• 2
• Let down by the staff

After a fortnight traveling around the Philippines and struggling to find vegan food I was delighted to spend my last evening here at the raved about Corner Tree Cafe. I arrived very excited by the lovely decor and wide array of dishes on the menu and specials board. I started off with the vegetable dumplings. A big favourite of mine throughout my travels of Asia. Unfortunately although packed; there were large chunks of uncooked ginger, not the most pleasing to have to chew, inside the under cooked dough. The vinegar dipping sauce received mixed reviews. Although not bad it didn't compliment the flavour of the dumplings. An underwhelming and frankly stodgy start. My main of "Kare-Karang Gulay" admittedly wasn't the best choice. Firstly it came whilst we still had our starter plates on the table which I had to hold up out of the way before the sour faced waitress took it away. Again this dish was very stodgy and somehow everything was the same texture, as if the vegetables had been over cooked and the whole dish sat around for too long. Not the "garden fresh and zesty" dish described. The organic red rice and vegetarian bagoong however were fine. Not the finest food we'd ever had, we thought maybe we'd just chosen the wrong dishes. However when we tried to get the attention of a waitress to ask for separate checks she briskly went off to get the check before properly acknowledging us so we could explain what we wanted. When the single check did come and we asked for separate checks due to only having large bills and admittedly being bad at math she snatched the check from me and heaved a disgusted sigh. I genuinely felt from the look we received guilty, as if I'd missed the memo and was asking for something incredulous. She was incredibly rude in her expression and didn't once even hint at a smile, leaving us with a sour taste all over. An unfortunate experience for our last night, which could have been easily erected by basic good customer service (for which we were charged 12%). I do believe we got a bad waitress possibly having a bad day, the waiter who took away our dishes and seated us seemed lovely.