Aplaya Kitchen + Tiki Bar — Restaurant in Chatham

I was really excited to try this place, but I left underwhelmed. It’s the cutest environment tucked away off Main Street past snowing owl espresso. It’s an outdoor cafe beautifully covered with trees and tiki umbrellas. The prices were high for what you got. I definitely felt hungry. The Siopao Cheeseburger had minimal filling and wasn’t worth $12 and the tacos were $14 and just all right - at $7.5 a taco with nothing on the side- that was a bit much and didn’t leave me wanting more. The kids had the chicken skewers and my son didn’t think his were cooked bc of the coloring of it. My husband got the poke bowl- it was tasty but for $19 it turned me off being served in a flimsy paper bowl. I expected more from my drink- the Beach Grass - maybe a cute tiki garnish or fun glass- being that it was $14? My husband however really enjoyed his mocktail- Calamansi Sour- his was decorated nicer and had a nice pink salt rim. Overall- the environment was cool. The server was admittedly young per her admission so she couldn’t recommend anything and her demeanor left more to be desired - like you could tell she just wanted the day to be over and it was lunch time. It was a nice atmosphere and cool concept but I would try someplace else when visiting...

For our family born and raised in Manila PH, our experience was beyond disappointing, this is Not Filipino food. It may say it’s “Filipino inspired” but that’s like saying Olive Garden is homemade Italian.

The prices for the portions are outrageous, we could not believe one siaopao was 12$ and one cup of rice for 7$!! All of our food arrived cold and the monkfish loco moco patty looked rotten and honestly everything tasted very bland. The tacos didn’t even come with a side just the 2 tacos no rice.

We also found it very disrespectful that the server (older blonde woman) did not know how to say any of the dishes names and made jokes of how hard they are to pronounce. It is so hard to find Pinoy restaurants and store to support and we were so excited to try this place out but we will definitely not be back. Maybe try putting an actual Filipino in the kitchen to do some taste testing.

Truly very sad to say we all arrived back home hungry and disappointed, and ended up going the store to remake dinner...

this is such a cool place! first of all every time we’ve come there’s been no to little wait time. from the first time you walk in it feels like your on a tropical vacation in aruba. cool plants and tiki huts everywhere, and a lot of other cool decor. drinks were so much fun, everyone enjoyed theirs. for dinner we got a bunch of stuff from the menu to split all around because a single item is pretty small for a single person, like there are four ribs so you may need two orders for one person. ribs were super good though! some people found them spicy, others (like me) thought they had such great flavor! the shrimp were less liked, i didn’t think they were necessarily bad though, just a specific spice that we didn’t love. egg roles were super good, we also enjoyed the chilled noodle dish. such a cool atmosphere, and it really feels like your eating in the filipinos! food is super cultural and has such great flavor. definitely try...