Little Bear Diner

Yuliana Tanusy

2.0

My boyfriend and I have been wanting to visit this restaurant for days. We've attempted to dine here before but the store was closed. Earlier today (July 11), we decided to go for another try.Just to make sure the store was open, we checked the store hours on Instagram. This did not help at all as the store hours written in their profile description was VERY confusing. I remembered it displaying store hours for friday -saturday, sunday and thursdays: closed. Although we weren't sure if the store was open or not, we still decided to risk it. We arrived at Kapitolyo at about 5:30pm. Feeling lucky, we saw a parking spot right in front of the store. We parked but was immediately told to move the car because it's the owner's parking spot. We moved our car to an available space nearby. We were told by the guard that Little Bear will open at 6pm. We waited in a coffee shop til about 6:10pm and then went straight to Little Bear. Right when we went in, we were greeted by smiles by the friendly staff. The server followed us to our table, politely handed us the menu and gave us cold house water. Two thumbs up for amazing service! Got quite excited since i did my research and already knew what dish to order. But to my boyfriend and I's surprise, the server told us that the only available items on the menu were the chicken wings and sandwiches (less than half of their menu)... Although he told us that other dishes will be available once the owner arrives at about 6:30pm. I was very hyped up with this place and didn't care to wait for another 20 minutes for the dish i wanted to try (spicy toro). My boyfriend ordered the "popper" and a bottle of beer. It was served in less than 10minutes (again, good job on service!). It was already 7:20pm and the owner still wasn't there. My boyfriend had already finished his meal and i still haven't even ordered mine.. The waiter, who i think was concerned that i still haven't had my dinner, approached me and asked me if i wanted to order the wings instead. I had no choice since i was extremely hungry. The wings was served to our table right away.The glaze, the crispiness of the wings and the portioning was on point. The only thing that turned us off was the quality of the meat itself. The chicken meat did not taste fresh and was a little bit gray in color on some areas and had a slight smell that I cannot point out. I did not finish my order so i thought of having it wrapped and to go. My boyfriend stopped me since he thought it was not worth it to have 2 pieces of wings for take out for an additional 5% charge on our bill which will be charged on top of the 10% service charge. The 10% service charge i understand ONLY if the WHOLE 10% was given to staff and crew members and not the management. I still gave this place a rating of 2.5 because of the ambiance, cleanliness of the place and the awesome service.  I do not write reviews since I truly understand how it feels like to have someone review/rate/say bad things about your hard earned restaurant. I was completely amazed by the menu of Little Bear since these are the kind of dishes i would love to eat. I honestly wanted to try everything on the menu and just reading it made me drool. It was a huge disappointment to us that we couldn't try the dishes we wanted and are now thinking of never coming back (even if the waiter, who i forgot to ask for his name, asked us to come back) because of the fear of being disappointed again. I really hope Little Bear steps up to solve their issues. I hope they train their kitchen crew how to prepare the other dishes themselves without having to rely on the owner. I also hope you could announce on social media that the dishes posted can only be served only upon availability of the owner.

RD Denny

5.0

Our 4th stop during our Kapitolyo Food Tour after visiting Lia's Cakes in Season was Little Bear Diner. You won't believe your eyes when you see how small the place looks like from the outside. . Little Bear Diner - Kapitolyo. Squeezed in between Cookie Bar and Mad Mark's, the space looked so cozy and out right adorable!

Real_food_only

3.0

Josh and I our less busy now, so we're starting to reconnect with some of our closest friend whom we haven't seen for a while. We invited his org buddy, Peter, to join us for lunch today. This restaurant was initially not part of our restaurant bucket list, but since it suddenly became one of the high ranking restaurants in Booky's Top 100 (They're in Top 13 for March), we decided to try it out. We ordered 2 starters, 2 melt collective (their collection of grilled cheeses), and 1 main course (rice meal). Read on for the verdict! 🍴 ---TNT Wings (Php 265) - ⭐⭐- Honestly, I had high expectations for this dish, because it's the first menu item that caught my eye when I was reasearching about LBD. It had no taba ng talangka taste, which is unfortunate since it's there in the menu item's name! 😭 I would have preferred it to have a thicker sauce or glaze than what was served. It was supposed to gain a 3⭐ rating, but the chicken was undercooked, too. Spicy Toro (Php 235) - ⭐⭐⭐⭐- This would have easily been my favorite dish, since I am a big fan of Japanese food. While I appreciated the texture and crunch of the nori chips, and loved how different but complementary the taste of each component (ahi tuna belly sashimi, poke sauce, spicy mayo, microgreens and nori chips) was, the quality of the tuna failed to meet my expectations. The color of the tuna was a bit dark and you would know at first glance that it's not as fresh as we hoped it was. I would've gladly given this 5⭐ if the freshness of the star, the tuna, was at par with my standards for tuna sashimi.Spam Kimchi Fried Rice (Php 295) - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- MY FAVORITE DISH FOR TODAY! 💜 Every component (crispy spam, musubi sauce, pineapple jam, pickles and sous vide egg) helped in making this dish a success. The serving is also quite big, so if ever you plan on trying out other food items, you may share this with your companions. It might be a bit nakakaumay if you try to finish this on your own while enjoying other dishes as well. People who are not that used to eating spicy food can also relax, since the spice it's just right and not overpowering. Note: Mix in the egg with the rice! 😉 You'll thank me later HEHEMELT COLLECTIVE Classic (Php 185) - ⭐⭐⭐A mix of mozzarella and American cheddar, it really is a classic take on the grilled cheese sandwich we all love. Josh chose the Sour Cream flavored Cassava Chips to be served with the sandwich. I LOVE the cassava chips! 😍 Josh said that the chesses did not really have a distinct taste, thus the rating. (But the chips -- ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ for me!)Wakey Bakey (Php 275) - ⭐⭐⭐This one had the same cheese with the Classic, though it has scrambled eggs and smoked bacon... Which we did not remember tasting with every bite of the sandwich. Quite pricey for a small sandwich, the upside is that it was served on croissant toasts which tasted HEAVENLY! Cheese was also not as gooey as the Classic. The roasted tomato soup that came with it, according to Peter, was too peppery; while Josh thought it lacked acidity. (I'm not a tomato soup fan, though.)The lapses in the food were compensated by the good service we got from the courteous staff of the restaurant. The ambiance of this restaurant is good. The interior has some cute trinkets, which made the restaurant look cute and homey. Overall, we enjoyed dining here, but it might not be a place we would come back to soon. I hope they can improve more on the quality of their food, so that it will be worth every penny we pay. (This meal costed us around Php 1500, including service charge. Quite pricey, if you ask me.)Thanks to Joshua and Peter's collective efforts for the photos! (I think they were already hungry but they still let me do my kaartehan so I can post a review HEHEHE)#NewRestaurantsFor2017