Ihawan — Restaurant in New York

I am very disappointed and sad to write this updated review on my favorite Filipino restaurant but my recent visit has me wondering if I will ever return again.

For starters, their most recent health grade is a C, which is shocking since they've always maintained an A, and if they had a grade pending and given time to fix the issues, they usually redeem themselves. However, a deeper dive into their past inspections and the violations they accrued are very concerning. I don't know why we bothered to continue to eat here after seeing that C health grade. I guess I was hoping it was some sort of fluke... but it's not.

The following violations were reported for Ihawan as of Feb 2024:

1. Food, supplies, or equipment not protected from potential source of contamination during storage, preparation, transportation, display, service or from customer’s refillable, reusable container. Condiments not in single-service containers or dispensed directly by the vendor.

2. Live roaches in facility's food or non-food area.

3. Anti-siphonage or back-flow prevention device not provided where required; equipment or floor not properly drained; sewage disposal system in disrepair or not functioning properly. Condensation or liquid waste improperly disposed of.

4. Establishment is not free of harborage or conditions conducive to rodents, insects or other pests.

Onto the food, it was disappointing and not the same quality at all. The lumpiang shanghai tasted different and are smaller in size. They're usually short and fat, but my visit yielded short and skinny with less filling. The pork was either old or something was off, but it didn't taste the way it used to. Their adobong manok (chicken adobo) was over cooked to the point that the bones had broken apart which made it difficult to eat. My husband kept getting fragmented pieces of bone and abandoned the dish altogether. Their famous barbecue sticks were tough, and my husband had a difficult time even cutting the meat off of the stick with a knife.The meat should slide right off the stick when you bite it off. The goto soup was also incredibly disappointing. The flavor was off, and had an overpowering citrus flavor that is supposed to be subtle in this dish. I abandoned eating this dish too.

The only dish to go unchanged was the sizzling sisig. The flavors were the same, and I overall had no issues with it. With regards to the dining area, there are flies everywhere which will bother you during your meal. The Halo-Halo tastes the same. But that's about it.

Overall, a major disappointment, my husband and I had upset stomachs following our meal here. Nothing major thank god, considering I was pregnant during my visit here. Servers wipe down the glass table tops with windex instead of a sanitizing liquid and that's problematic. Please clean your tables with disinfectant not just glass cleaner.

I don't know what's going on, but as a very long time and loyal customer to this establishment, my visit in July 2024 was abysmal and I don't recommend others to come...

I just want to start off by saying I’ve never written a bad review for anyone because I understand being a small business can be difficult but what happened to me and my party on September 15th at Ihawan was completely unacceptable.

Yesterday was my friend’s birthday and we made a reservation for 15 people at 7pm at Ihawan. We got there at exactly 7pm and seated immediately. Once seated, we ordered food and drinks. This was at 7:05pm. We got our drinks at about 7:10pm and we were still waiting on our food. At 7:30pm we asked the waiter for an update on our food, he said 20 minutes. At this point, we noticed the two other tables who were seated after us, ordered and within 10 mins were served their food. We figured that because it was such a big party they might have been preparing a bit more food so we waited another 20 mins until asking again. 8:00pm comes around and now the two tables behind us are almost done with the meal and we still have not been served our meal. At 8:30pm, which is the time that the restaurant closes, I asked the waiter to speak with his manager. The “manager” came upstairs, I said that we were going to leave and he said that he was sorry for the wait and that the food was coming up now and there was a “glitch” in their system. When I looked at the tables behind us, it looked like they ordered the same platter that we did. It appears that the staff mistakenly served our platters to the two tables behind us and never came up to us to apologize for the delay, offered us appetizers while we waited, or anything. The only reason we stayed was because we had reservations at another location and couldn’t guarantee that we’d have enough time to be seated at another restaurant and be served all before we had to go to our second reservation. When it came time to pay, we were not compensated in any way at all and were required to pay FULL price for a meal that was mediocre at best. We were told by the “manager” that he couldn’t authorize a discount or some sort of compensation because we he was NOT the manager. The rice was undercooked, the BBQ was extremely dry and overcooked and everything tasted as if it was sitting out for a while.

I would never recommend this restaurant to anyone and if you are thinking of having a large birthday party or gathering here, this is definitely not the place to have one. You will have awful service and wait an ungodly amount of time for mediocre food and then be required to pay FULL price after having to wait an hour and a half then be served a meal.

I called today and was told that there was no manager or owner on sight to speak with me. I will call at another time to get in touch with a...

TL;DR: Wait times, overcooked meats, bland dishes, bad Halo-Halo, and dishonest pricing.

Never had Filipino food before this, but this didn't seem like a great introduction. Our food got to us very late. For comparison, the table next to us ordered at the exact same time and got their food ~15 minutes before us, maybe 5-10 minutes after ordering. A table of 4-5 that was seated much later than us also got their food before us. We thought they forgot about us.

By the time the sisig got to us, half of the meat was overcooked. The flavor was not particularly my favorite. It was mild and porky, but the lemon added a lot of acidity to the dish. Maybe if you are accustomed to Filipino food, you would like this dish.

The BBQ Chicken and Pork had a very generic sauce, but those dishes were lacking flavor and could definitely use more of that sauce. The BBQ pork was very chewy. The chicken was cooked well. The rice felt hard. Maybe it was stale or undercooked.

The Halo-Halo was unenjoyable, to be honest. Outside of the ube ice cream, the flavor was very bland. And it wasn't mild; it was just not sweet at all, and there was way too much ice compared to the amount of milk. Apparently, there was supposed to be tropical fruit and custard in there. The only thing we got was milk and plantain slices with beans and ice. There was also the ube ice cream. I saw older pictures on here, and people got slices of flan as well. The Halo-Halo we got looked gross compared to some of these older pictures. I'm not sure what happened.

Speaking of which, the ube ice cream was very nice. Too bad there was only an incredibly small amount on top of the Halo-Halo. It's also a shame that there was no option for adding ube ice cream on the menu, but I was still given the ice cream and upcharged $1.25 for a teaspoon of ice cream. It's genuinely the smallest scoop of ice cream I have ever seen. As far as I'm aware, ube ice cream is a core part of Halo-Halo, and it's disrespectful that I would be dishonestly upcharged on the item without being told ahead of time. I wouldn't mind getting it if I was asked or if it were on the menu, but neither of those were the case....