Grill City

OMG!!! I can’t believe I’ve been working in Irvine for over 3 years and didn’t know this was here! BBQ IS DELICOUS!!! Okay… I just read some of the most recent reviews and am shocked! I had a fast pleasant experience and the food was delicious. The service is what you’d expect at say a fast food restaurant… nothing bad… that’s just how it is. I’m an American born Flip and have traveled to the PI and noticed that in the PI service is 5 star EVERYWHERE… even at a fast food restaurants. So, I could see how one could expect that here… but sad to say this is normal… at least from my experience and price is just right for me since most of my family is gone… this reminds me of what home used to be like. I’ll be coming here more often AND bringing my coworkers!

Got the breakfast special that advertised unlimited garlic rice, unlimited coffee, and unlimited sarap, only to find out they ran out of garlic rice and hot water for the coffee.

Filipino food. My favorite is the Liempo combo. It comes with rice and another side (the adobo is the best one) of your choice. The meat is marinated well and grilled well done. You can use your seafood city grocery Suki rewards card here. I’ve only tried the mango and calamansi juice, which in my opinion is too sweet.

Ordered some party platters for my daughter’s birthday party — pork & chicken barbecue, pork eggrolls, pancit bihon, veggie eggrolls. When we’re around the area around lunch time, this is where we would most likely to eat so we are quite familiar with their food. Their food is quite pricey but since quality is good, you get what you pay for. Not so much the same with their platters — the barbecue is less than half of what they serve for dine-​in but at the same price! The bihon was salty and had some sort of sauce at the bottom that was a bit odd. Needless to say, we were very dissappointed with their platters and we don’t see any reason to go buy them again. We will, however, still eat there when we get a chance.

Placed an order with someone named Chris on Wednesday and scheduled it to be picked up for a birthday party on Saturday. We get there and they have no clue who took the order and apparently do not know the names of their co-​workers standing next to them. This is not the first time this has happened to us. Good food but terrible service.

I like the food here but the service is always terrible.
I came at 10 am to eat breakfast and I was ordering a #7 which is the garlic rice with baby bangus and 2 eggs. The server proceeded to get me rice with a stuffed bangus. I was thoroughly confused. Then I realized she was getting me a #7 on the lunch/​dinner menu. And I told her I wanted a #7 on the breakfast menu. She said «Oh sorry we don’t have breakfast anymore! The menu hasn’t been changed.» Then she changed the menu screen so the breakfast menu was gone.
If the workers weren’t so busy standing around and gossiping they would realize that they actually have work to do like change the breakfast menu to the lunch menu. It would also be helpful to put the time of when breakfast ends. They say breakfast starts at 7 am but when does it end? The sign they display doesn’t even say.

Wow huge portions for a really good price. The food isn’t bad either. Service is horrendous though. A line of around 7 people were behind us as the server slowly tried to get our order together. I felt like everyone was giving us the angry eyes…
I’m not too sure of the names of the foods that I ate but I thought they were all pretty good. The sour soup comes with shrimp in it. There’s also a good portion of rice with the combo of 2 items. We had to wait around 25 minutes for the crab pancit to be done.

It’s a shame that such good food is overshadowed by some of the most inefficient service.
Stopped in to pick up bbq for a Mother’s day luncheon only to be stifled for over an hour waiting for the order to be cooked for a previous order.
The POS checkout girl was so inefficient that she couldn’t ring up the subsequent guests who were just awaiting their already packaged food.
A guest 3 orders ahead ordered items which had to be prepared on the spot, so because of that all of us had to wait for that to be prepared and rung up before she had any sense to manage guests simply waiting to pay.
We left so infuriated, but sad to say as others have noted… Classic Pinoy inefficiency. It’s a shame because the food was pretty good.

As an immigrant, I find myself looking for a restaurant that will bring me back to the streets of Manila. Grill City does bring back memories, memories consisting mostly of food poisoning.
While this stands operates under the guise of «Authentic Filipino Food,» it’s much rather a mass produced imitation.
Food:
–Taho:
The presentation is neat. It’s packed and sealed into a boba cup. However, the taste is reminiscent of watered down sugar water. The boba is hard to chew and tastes like it’s been out for a few days.
–Bbq:
The meat is grilled all at the same time. By that I mean, the chicken, pork and beef sticks are cooked on the same grill. There’s bound to be cross-​contamination in the cooking, but hey, that’s authentic right?
–Fish:
The fish is drenched in oil. Yes I know it’s deep fried, but when the skin has already absorbed enough oil to emit it out involuntarily, you just can’t bring yourself to eat it.
Overall:
My experience was sub-​par. I was greeted succinctly by the cashier and the food is too Americanized. One thing that is authentic is the lack of health and safety standards. Sounds exactly like the Philippines.

When you see how they grill meat skewer behind that big glass, you can’t wait to try their BBQ.
The service is messy and unfriendly.
—Chicken skewer is cold: It’s moist, overly sweetened, it didn’t taste like chicken. And the chicken meat is cold
—Pork Skewer is cold: It’s chewy, overly sweetened and cold. All the skewers share the same sauce.
–+ BBQ Tilapia: The fish is tiny and blackened, the fish meat is tender, the bean paste that goes with the fish is tasty, but the entire dish is cold.
–+The soup: Is super hot, burning hot. I didn’t feel part of my tongue anymore after I took a sip. The soup is overloaded with MSG and lard. But we kept drinking the soup because it’s only the warm thing and it felt nice in my stomach.
-++: The steamed cake came out cold, but it’s filled with flavors and it’s textured sponge in a good way.
—Coconut water: WTH is that? That’s the most disgusting plastic water that I ever tried in my entire life. What is that coconut made of? Melted Synthetic fiber? Ugh…
Why would you serve people cold BBQ if you are showing that you are supposed to provide fresh BBQ? hmmm…All I can say is bad management.

We ordered food here after grocery shopping at Seafood City; picked up the pork bbq and rice plate and a glass of taho and sago which is reminiscent of growing up in Manila. It took me back to my happy place. The glaze on the pork bbq stick was sweet, salty and spicy which is so good! My boyfriend ordered the bbq combination plate with a side of the pancit bihon noodles and he loved it. He also ordered the halo halo although he said he had better. Nevertheless, it was a delicious and cheap meal. I’d come back here again for the pork bbq! They do offer other options at this turo turo joint. I think I will order daing na bangus next time!

Cheap Prices. Big Portions.
They give you so much food for cheap. I ordered the GRILLED MIX PLATTER for only $ 22.95. It came with 2 grilled Tilapia, 3 grilled BBQ skewers and 2 grilled pork belly. El Hubby and I ate it for 2 days.
I would’ve given it 4 starts, but the grilled bbq pork skewers was a tough. I liked the sweet sauce on top, but it was a difficult to chew O_​o. On the other hand, grilled Tilapia and the grilled pork belly were good and had a strong char flavor. Next time I want to try their grilled squid and other noodles.
Located inside Seafood City Supermarket. It’s «turo-​turo» style which means you point at what you want from the buffet. Some Unilocalers complained how the line moved slow, but I didn’t have that problem. The line moved pretty quick and there were 3 staff helping customers.
Will I come back? Most likely yes since I like to shop at Seafood City and it’s convenient. I guess I’ll just avoid the BBQ skewers???

Honestly, growing up with certain types of foods, you learn to love the «labor of love» that your mother, father, aunts and uncles all talked about as they slaved away in the kitchen, or in the backyard on the grill or fire pit… And as we grow up, we yearn for the food they cooked (if you haven’t learned to cook it yourself!) Whether you grew up Italian, Filipino, Chinese, Mexican… your cultural food that your family cooked will always hold a special part of your stomach and heart… but the truth is, we’ll never reach it going to a restaurant, we can only hope the curb the cravings.
Grill city satisfies cravings of Filipino food. but it doesn’t exactly hit the spot. I’m not sure what others talk about with service, as it’s a line, it’s an order with a possible «Ma’am Sir,» and it’s a take it to your seat kind of place. The food is decent, and just like other Filipino spots, when there’s dead time, food sits under that lamp and gets dry. so when you grab skewers etc. at an odd hour, chances are its been sitting there for a bit. Though coming at peak hours means that line moves pretty slow (the workers are a tad bit slow…) and the filipinos can smell the inihaw in the air.
When it is fresh though. the Pork Liempo, the Skewers, and tilapia and bangus are all great. Paired with kanin (rice), vinegar, and patis (fish sauce), it’s the closest thing you’ll get to your Mom’s actual cooking.
They have shakes too, and Halo Halo… they’re just OK too. But like i said, if you’ve got a craving, they’ll try their best to satisfy.

2.5 stars.
This is an over the counter spot inside Seafood City which is a Filipino supermarket. They serve various grilled meats.
I ordered the pork lechon which is almost like a filipino version of porchetta. It comes with pork meat and the skin. The lechon meat did not have much of a porky flavor and the skin was tough and chewy. The meat actually did not taste very good. And, overall, the dish was not very good. I also ordered a pork skewer. The pork meat was bland and did not have much of a pork flavor. It was coated with a slightly sweet and slightly sour sauce which was okay. It did have a nice char backnote flavor. Lastly, I ordered a chicken skewer. This was my favorite of three things that I ordered. The chicken meat had a nice chicken flavor and it was fairly moist. The marinade coating sauce also had a slightly sweet and sour backnote of flavor. And, it had a nice char grilled flavor.
Was I wowed where I would return? Probably not.

After eating at Grill City I can’t say I have any compelling reason to go back. I had really high hopes seeing the luscious skewers of meat roasting over the flames, but the meat we ended up getting was dry and unremarkable. There are other dishes on the menu and the Halo halo drink seemed interesting, but the mixed grill with pork and chicken didn’t make us fans.

I really want to give this place four stars, but I don’t think it deserves it. When they have a long line it moves kinda slow even though it’s just a pick and choose eatery. Let’s just start with the bad part and get that over with. The pompano which was the main part of our meal was dry. The fish skin which is the best part of the fish was soggy. Pompano shouldn’t be that hard to get right especially at a Filipino place. I was kinda disappointed. Next time I think I’ll try those meat skewers they have. The pancit was also a little flat, they need to work on it. It needed more veggies in it, it was really just clear rice noodles with a plain sauce.
Now the good part. I also got some dinuguan. I’ve only had this dish two, maybe three times in my life and every time I get it, it’s always better than the last. This was the best dinuguan I’ve ever had. Not to salty, thick, black, bloody, fatty, porky deliciousness. It also had a light, not too strong, kick of vinegar that makes Filipino food Filipino. There were however some chewy gristly bits of pork in it that I tossed aside. The rice was amazing and every Filipino knows that rice is important. Probably the most important part of the whole meal, of the whole universe even. It wasn’t soggy or mushy, neither hard or grainy. Perfect rice. So not a bad meal after all.

We built this city on rice!
These pork skewers are the best! The meat is so tender, juicy, and has amazing flavor. It reminds me so much of home! It’s almost just like how mom makes it. Came here for lunch before groceries. I figured it would be best to eat prior to buying food for the home, cause we all know what an empty stomach does when you go grocery shopping… buy everything! Anyway, I got the «meal» which is the BBQ pork skewer (1 only), rice, and their salad. Everything was really delicious, but I felt that the meal was a bit overpriced for 1 skewer. I know, everyone says that the rice was bountiful, but I wanted more meat! The «restaurant» is pretty small because it is located in Seafood City. So, seating is very limited. Basically, have a family member find seats while you or another person wait in line. Overall, good food, but it is a bit pricey for what they serve.

Located inside the new Seafood City supermarket, Grilled City offers quick, inexpensive and tasty grilled yumminess.
Although the bbq pork on a stick looked delicious, I had to get one of my favorite, the grilled squid. Most entrees range between $ 6 – 8 and you can choose between a salad or a soup. My squid was tender and tasty, stuffed with veggies. It came with rice, and LOTS of it. The soup was a chicken soup with a strong gingery taste but pretty good.
There’s also free water on the side.
I’d definitely go back!
Unilocal 100 Challenge! 2015: ²²⁄₁₀₀

Grill City when all is said and done for me is just OK. I am not a fan of «turo turo» (point-​point) cafeteria style Filipino places, which is what you’ll find 90 per cent of the time. Most of the time, the food sits and sits. Someone please open up a sit down, cooked to order Filipino restaurant in OC… is that too much to ask? But I digress. Grill City is like its competitors like Goldilocks. Yet another tutro turo place.
Then you have the long line. It took 15 minutes to get through the line at 7 PM. On weekends, it probably takes a lot longer. The first thing we did was snag a table… It was dirty but the only one available. Fortunately, I carry alcohol wipes with me and cleaned off the table. The people around us had fish, pancit, and pretty much everything on the menu.
. On a Tuesday night it was still crowded until 8 PM. Shortly thereafter, the place seemed to empty out as if Manny Pacquoa was outside. Speaking of outside, parking can be non existent esp; during busy times. It shares a parking lot with Wal Mart, the Habit, Taco Bell, Staples, etc.
Food is decent for the price. For me, the highlight is: the on site grilled chicken and pork. It’s fun to watch it being cooked, especially for little kids It’s got a slight marinated taste to it. The most popular item is the 1 item plate. I chose the pork skewer served with a pile of rice and so called salad which is boiled vegetables with a sugary taste for about $ 7. I did not like it-​it was too sweet, I want to taste the vegetables as is with a little salt. The pancit wasn’t bad. The noodle dish had some veggies and is very popular. There are lots of other choices but I decided not to try other menu items. such as fish, squid, etc.
My friend, a white guy who is an adventurous eater liked Grill City and said to him it was a four star place. We agree to disagree. I am glad it’s here as some of my friends like this place a lot more than I do. It’s also very cool this place is right next to Seafood City, Valerio’s Bakery, Red Ribbon Bakery, and Jollibee.

This is really a 4.5 star experience but I’m going to give them 5 stars for their outstanding catering deals!
This place isn’t kidding, it really is grill city! They have some value meals that come with a grilled meat (chicken, squid, pork, fish), rice (lots of it), cooked salad or soup or a classic entrée (which can be one of their stews in the steam tray). Service is EXTREMELY slow, hence the large line. But it’s all good, the food is very good! I opted for the pompano grilled fish with salad combo for $ 8.50. I then got a bbq chicken skewer for $ 2.75 more. Their chicken or pork skewers are 9″ long on a stick. It’s a lot of meat at an extremely reasonable price. They also have catering trays.
Their 100 piece chicken or pork skewer tray is only $ 129! That is an insanely good deal!