Shabu Shabu Grande

Where it can be found: Film Center of the Philippines, Manila -- It's at the side overlooking Manila Bay.

Type of dining place: Chinese/ Korean restaurant - semi casual family dining

Type of food served: Seafood

Upside: Okay, I have to admit that I have not tried a single dish from this restaurant. So forgive me because this review will not focus on their food but rather, on their poor service. Before I start ranting, let me tell you that IMHO, a good restaurant must cover three basic points: delicious food, excellent customer service, and cleanliness. If one of these points is absent, then that restaurant immediately falls under "will-never-go-back-there-and-will-warn-friends-of-this-hell-disguised-as-a-restuarant" category.

Downside: Customer service so bad, we did not even bothering eating in this place.

Budget for 1 person: Around P200+++ per dish.... but with service like this, don't even bother coming here and spending that much money.

Must try: Sorry, haven't tried any of their food... you'll see why in my recommendation.

Honest recommendation:
From the outside looking in, the place looks decent enough. It has a mini fountain/aquarium at the entrance and a reception, which I assume is there so that the attendant/waiter/whatever they are called can let you know if there's a table available for your party. The place looks clean and roomy and the tables can seat 10 people. So this resto is obviously not a dating haven but more of a family/reunion/gathering dining place. Once you are inside, the first thing that you will notice is the place is warm. For a place that big and grand looking, this will come as a big surprise. I think they use only one air conditioning unit and they try to spread the cool air with electric fans. The next thing that you will notice is that almost everything written around the area is in Korean and Chinese. I have nothing against this (most of their customers may be of those nationalities) but come on, you are in Phil and if I am not mistaken, 90% of the population is made up of true blue Filipinos, of which around 80% can't read a single Korean/Chinese character. The least you can do is put simple english translations below the Korean/Chinese text so we can understand what the hell is written at the reception area. Even the menu poster board is not translated!!! How are we supposed to know what they are serving? I don't know if it's just me, but I find the lack of english translation insulting because I honestly felt like I was the foreigner IN MY OWN COUNTRY. So okay, since we couldn't read the poster board, we asked for a copy of the menu -- we figured that maybe it will have some pictures and translations that can guide us through their dishes. And in comes the third shocker... THEY HAVE ONLY ONE MENU. As I said earlier, this place can seat around 10 people per table and there were around 15 tables in the entire restaurant. There's only one menu for a possible 150 customers. SOMEBODY STRANGLE THE OWNER AND PUT SOME SENSE IN HIS IDIOTIC BRAIN!!! As you can imagine, we were pretty pissed off by this time but we were so hungry that we patiently waited for our turn to look at the menu. When we finally got hold of it, we were happy to find english translations for each dish but the downside is that the restaurant served only around 15 dishes. Not much choice there but since my family and I are seafood lovers, we immediately picked 3-4 dishes we liked. Surprise, surprise NONE of the dishes we ordered were available. Really irritated now, we decided to wallow our hunger in sodas. Good thing the resto has them. Right after we received the drinks we immediately handed paid for it. Big mistake. My dad, being the righteous person that he is, insisted that they give us a receipt for the sodas (he loathes tax evaders). We watched as the waiter approached the owner (well, we think she's the owner) for the receipt and the owner in turn...looked at our order slip, glanced at our table and did absolutely NOTHING. As in she just went to her throne (chair near the reception) and pretended that we weren't there. So we just sat there and waited for around 15 minutes for our official receipt but it never came. DEPARTMENT OF TRADE AND INDUSTRIES, CHECK OUT THIS RESTAURANT FOR POSSIBLE TAX EVASION!!!! In the end, we left the place with our blood boiling and stomachs grumbling. It was a bad way to end a nice Saturday evening. So in conclusion, warn everyone not to try this place out if you want to spare them from painful suffering.