that caught our eye. We couldn’t resist taking photos. My colleagues even swooned about the design of the comfort rooms.

The menu was a bit disappointing for me. There wasn’t much to choose from. We were already warned beforehand that Kalui served mostly seafood. But we still tried it anyway, thinking that there might be something hidden in the “mostly seafood” menu. There were no pork, beef, or chicken dishes, but the waiter offered to order Chicken BBQ from a nearby restaurant.

The unimpressive menu was compensated by attentive and thoughtful service. Once we finalized our choices, we were immediately served free “lato” with calamansi to whet our appetite. Our food didn’t take that long to arrive. The whole ritual seemed to function like clockwork; they were accepting the next round of reservations at 8PM, so I guessed that they really had to keep things running efficiently.

I ordered a Choice Catch of Squid, while the rest of my colleagues shared the Kalui Special of the Day Set. The food, in general, wasn’t that spectacular, but it was ok. The Fish Roll in Coco Cream, which came with the set, was notable; it tasted and smelled like some Thai curry. When we finished the main course, they served us complimentary slices of papaya, watermelon, and pineapple, sprinkled with brown sugar, and served in a halved coconut.

Overall, the highlight of our Kalui experience was the ambiance, the quality of service, and the story you get to tell people about having tried it out. I wouldn’t bring friends again to Kalui just for the...