Kuya's Food Express - Filipino — Restaurant in Duluth

Place has an 86 score on their Health Inspection Sheet & the owner/gentleman taking your orders is known to be short tempered & crudely rude if he’s just simply not in the mood of working that day. Old tasting food that takes an eternity to be ready. Lastly, since we don’t have many Filipino restaurants, seems we’re doomed to experience the worst sometimes. “That should tell you enough about the place”. However, if you want to take the risk like us, (go ahead). Personally we love Asian food in general (people are without exception friendly & polite) “Not this Place”. But were so excited to have found a Filipino Restaurant, that we disregarded the red flags 🚩 (not a good idea)! This place is located in the deserted food court of Assi’s Super Market. Its dirty, sticky & dingy, food tasted old & it took more than 40 minutes to get it despite of only ordering 2 plates & us being the only customers at the time. Last but not least; let me tell you about the best part of our experience with the famous gentleman working there. Initially when me & my friend decided to order; he had such a bad attitude that he hardly even spoke to us. He seemed inconvenienced/bothered, of us just being there. Though he was just sitting there behind the counter the whole time watching us since we got there, and he never even bother to say “Hi”. (granted, we weren’t there for the greetings). “That my friends, should be another sign to GTFO -ASAP”. There are plenty of really good Asian places to eat all over ATL & they would be more than delighted to serve you their delicious food & greet you cordially, because they know very well that you’re helping their small businesses grow. Not only by just purchasing their food, but also by spreading your words & ratings on social media. The intention of this post is not to discourage anyone from eating here; hopefully you won’t have such a bad experience like us. But the awful service & long waits for old tasting food seems to be the most predominant experience at this place & a waste of your hard earned money. Spend it at least somewhere where the atmosphere welcoming &...

The main thing dragging down this overall score is Atmosphere. This was the original Filipino Restaurant in Metro ATL. It's counter service inside City Farmer's Market Food Court (formerly Assi). I've been here a few times over the years.

My regular local dining companion and I considered prices a bit high considering this is counter service. I interacted with at least three different employees. First employee took my entree order of Pinakbet Veggies (Pumpkin, Japanese Eggplant, Bitters Melon, and Green Beans.) I did not realize this comes with Chopped Lechon Kawali on top (Roasted Pork Belly). So I ordered a separate order of Lechon Kawali as a meat entree. My friend ordered Meat Lumpia. I got a food buzzer to let me know when my entrees would be ready. Everything did not fit on a single tray and the first employee helped me bring my extra serving of rice to the table. Another employee came by to help us clean up and pick up plates. I then ordered dessert from a third employee. I ordered Cassava Cake and Halo Halo. She offered to warm up the Cassava Cake and brought me my Halo Halo.

My family is Filipino so I am pretty familiar with most of the menu. Lunch is my main meal of the day so I wish the entrees were a bit larger. However, as mentioned I planned for this by ordering two entrees. Each entree was about $15. Just a bit under. It was too high a price point for me to stock up on take out for the week. I do have more than one serving of rice and Lechon Kawali left over for lunch tomorrow. I wish the Green Beans in the Pinakbet were fresher. They seemed a bit wilted. I did ask for an extra serving of Bagaoong which was at no charge. The Lechon pieces in the entree were pretty substantial chunks.

The Cassava Cake was quite good. My friend had never tried this before and liked that it wasn't too sweet. She had never had Ube Ice Cream before and thought it tasted like Vanilla. She was pretty impressed looking at all the ingredients in the Halo Halo.

We go out about once or twice a month together and both thought Kuya's would go on a...

TLDR: Would NOT recommend. HORRIBLE and rude service. Half the food was dry and unappetizing, the other half was ok.

I had a great experience here a few months ago, and was really excited to be able to come back. Unfortunately, I was really let down this time. We ordered the Lumpia, Longsilog, Palabok, Lechon Kawali, and Halo-Halo. Even though the store hours are 10am - 10pm and we showed up around 4:30pm, we were told that we couldn't order the Palabok as they had just started cooking it and it would not be ready for another couple of hours - didn't see anything about this online, but ok. Food came out about 15 minutes later. The lumpia was ok - a little too dry (it tastes the way it looks). The longsilog was incredibly disappointing - the longanisa (sausages) barely tasted like the longanisa that I know and love, they really just tasted like normal sausages that were just faintly sweet. You can tell in the photo they look like normal sausages (brown) as they do not have that distinct red coloring. The lechon and the halo-halo were good though; both tasted fine and how I expected them to taste. The main reason I'm giving them one star in this review though is how rude the service was. The man at the counter who took our order gave me a very standoff-ish attitude, as if he didn't have the time of day for me. After the food came out, I asked for a to-go box right away because I knew we weren't going to finish everything, and he bluntly told me that he'd give me a box after we were done eating. Although not pleasant behavior to deal with, normally this wouldn't bother me too much - after all, maybe he's having a bad day. However, while we were eating a group of Filipina girls ordered food (speaking Tagalog) and he came out and started laughing and smiling with them - clearly his problem was with us. I'm Filipina myself, but was it because I couldn't speak Tagalog that he gave me such rude service? I don't know, and I'm certainly not going to come back...