Capiz by Rapsa — Restaurant in London

We've been here once before and as we were going out for my daughter's 21st birthday in Shoreditch we thought we would give it another try. The main influence here is Filipino cuisine however it's not heavily marketed as such so if you just strolled past this place and had a look inside and had a look at the menu you may not be too sure what cuisine you were looking at. There's hardly any signage outside at all even making it clear what the name of the restaurant is, let alone what type of cuisine, to the point where a friend of ours who was joining us walked past a number of times looking for it. However once inside the food and service is excellent. This is Filipino cuisine done in tapas style so all the plates are quite small so you do need a few per person just like Spanish tapas. The flavours and presentation are excellent but my only criticism would be that not enough of the dishes have the ability to fill you up so after leaving I could still eat more but if you order too much in the restaurant in order to fill you up it can get quite costly. The service was amazing from all staff members and in particular a very young staff member called Thoko, who was honestly one of the friendliest and most upbeat waitresses we've ever come across. The owners should work very hard to keep her as she is an absolute credit to the restaurant and takes the dining experience up to another level. However we were disappointed to hear that the management keep the service charge if you don't remove it from the bill, which I find inappropriate and does put me off returning. Of course you can leave a cash tip, which I did and once I asked for the service charge to be refunded, it was done without complaint but I do feel that any restaurant that keeps the service charge is being very unethical. If you haven't tried Filipino cuisine before this could be a good first starting point.

Update In response to the reply from the owner regarding service charge, I would urge you to reconsider your stance as it is massively flawed. As it stands the company receives every amount of service charge as extra income, which is undeserved as that is not the purpose of service charge. On your point about inflated hourly rate for younger staff, there is no obligation to pay anyone minimum wage & having worked in the service industry, I'm a strong believer in paying someone what they're worth & your younger staff members are worth a higher rate. The emphasis should be on quality of service, not age. With this in mind and if you were really concerned about the staff you would give them the rate they deserve and remove service charge to let customers choose to leave whatever they feel is deserved of the service they received. Keeping 12.5% of every table is not appropriate. Your response is unfortunate as on the whole the restaurant is great, as you saw from my review. To give benefit of doubt your stance could be done with the best of intention but on inspection, it definitely...

Update: Owner responded after two years to my feedback. Definitely not coming back. The response was very lame and with no accountability at all. It just shows how slow they are in serving, responding, and valuing their customers. 🤮😂

Originally posted 2 years ago: I was very disappointed that we booked this place for Valentine’s Day. I had high hopes as a Filipino that this place will actually deliver good quality food, considering the tempting advertisements and the good reviews. We actually asked for a nice seat for our reservation request which we have already booked more than a week in advance. However, they gave us a very awkward place to dine in. I know that requests can’t always be accommodated all the time, but surprisingly, a couple who just walked in the restaurant with no reservation (a white guy and an Asian lady) was given a nice couch/place to seat in. My fiancée and I let it pass as we don’t want to ruin our night and we just hoped that the food will be going to be great. We ordered ukoy fritters, Jersey oysters, longanisa sausage fried rice, soft shell crab ginataan, slow roasted lechon, calamansi juice and taro smoothie. It took like more than 30 minutes to actually get our starters, the ukoy fritter was cold and tasted like it’s made from just flour. We actually waited for more than 30 minutes again for the mains and we were disappointed with the cold rice which was full of red bell peppers and no hint of longanisa at all, which was funny considering that it is called longanisa sausage fried rice. The slow roasted lechon was the only consolation in this place, but paying £12 for 4 pieces of lechon was a joke. We ended up paying £84.93 for very small portions/plates of food, that we ended up eating again at home. I think the good reviews were coming from non-Filipinos who actually don’t have a reference of Filipino food, what it tastes like, and what it looks like. Even though it is marketed as ‘a contemporary twist’ to Filipino cuisine, their food should at least be tasty or at least served in good portions. I think ultimately, the lesson here is to not be fooled by advertisements, as pictures can be really deceiving....

Update: Just attached the pricing that Rapsa sent to us to book our evening. It explains the cost of the karaoke room.

Anyways, I hope the owners learn to read feedback one day and take it constructively to make improvements :) no where in my review did I expect Rapsa to control the weather or have air con. Rather I was just hoping they would’ve been transparent about the uncomfortable dining situation prior to us coming.

Also now that we know that this “PRIVATE” room booking warrants NO attentive wait staff present, perhaps take your private events elsewhere where servers come in to check on you. Perhaps they could even come in to check and see how we are doing in the extreme heat and offer solutions to make it more comfortable groundbreaking.

Original review: We’ve been going to Rapsa for years, and sadly I feel that it’s on the decline. The food was great as usual, but the drinks, service, and atmosphere were awful.

We made a booking for about 12 people in the side room for karaoke and the boodle fight. The biggest offense was that they did not tell us in advanced that this room had no fans which made the entire experience uncomfortable, especially during this heat wave we’re experiencing. They barely provided ice cold water for us on top of this, in which we had to keep asking for. We also had to continuously leave the room and go up to the bar to order things because the servers barely came around. But perhaps this was a blessing in disguise because this gave us some respite from the hot room.

To top it all off, karaoke costs extra. But none of us knew that their karaoke was off of YouTube and the mics barely worked. Thanks, but we can do YouTube karaoke at home for free.

It’s sad to see this restaurant on the decline, especially since the food was always great. We’ve brought so many friends and family throughout the years to experience delicious Filipino food, but I don’t think I can no longer recommend it. The interior, bathrooms, etc are all becoming worn down and dusty; the servers just don’t care anymore; and it’s just...