Marites D.
Yelp
I had high hopes for Halo Halo and left sadly disappointed. This is a new Filipino restaurant at The Venetian. There's actually two food courts, and Halo Halo is on the second floor food court of the Grand Canal Shoppes.
I was looking forward to try freshly cooked Filipino food. The menu offers a limited selection of main dish with beef, pork, and chicken, and there's a couple of light bites and dessert. After placing an order, they give a buzzer to notify when the food is ready. As soon as I sat down for about 5 minutes, the buzzer made a loud alarm sound. It was unusually odd that my order was ready to pick up that fast! Each item was boxed separately. I asked for a tray so I can carry the food to the table, but they didn't have a tray. Instead they gave me a big plastic bag and went ahead to place the items inside.
I tried Chicken Adobo ($8.99) and the meat was tender and flavorful, however the garlic rice I requested was served lukewarm and there's no garlic, it had hard pieces of old rice. Chicken Empanada ($5) was good, it's served as two puff pastries filled with chicken, potatoes, carrots, and raisin. This would taste better if it came with Mang Tomas dipping sauce. As for Chicken Lumpia ($5.85), there's 8 good pieces and it's accompanied with sweet chili sauce. Keep in mind, this is more of a quick bite snack. They make the lumpia so tiny it's like the size of my thumb!
The most disappointing item is the Turon ($2.75). Traditionally, Turon is a skinny egg roll wrap filled with plantain and jackfruit, and then it's fried and coated in brown sugar to give a sweet glaze and crispiness. What I received was a fat dry turon roll and there was no sweetness, not even syrup to go with it. The exterior looks golden brown, but inside it had another wrap that was still raw and uncooked. The second one is the regular Halo Halo ($10) which was too sweet, it's a good size dessert (24 oz) for one person. There's an assorted mix of gelatins, sweet mung beans, red beans, coconut jelly, banana, and flan topped with ube ice cream. Usually evaporated milk is what's added in Halo Halo, but the milk I had was overly sweet and this type of dessert is needing more shaved ice.
Overall, the customer service is nice and the food is decent. There are other items I would like to try like the Seafood Breakfast, Wagyu Lumpia, and Grilled Shrimp. However, after the first experience I'm just going to hold off on making a return. I noticed there were some flies swarming around the Venetian food court. I'm not exactly sure where it's coming from, but it's making me feel uncomfortable about returning too soon.