Kamayan ATL - Filipino Restaurant — Restaurant in Doraville

My parents are Filipino. This is my second time bringing an African-American guest who has never tried the cuisine and absolutely loved it having no clue what the food would taste like.

Appetizer was LUMPIANISA which is a wrapped Pampanga Sweet Breakfast Sausage in thin, crispy traditional rice eggroll wrapper. My friend was least interested in this menu item and assumed she would take one bite to try it. She ended up being most impressed with the LUMPIANISA and it was her favorite menu item. The restaurant must be making their own sausage or has a non-frozen source as it's better than what you often get in the freezer section of an Asian grocery store which is larger, artificially sweet and fatties. The LUMPIANISA has the right balance of sweet and fat. Served with a traditional vinegar garlic dipping sauce.

Entrees were BANSILOG, FRIED POMPANO, and JAPANESE EGGPLANT, GREEN BEAN, and RED CABBAGE COCONUT CURRY. I did not try their BANSILOG but my friend really enjoyed KAMAYAN's take on GARLIC FRIED RICE. I told her she would get a traditional, marinated BANUS, pan fried fish. The eggs are poached and you received two of them served on the side in the serving pkate vs a fried Sunnyside Up Egg on top of the Garlic Fried Rice. She's not a large eater and looked forward to her leftovers.

The POMPANO was scored and deep fried. It was beautifully served with tropical fruits, vegetables and a side of traditional ATCHARA - Green Papaya, Carrot and Whole Black Pepper traditional pickles in a ginger vinegar cure. This one was more spicy with the peppers than sweet and didn't have raisins like my dad's.

I personally liked the JAPANESE EGGPLANT COCONUT CURRY but it was surprisingly sweet vs spicy. My friend is a huge fan of spicy Indian Curry so this dish was her least favorite. But I would order it again. I had although assumed the Curry would be a mild yellow Curry like my aunt's. The GREEN BEANS are served al dente and the RED CABBAGE is raw and served on top.

I did like the plain white rice. Often a restaurant ignores having a good tasting rice or it's not moust enough. This was not the problem here.

Unfortunately, they were out if UBE PUTO which is a steamed rice cake like a cupcake withoutFrosting.

This is on the same side of ASIANA SQUARE as SWEETHUT so i grabbed my dessert BOBA their instead of reordering HALO HALO. But my friend's eyes popped when she saw the HALO HALOs being served at others table.

My guest was really curious what everyone else was enjoying. She asked me if the patrons were all FILIPINO. I noted some but not all were FILIPINO.

Service overall went well until the very end when we waited for a long time to get a printed receipt. I finally went to the back of the restaurant and someone else printed our receipts.

I reserved a table as last time I noted the long wait after I had arrived. It's easy to reserve a table via RESY which links on KAMAYAN 's website. Getting a reservation was plentiful as I didn't reserve until the last minute the night before. Originally I wanted to try ESTRELIYA but my regular dining companion wasn't impressed with their menu and specifically noted it didn't seem tasty. I told her to look at KAMAYAN 's menu as it was slightly different and she was totally on board to try FILIPINO food for the first time with me.

I got an email from RESY via the restaurant asking for how I liked my meal.

I do want to extra kudos for the genderfree handicap accessible bathroom. There are a few handicap parking spaces but with the stairs if you are wheelchair bound it might be easier to have a friend drop you off.

They finally finished construction in ASIANA SQUARE and the full parking lot is once again available. So parking is plentiful vs it's a busy SQUARE with several restaurants and businesses so you might have to walk a little bit if you arrive later in the day. I arrived at opening for a Sunday lunch and got a space at the sidewalk just below the stairs leading to the restaurant. There is a flat landing with no stairs needed to...

TLDR: John is great, the food isn't, and the rest of the staff was awful. Maybe you'll have a better experience if you book before their last seating at 8:30. Ordering is done through an app: I hate that, others may not. Bring cash for your server to make sure they get to see their tip.

The first thing I want to say is that our server was the only good thing about our experience there. I would have loved the opportunity to interact with him even more, but we had to place our orders through a website on our phones. I could go on for days about how truly awful that is to be at a not inexpensive restaurant and be forced to stare at a phone for the first 10-15 minutes of ordering. It also sets you up to have to enter a tip before you've experienced any part of the service. In our case, even though the tips were pooled, the only person who was attentive to us was our server, John. The other servers/staff actually negatively impacted our experience.

And the FOOD IS UNREMARKABLE AT BEST: all 3 types of lumpia we tried were greasy and otherwise indistinguishable from each other, the prawns were overcooked and somehow tasteless despite being covered in sauce. The green beans and the pork belly tacos were very good, but not worth the trip on their own.

It felt very strange to watch John, a Black man, maintaining his own section and helping out with others' sections while the entire rest of the non-Black staff congregated behind the counter talking and being on their phones. When they did venture into John's section to "help," it was counterproductive and only to attempt to rush our meal along.

When I asked one guy for extra napkins on my way back to the table from the restroom, he couldn't be bothered to hand me some; instead, he pointed behind me and told me to grab them myself.

Twice other servers came by our table: the first (napkin guy) to tell us within 10 min of us sitting down that it was the last call on the kitchen and ask if we put in our orders yet. He was rushing us to order even though we hadn't even had a chance to ask any questions. He got those answered for us, but it was clear that everyone was in a rush to get the restaurant closed for the night. We were part of the last seating, but it was still full of people.

The other server was the one who angered me. We had finished the water from our bottle and a woman came over and took it away. Some of the food was spicy and some of it was greasy AND salty to boot. I waited a long time for her to return with a full water bottle and IT NEVER HAPPENED. I watched her walk a half-empty one back to the counter and thought maybe she'd refill that one and bring it to us. She didn't. I had to go to the counter and watch no fewer than 6 employees laughing and talking and wait for one of them to notice I was there. I ended up asking the woman who took our bottle to begin with for more water.

Two of the three of us in my dining party (including myself) used to be servers in various types of restaurants: fine dining, super casual, and everything in between. Everything about this place really sucked except for our server John.

We tipped John in cash and are in the process of trying to get our orders adjusted so no one else benefits from sabotaging...

They only open for dine in on Thursday-Sunday. The only lunch time is Saturday. You can also book them for catering and private event.

They're in the same plaza with Sweet Hut, Quoc Huong, Good Harvest and more so parking in the weekend might be a bit tight though the plaza's parking is still spacious.

Reservation is recommended if you plan to go in the weekend. We dined in on Thursday night and there's still plenty of space though we did made reservation ahead. The reservation making is very tricky. They won't take reservation on the phone though they will pick up phone for other question. The reservation link on their website won't work. After you fill out the form, you will receive error email. It's a waste of time. After calling them, I finally know they only take reservation by email. Then I will email them about the detail of my reservation and they reply with a confirmed email.

They have a printed out menu but prefer you to use the QR code menu at the table because it's more updated. They use canva for menu but the menu show up on the link has the most inconvenient interface of menu that I've ever seen. It's a pretty pdf menu but you can't scroll either vertically or horizontally on your phone. When you scan the QR code, it show up only 1 page of the 5 pages menu. The only way that I figure out it's a 5 pages menu and the way to navigate around that is I spend time to play with it while my parents just gave up and look at the paper menu. If you want to see the menu on your phone, note that to be able to see the full menu, you will click anywhere on your screen, then it will display a number of the menu pages. When you click on it, it show you a screen of all 5 pages menu. To view each page, you click on that page. But to go between page, you have to go back to that home page of full menu and click on another menu page. It's a very confused and inconvenient way to see the menu. If you insist on viewing the online menu, instead of scanning the QR code, you should go to their website and click on menu, it's easier to go between pages that way.

Besides the the technical issues of reservations and online menu, we all had a nice experience. My dad wants to experience something new so I took him here. The restaurant is small but well decor. They have a small station for self service water with plastic up and straws. They practice order at the counter and check out right when you order. It saves more on the staff and services so they can focus more on the food and cooking. All the dishes has pretty presentation and taste good. Some of the dishes is a bit too over seasoning for our own tastes but it's mostly because we have milder taste than average. We had:

Lechon kawali (deep fried crispy pork belly) Shrimp lumpia (Shrimp spring roll) Pork BBQ skewers Pak pak patis (fried chicken wings) Pansit palabok (glass noodle with tomaley sauce) Fried Pompano (fried whole fish) Halo halo espesyal for dessert

Over all, their food is good. The staffs are friendly. They don't always have the full dessert menu as what they put online but that is fine. They're one in the only 2 authentic Filipino restaurants that open in Atlanta so if you want to try Filipino cuisine, I highly...