Cabalen — Restaurant in San Jose del Monte

Just decided to eat here on MIL's birthday for lunch on a weekend.

Cabalen serves the following Filipino dishes at the time of this writing and at this particular location and our party's review of each dish:

Kare-kare - The tripe is tough. Sauce is so-so. Dinuguan - It's ok. 3 out of 5. Lechon Paksiw - Also 3 out of 5. Krispy Kangkong - Battered like tempura. 4 out of 5. Tokwa't Baboy - Horrible! 1 out of 5. Bulalo - There's nothing in it but soup. It taste ok but a bit salty. 2 out of 5. Kuhol - Didn't try, too bothersome to eat. Adobo - No one dared to try this, not even the other patrons. Why? Because it is the most basic Filipino dish why would anyone waste their precious stomach space for this. Why would Cabalen even serve this? It looks so ordinary. Caldereta - Wasn't able to try, ran out. Vietnamese Salad - It's ok. 4 out of 5. Macaroni Salad - didn't try. Atsara - It's ok. 3 out of 5. Minatamis na saging - didn't try. Pritchon - The skin is perfectly crispy but bland even with the sauce. 4 out of 5. Bangus Inasal - Very bland. 1 out of 5. This should be renamed to unseasoned Bangus! Inihaw na hito - didn't try. Pancit - didn't try. Cut fruits - How can anyone screw this up? Longganisa - Good. 4 out of 5. Halo-halo - Terrible. 1 out of 5. You cannot go wrong at Chowking's instead.

Paid P509 per person. But if there are 5 paying adults in the party, and the 6th person's birthday is within the month they will dine for free.

So, was it worth it?

NO.

I'd say, the value of what each of us ate was around P200 the most. They're mostly bland. If you think you can go for 5 plates of food going for quantity instead of quality then Cabalen is worth it. But then again, the service is slow - restocking of food is very slow. The air conditioning unit at our seating is dripping. It's chaos just to get a clean set of cutleries and plates. The seats are cramped.

Only the water...

It is my first time to eat here with my family to celebrtae mother's day, since we have no choice why not to give it a try. Not so good experience. Freshness of the food that they serve is bad special seafoods only two dishes of seafoods (mussles and tilapia). Cleanliness of the place is poor, Utensils needs to be washed properly, its too oily,need to use more effective dishwashing liquid and rinse it off very...

They have a very poor customer service. We had an LBM from our last visit last October 14, 2023, I did tell them about the incident via email, and Facebook messenger yet they didn’t bother sending any kind of proper response regarding the incident only the automated response we got. The phone numbers are also...