Paraiso Filipino Native Foods — Restaurant in Lakewood

There is a good variety of authentic Filipino food here. The food and serving portions are ok and the owner is nice. There are few major issues though. The staff is ignorant of the concept of good customer service. First we got seated thinking that the server/owner is coming back to give us the menu. Nope. After a few minutes, I figured out that I have to go to the counter where the food are and point at what we wanted to order to the person behind the counter. Just when I thought he'll start scooping the food that we ordered for our table, a customer walks in and that customer is taken care of first because he is buying takeout! It's not like he called in his order so he's just picking it up. Nope, he ordered just like I did. But somehow, the owner thinks it's good customer service to delay my order to get to the next customer. After 3 customers who came after us had gotten their takeout orders, our food finally came in disposable styrofoam/plastic bowls and plates! They have several stacks of real dishwares but they seem to be just for display (collecting dust?). When we wanted additional dish or cutlery (plastic), we had to go to the counter to ask because they never came to check if we wanted anything else. When it came to paying our bill, I had to wait for the owner to ring me up according to the lone person behind the food counter. Apparently, the owner was working the check out counter at the neighboring Manang Biday Filipino grocery. So that means another long wait. We spent an hour and 45 minutes at this restaurant and 45 minutes of that is for waiting. Unfortunately this is a very common experience for me whenever I go dine at a Filipino restaurant in Western Washington area and even California. The sheer lack of good customer service is really the reason why not many Filipino restaurants survive that long in the States. I've seen many Filipino restaurants come and go in Seattle-Tacoma area and they did not attract a good customer base because of very poor customer service. I notice too that they only attract Filipino Americans but not any other Americans. The lack of good customer service and high standards in Filipino restaurants is major turn off, even for a Filipino American like myself. Imagine if you're not FilAm, would you even dare at dining at a...

I was really hungry that day and wanted to eat something different so I googled restaurants and found this place. I wanted to support my fellow countrymen so I went there.

I wanted to give them a great review because growing up in the Philippines, I knew that our food is good.

I ordered the tapsilog, my favorite dish growing up.

When I got the food, it was presented nicely but the meat amount was tiny and it was sliced so thin, even a dime is thicker.

I tasted the meat, it was good but in my previous experiences at other restaurants at this price point, the food amount here was about half.

Then I tried the rice, it felt old as some of it was dry and crunchy. The eggs and vegetables were ok.

I went and forced myself to eat it all since I paid $17 for it. I was severely disappointed at how scarce the food amount was and the terrible rice quality.

I had to make this review in hopes that the owners will see it and make a change so future customers that would order tapsilog won’t be disappointed like me and probably never come back.

I want them to succeed.

To be fair, their other food that is displayed looked good and their portions for them are good for the price. As I saw other patrons’ dishes and food amounts.

Please owners don’t be stingy with the food amount and make sure the rice isn’t old.

Anyways, I recommend anything else that they have other than tapsilog. I will probably visit again in the future to try...

Me and my family were here yesterday around 1pm and they were pretty busy. We ordered palabok, 2 meat (pork adobo and pork sisig), beef and chicken lumpia, bangus sisig, bistek, 2 sago't gulaman and a halo-halo.

The sago't gulaman and halo halo are really good, wasn't that sweet but they were very flavorful. But when it comes to the meals we had, it was okay. It wasn't bland but when you're paying $100+ for what you ordered, you're expecting that the food will be really good. Their lumpia is about an inch, and you will get about a dozen of them for $4-$5. For its price, I was expecting decent amount of filling but I could barely see any chicken and the ground beef, I could even count them on each bite. The bangus sisig tasted like bangus meat with knorr liquid seasoning only, and their bistek - the beef part used was really good but that was it.

When it comes to their customer service, I think the guy is the owner, he's very friendly, he was very chatty but he got our orders mixed up with another customer, he confirmed our orders more than twice (after paying for them) and the bistek which was available by the time we ordered, they gave it to another customer and just cooked another batch for us.

We were not happy with our experience and I am hoping this is an isolated case. If not, I am hoping they would improve as I really want to go back as seeing and chatting with my kababayan helps with my...