Little Manila

Yummy food! I especially like the Corned Beef with Fried Rice and Egg. It makes me feel like I am in Manila again. Nakakamiss!

This is the worst food I have ever tasted. Lumpia Shanghai tasted stale and burned. The BBQ was charcoal and their pancit… I don’t even know how to explain the disgusting taste of it. I’m so sorry that I made my husband drive me, for an hour, to a very disappointing restaurant. This place does not even deserve a one star.

Pork sisig — good
Inihaw na liempo — doesn’t look like it was grilled (more like pan fried and then charred)
Bulalo — no bone marrow but it was delicious
Pork barbecue — just ok
Sugpo with crab fat — very tasty, but the shrimp is overcooked
Lechon kawali — tender meat

The food is okay but I dont like the inconsistency of their dishes. Ive been here twice and ordered the same thing in both my visits and the appearance and the taste of the food weren’t the same. Another thing I dont like specifically is their Batchoy. I’m from Iloilo and I know what good batchoy tastes like.

So this is my second time at Little Manila. the first time I was here, I ordered longsilog to go and it was great. It was made fresh. Alas, the second time was terrible. So, today I went back. I called ahead and ordered longsilog and the Adobo Rice Medley off their menu to go. They told me 30 minutes. So after giving them time to make it, I went to pick it up. I’m glad I checked my order –they forgot to give me the fresh lumpia that was supposed to come with the rice medley. And as an aside, I was surprised that the rice medley was just fried rice (as the lady explained, it’s fried rice with pork adobo mixed in). So when I pointed out that it was supposed to come with fresh lumpia, they told me to wait. It took more than 15 minutes. I got the fresh lumpia and drove home (which took me about 25 mins with traffic). I should’ve checked before leaving, because when I was in the car, I popped open the fresh lumpia and discovered that they used the wrong wrapper to make it. They used the wrapper for lumpiang Shanghai instead, which is meant to be fried. So in other words, this fresh lumpia was not edible as is. Then, when I got home, famished, excited to eat the Adobo rice medley (aka fried rice), I discovered that there were absolutely NO Adobo pork belly pieces in it. There were just bits of corned beef and possibly ground pork thrown in. I was really disappointed.
If you don’t have the items in your menu, by all means, freaking tell your customers instead of just trying to «pass» out food hoping they would fall for it. It was disappointing. I called the restaurant and spoke to Penny (this was before I discovered the non-​existent Adobo in the Adobo rice medley) and she apologized saying she didn’t even know that the fresh lumpia was supposed to come with the order and they had to make it on the fly, She was willing to give me a fresh order the next time. She was nice, the staff was friendly, but the quality of the Adobo Rice Medley was just plain terrible. It was totally not as described in the menu. The longsilog was perfectly fine though.

Moved to Bergenfield 15 years ago because of its strong Filipino
community and many restaurants. Since Little Manila opened, we’ve
just about forgot about the many other Filipino take-​outs in the area.
Meats are tender and packed full of flavor. You can tell that everything is fresh
and cooked by someone who really cares about food.