Cabalen — Restaurant in Hercules

Worst catering experience!!! We trusted them with feeding our guests and the food ran out before everyone else had the chance to taste them. We were promised that the trays would be filled beyond the brim, especially the dried food, because we expressed concerns that their large trays were very shallow. The palabok was dry and musty and for the $165 we paid for that thing, we could have cooked our own special palabok for a third of the price. The menudo was swimming in tomato sauce and mostly just has hotdogs. The pork was cut into large 2x2 chunks instead of smaller cubes making it look like the meat was so sparse. First of all, who cooks menudo with tomato sauce and no "atay"? Even worse, the day before our party, they tried to charge us an extra $150 to set up the food and the chafing dishes. The owner had assured us they will deliver and set up the food for free because they wanted to advertise their catering services, but the lady at the other end of the call said the owner didn't know what she was saying or what she promised to us. It was the 11th hour and we were so stressed with the party preparation...they just had to pile up on top of it. Great service!!! Not!!!!. Should we have put every little detail in a contract? For Filipinos from our generation, a handshake and honest assurances are what still we bank on. This company is very greedy and shortchanges the ingredients and the amount of food to rake in a large profit margin. For first time customers, they should have given up a little of the profit to make sure we not only come back for more business but recommend them to the larger community. WHEN WE RETURNED THEIR CHAFING DISHES, THE OWNER ARRIVED AND NEVER EVEN BOTHERED TO TALK TO US TO STRAIGHTEN THINGS OUT. INSTEAD, THEY SENT THEIR DELIVERY BOY (WHO KNEW NOTHING ABOUT THE DEAL) TO TALK TO US AND HE WAS JUST VERY DISRESPECTFUL. We placed our trust on them and we ended up being very DISAPPOINTED and EMBARASSED. We have had several large parties before with a different caterer and with much more guests. Back then, everyone was fed and even had take home food with them. We will NEVER do business with them AGAIN and will NEVER RECOMMEND them to...

I love Filipino food. Cabalen food, I would happily recommend to many Filipinos I met BEFORE but not anymore. Most of their foods now are very, very oily. Today, we bought their menudo and binagoongan with rice . Both were SO OILY/GREASY !!! Menudo has less meat with many fillers. The taste is more of a hotdog flavor than menudo. The fish paste they used is spicy for binagoongan. Not all people eats spicy food. The rice today is soggy. My parents would scold me if I cooked rice like this. I thought the rice will save the disaster binagoongan and menudo but It cannot. We threw away all of them in the garbage. The “kakanin- 3 pichi-pichi, 1 kutchinta, 1 Biko, 1 maja Mai’s are too sweet, the grated coconut not as fresh and there is slight after taste of an old container were they probably kept for a while. It took us only few bites to decide we need to stop eating and dump all this food in the garbage. We bought extra large orders of menudo and spaghetti to be brought to a relative but we also decided to dump them, untouched! If we cannot eat them why we let our friend and relative eat them. I’m sorry Calabalen the quality of your food is not as good as before. It’s scary unhealthy for anyone. We were at the park to eat what we ordered and met a Filipino couple who got the same comment about your food. We wish Cabalen could improve the food that they are selling. Sad that we decided not to go back to any Cabalen restaurants. Today is the last day. Hope you still thrive. Thanks if you read...

I often go up and down on I-80 from San Francisco to Sacramento and back. Over the years, Cabalen has been one of my regular stops.

For a small space, these folks serve up quite an array of Filipino dishes and the turnover is brisk as they do a respectable amount of business, meaning that the food gets replenished often.

I believe they also have other outlets, one in Fairfield and another in Vallejo, but this is the joint with which I'm most familiar. The staff has always been friendly and inviting, in its purest form of Filipino hospitality.

I realize how hard it is to be in the restaurant business, what with finding reliable labor, rising prices of ingredients and the frugality of patrons, it's like walking on a knife's edge. For their longevity in staying in the game along with serving such a niche cuisine, I give these folks much respect and gratitude for representing Filipino food that is generally underrepresented in the general scheme of things.

I wish them continued success...