Kubo Woodfired Kitchen

Have been eyeing this place for a long time and wanted to try their elevated filipino cuisine, so my partner brought me here for my birthday dinner.

First of all the service staff were really friendly and helpful in recommending dishes to try. The ambience of the place was also immaculate - warm hues and cosy vibes, perfect for date nights or gathering with friends.

For the food, we had:
1) Chicharon ($12) - Great way to start off the meal. Loved the crunch and fattiness of the pork cheek slivers. The smoked plum ketchup tasted so similar to macdonald's curry sauce though, and that threw me off a little.

2) Pork Longanissa ($20) - Like an open-faced sandwich with a perfectly grilled patty complete with crispy edges, pickled cucumber for the tang and crunch, cheddar cheese and mustard sauce to give depth of flavour, atop a fluffy toasted potato bread with briney ikura and gooey cured egg on top. This was a flavour bomb. Full stop. This was my fave dish of the night.

3) Crab Fat Risotto ($22) - This was quite a disappoint as it was highly raved online but I could only taste sourness from the entire dish. Not sure if it was the fermented crab or the calamansi, but the sourness was overpowering in this plate.

4) Duck Fat BBQ Corn ($12) - Simply corn grilled with duck fat and smoked paprika sprinkled on top. Flavors were nice with the sweetness of the corn and savouriness of the paprika coming through, but $12 for what I think is half a corn? Wouldn't order this again.

5) Halo Halo ($14) - A scoop of purple yam ice cream with coconut jam and coconut corn custard. That's all. Thought I could eat the flesh of the coconut this was served in too, but it was too hard to scrape off. Overall, felt that this dessert leaned too heavily on theatrics instead of the food itself.

6) Barbie Potion ($20) - A gin-based aperitivo with raspberry, balsamic and egg white. Felt this was pretty diluted and tasted more like raspberry soda instead. Absolutely not worth the price.

Overall, had a nice meal but personally there were more misses than hits for the food. But I would say service is good; my partner told the staff that this was a birthday celebration and they took away the Halo-Halo (that they already served) while I went to the loo and when I returned they came back to serve it with a candle on top. Enjoyable experience, but would try the rest of the menu.

Pork Longanissa 1/5
Octopus 2/5
House Aged Duck 1/5
Duck Fat BBQ Corn 2/5
Rice 1/6

This takes damn long. 15mins wait? Quite ridiculous

Pastry encapsulating molten banana. It's not punchy at all

Overall the place seemed very promising and I had high expectations but it was sorely disappointing. Most things were average and at this price, that's simply unacceptable. We paid 70bucks each without drinks. Ideas are good but executions need a lot of work

1kg plus, feeds 3

The meat was alright, the skin was crunchy but a tad dry. The soy sauce condiment was really good but the Kare Kare cream sauce was terrible, way too creamy, to the point that it tastes abit dessert like because of the peanuts. The other sharp yellow sauce it was served with was terrible too.

Overall it's alright

Grilled breast, confit leg of one week aged duck served w pineapple sauce and carrot puree

Tbh, the breast meat was v chewy. There's not much flavour either despite it being dry aged. Duck leg wasn't succulent and lacks flavour as well. The accompaniements were average too, didn't go particularly well

Ckn wings, it's nice that there's only 1 bone left in each.

It's not particularly crispy, it's not bad esp at this price though. The sauce was too creamy, their sauces are all too french and tastes too creamy instead of whatever Indonesian flavours they're trying to incorporate. Sweet glaze that's reasonably permeating

Overall this was fine