Alavar’s Curacha {Foodee}

I thought this was going to be a happy post. Sadly it won’t be. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.

My brother brought his new wife home with us for Christmas. One of her friends who grew up in the same hometown as us had told us that she needed to try the curacha or the large deep sea crab which is exclusively available in this part of the country, so my brother brought her and us to Alavar’s seafood restaurant which is best known for serving it with their famous Alavar’s sauce with coconut milk.

And so we went. This was our family’s first time to go there because the place is not that affordable. But we wanted our guest to try their famous specialty, so there we were.

The restaurant looked pretty from outside, with all the Christmas decorations.

It looked just like an old house, including inside.

We were seated at a huge round unsteady table which moved everytime you laid a finger on it.

We perused their menu and ordered the curacha and other dishes, including soup and shakes for drinks.

 

It was incredibly noisy inside and it took a long time for the food to be served. It took so long in fact that my brother, his wife, and I got bored and decided to go outdoors to take pictures and my mom found someone she knew at the next table and chatted her up.

They served the food that my brother had ordered first.

 

So we started on the food.

To be fair, the curacha’s sauce was quite delicious. But the curacha itself was just so-so. I mean, Singapore’s giant crabs taste better.

We followed up on our other orders more than five times. Each time, the waitress we talked to looked at us like she was annoyed with us for deigning to give her instructions.

By the time they gave us our soup and drinks, which should have come first, we were already done eating. So my brother said we’ll just get the soup for takeout instead.

Then came the worst: when my sister-in-law took a sip of her water, she noticed something dark stuck to the bottom of her glass. Upon closer inspection, she realized that it was a cockroach egg! The horror.

So we called the servers over to complain about it and they asked, “Where did that come from? Are you sure that’s not just bits of food?”

What the F.

I cannot even describe my sister-in-law’s facial expression at this point. I was so mortified that I was frozen in shock.

My brother and father got mad and reprimanded the manager. She said sorry.

But what can your sorry do? The damage has been done. You just ruined my hometown for our guest. Thank you very much.

The next day, my brother’s friend showed up and I found out he was a food sanitation inspector. So I told him about this incident.

I also posted about it on Facebook, and a friend commented: “there’s no semblance of any ambiance in Alavar resto, plus the waiting time is unreasonable.”

Then today, my friend’s parents said that the quality of food and service there had gone downhill lately. The dad said that the waitstaff are proud locals who don’t know how to be servers, and the mom said they recently had an event for 30 people there and most of the food was wasted because the people didn’t like it. “After that we had a catered event at Garden Orchid and it was cheaper there and the food tasted better!”

I wish I had known all this beforehand. Then we would never have gone and wasted over P2,000.

But now you know. You have been warned.

But if you really want to try the famous curacha, just buy the sauce (they sell it for P250 per kilo) and some curacha from  the market, and cook it yourself.