Manila Grocery

I was there March 27,2024. I purchase a vacuumed sealed tapang bangus vacuumed frozen fish and dried squid! I ask how much it cost per package. I was told by the owner oh it is per pound. The packaging says how much it weigh already. When she was ringing me up with my goods, she still went ahead and weigh the products that is already been weighed by the manufacturer. I got 8 items and was charge almost 90 dollars. I came home and mind you i am 5 months pregnant, i was going to fry some squid because it is one thing f most filipinos fav dried fish, found black molds. Apparently it says on the package that it has to be in the cold environment at all times. Ut the owner is just letting it sits in the counter with room temperature. No wonder why molds grew inside. I called her and she got an attitude and was told" it is normal to have mold in the dried fish." So she was saying that it is ok for pregnant woman to eat mold. I told her i am servsafe certified and run a multi million dollar restaurant and i know what i am talking about. And i was told to just return it. ImHoping she would not re sell it.

You can't really call this place a grocery store per say... they do have few items, but looks like their money maker is the food they prepared and sell in the store. I walked in in hoping to buy some Filipino items, did a walk around twice and didn't really find unique Filipino products that jumped out. I would have looked what they had, but needed to head out so left without purchasing anything.

This place is starting to become a shell of it's former self. IMHO the Chinese/Korean powerhouse grocery stores in the City Market/JoCo-Metcalf area are finally starting to put a squeeze on this place. Products here are now consistently more expensive than their southern competition. I also ran into a few other canned products that were expired. It's pretty darn hard to expire canned food. And to my wife's sad dismay, the ampalaya (Bitter Gourd or Bitter Melon) is always rotten in the box. It's not even worth trying to sort through the mold covered veggies. And for what I think is the final deathblow, the store is losing it's family first agenda. You used to always see the whole family here joking around and engaging customers. On my last few trips, there's new folks there that don't even recognise the clientele. I hope this place can turn it around. But if they don't expand their product line and price things competitively, they are going to suffer the fate of their restaurant, La Filipina Cafe.

First time I ever went there, they had issues with their card reader/register. The owner (old lady) had an attitude towards customers who only had cards to pay by. Seriously? Not a good way to treat customers. Not coming here again.