Dinner Fail at Kuya's at The Fort, Fort Bonifacio Taguig City

This is going to be a 2-part review of Kuya's / Jed & Julian's at The Fort.

For Part Two, click here.

The place was way farther than expected. We were hoping that the food was well worth the long drive and traffic at McKinley.

This sign made my heart flutter; you had me at Kare Kare. Seems like this was going to be a Good Eat.

Made reservations for their non-smoking area. Brown chairs + white tablecloth  worked well. This color scheme helped make the place look classy.

Menu Art

Beef Salpicao (Php 290 )

Did our research beforehand and found that the majority of their patrons ordered this one. We went ahead & got it as well. The chunks of meat was swimming in oil, which they were passing off as sauce. The garlic bits did not help taste-wise. FS Verdict?  Nothing special.

Crispy Tadyang (Php 395)

Have been curious to try this dish; what better time than now.... bad idea. The good news? This was crunchy. The bad news? It was just that... crunchy. This was also tough to chew. If this is how tadyangs tastes like then I haven't been missing out. Sigh.

The night was pretty much a bust; but we couldn't tap out just yet. Kuya's still had their Special Kare Kare to serve. 

Special Kare Kare (Php 380)

Looked wonderful. You can see the yellow orange tint that we all have come to love. Couldn't wait to dig in. The first spoonful was bland; no hint of peanut whatsoever. Okay, maybe it just wasn't all mixed in. Let's try another one.. and another one.. and another.. until it became apparent that it wasn't that the sauce wasn't mixed right; it was more of that the Kare Kare tasted really bad. Sorry Kuya's, it just sucked. Big time. What made it worse was this was their best-selling dish. 

We left the Kare Kare practically untouched which prompted the server to ask how our meal was. We were honest enough to tell him that we weren't satisfied. Several minutes later, the owner approached us and proposed a solution; which was we should've added more bagoong. Seriously? Telling us to add more bagoong is not the way to solve the dish. Bagoong enhances the flavors already present in the Kare Kare. The problem with Kuya's version? There was NO flavor to enhance. Tsk tsk

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  I also didn't appreciate how the owner reacted when he realized on his own (with no introduction from us) that we were bloggers. Saying "Naku, wala kaming proteksyon" referring to internet food bloggers, sounds like we can just write anything we want with no basis whatsoever. Just because we can't give a positive review of your dishes doesn't give you the right to belittle our opinions or make them sound like lies. That statement definitely left a bad taste in our mouths. 

The owner then insisted that he will waive the Php 100 balance (after deduction from the vouchers) since we didn't enjoy their food. After several minutes of arguing that we wanted to pay for our meal, we gave the Php 100 to the server instead.

We have always prided ourselves in giving honest, fair, no nonsense dining experiences. Our opinions may have much more bite than other blogs but we assure you that what we post is what happened; nothing more nothing less. It has never been our habit to accept freebies in exchange for our post content. Never did and never will. Ask any of the places we featured here.

So I am saying it again, we paid for our meal IN FULL and this is our Food-Stars review. 

SERVICE:= To be fair, its the staff that earned these 2 stars.  It was the owner that needed improvement.

TASTE: = The salpicao & tadyang deserved half a star each.

VALUE FOR YOUR MONEY: 

'Til our next Good Eat!

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