Mabuhay Philippine Cuisine

As an American born Filipino with a large, loud immigrant family, this place feels like home in a lot of ways, especially the most important way– the food.
Buffet style, great classic Filipino dishes like bangus (smoked vinegar whitefish), puncit (noodles), adobo, lumpia, and sinigang (sour broth beef and veggie soup– I put mine over rice).
Don’t expect fancy table settings or service– this is a down home place– come for the food and the Pinay aunties’ gossip-​chatter.

Skip this place! Came because of Groupon, but will never go back. Food was subpar. Walked in and nobody seemed to care that we were there. The majority of the dishes were not even labeled. Don’t waste your time.

I bought a Groupon to go try Mabuhay Philippine Cuisine, and The Wife and I finally went to use it for dinner this past Saturday. We had heard good-​ish reviews for Mabuhay, and were excited to try a new style of food. Unfortunately, the whole experience, from start to finish, ended up being terrible, which led us to give the restaurant the nickname of «Mabu-​bye.» We actually walked out of the restaurant before we had even taken a single bite of food, but, lest you think I’m being unfair in this review, please read the whole thing.
The restaurant is located in a small strip mall along S Park Street, which wasn’t a big deal to us because some of our favorite restaurants have been located in strip malls. Our first warning of things to come should have been that there was only one other car parked in the lot at 6:00 pm on a Saturday evening, but we walked in anyway. Upon entering the restaurant, we discovered that there was no one at the cash register, and no indication of whether to seat ourselves or wait for someone to seat us. We saw one waiter running around getting drinks for the 3 tables that were eating, but he never once looked at us. After standing awkwardly in the entrance for a few minutes, we decided to just sit down at a table, at which point a woman who had been sitting and eating at one of the other tables got up and said, «Yes, wherever you want.» Well, that would’ve been helpful a few minutes ago!
So, we sat down at a table, and the waiter came over another few minutes later to ask if we wanted drinks. Both The Wife and I ordered water, which he brought out, but it was lukewarm (no ice at all) and the glasses were barely ¾ full. He then walked away without saying a word about ordering food.
Now, going in, we knew that the food would be served buffet style, but the waiter did not say whether we could just go up to the buffet or whether he would bring us plates to use first. So, I got up and went to look at the buffet. I discovered a stack of maybe 6 plates that I thought were clean (though I’m still not sure they were), some silverware, and one bowl. I also glanced at the buffet items, and thought, «Oh, god, what have we gotten into?» The Wife came up to join me at the buffet, and while she was looking over the options, I started to serve myself some rice. I dug the rice scoop into the rice cooker only to discover that the rice was so overcooked that it was too hard to push the scoop into. So, I changed my mind about the rice and went to look more closely at the other food options.
None of the dishes were labeled, so it was a complete guessing game as to what food you might be serving yourself. The stuff that looked like chicken skewers were just sitting in a metal tray perched precariously on the edge of the buffet station, but they looked old and dry. One of the pasta dishes looked so slimy that it literally made me gag, and the other noodle dish looked old and crunchy, which is not how I ever want to eat noodles. The remainder of the dishes looked funky, old (like they had been sitting out for a while), and, again, we had absolutely no idea what any of them actually were.
Given how terrible EVERYTHING looked and how bad our initial service experience had been, we set our plates back on the table, left $ 1 to tip for the water, and walked out. I wish I hadn’t wasted money on the Groupon to this place, but that sunk cost was minimal compared with our desire to just say, «Mabu-​bye» to this disgusting restaurant.

Sunday brunch yesterday — enjoyed having Filipino longanisa and eggs — along with delicious fried tilapia and many other dishes. The selections were freshly made and tasted great. Everything was labeled — but if you don’t know what something is or what something is made of, just ask — the staff is friendly! The server (owner’s son) was polite and efficient in keeping the tables cleaned.
After we finished eating and just before we left, the owner and head chef (Cita) was just finishing fresh pork siopao (steamed buns) and insisted we each take one home. So glad she did because they were DELICIOUS!
Nice selection of freshly made Filipino deserts, as well. Nice part of this buffet, as many Filipino buffets I have been don’t include deserts.
We left full and satisfied! Adult prices: Weekday $ 7.99 lunch/​$ 8.99 dinner. Weekend is $ 8.99 all day. Seniors (55+) and children prices are also available.

The buffet bar was filled with many of my favorite childhood dishes.
For non-​Filipinos patrons, I would appreciate labels and short descriptions of the dishes as I had to describe these to my SO. I can only imagine the amount of guessing involved if I wasn’t available.
Otherwise, there’s a good selection of dishes and desserts.

I get the hype!
Came here a few weeks ago with a groupon for dinner. Honestly, dinner buffet is a great deal even without the groupon.
The food is excellent. Authentic and delicious, and they do the buffet right. The food is always hot, and they bring out fresh dishes often so that nothing sits out long or gets cold. Yes, the food is meat-​centric and greasy, but that’s just Phillipine cuisine for you.
The one thing I was disappointed in was the service. While our waitress was super friendly and even gave us free tea and cookies, the service was shockingly slow. I think the issue was that our waitress was also cooking, so she was very busy. Maybe Mabuhay should think about hiring a few extra people to help work the tables. The three parties (including us) that were finished eating waited ~20mins to pay. We even got up and went looking for our waitress at one point.
Come here expecting great food and very kind service for very low cost, but know that you’ll be here for a while.

I’ve been here twice. I really want to love it, but I just can’t. There are a lot of other ethnic restaurants doing great work with their food, especially here in Madison, but I just don’t see this place doing the same thing.
The service and location is just not good. No one greeted us at the door, we sat ourselves down, and we just started eating. The placement of the buffet was a little awkward, but not as awkward as figuring out what the food was. I’m Filipino, so I could recognize most of everything, but my friend had a real hard time. The biggest thing that caught me off guard is that it just seems lazy or sloppy. And how attractive is that for a restaurant?
I could mostly forgive this stuff if the food was great (see Melly Mel’s). But the rice was off, and the dishes were overcooking in the steam trays. That left maybe three items overall that were edible. I was able to eat some of the veggies and the sinigang (a sour soup) with the rice, but none of it was very balanced.
Ugh. This review is making me sad. I have to review something good next.

Third time done us harm.
The first time using a groupon, we were blown away with how great the food tasted. The humba, lumpia, and sour soup had me anticipating the next visit. It was as if I had gone to my auntie’s place for lunch and had all my favorites set out. We were excited and hoped that this restaurant would make it.
Come 2^nd visit, we walk in for dinner, all eyes turn to us as we enter. No one to greet us or to tell us where we can sit. No service, no water, so remembering what other customers did the first visit, I casually go over to where the drinks are refrigerated and choose some drinks. That’s when I finally get some recognition from a lady who is waiting for her halo-​halo and asked if we want water. The food still tastes great, with a good variety, but very sketchy service.
Our third visit and probably our last was during lunch on a Friday. Again, we walked in and sat at our usual table. No one is there to greet us so we have to go to the kitchen to ask for water. The food is just awful. Clumpy white rice, cold lumpia, pockets of soy sauce in the pancit, and you can just tell the humba was reheated and sauces added to give it its last «oomph.» The food wasn’t refreshed but we noticed that the owner and his wife were busy with carryout cartons. We left disgusted and disappointed. Not only was the service poor, the food was too.
You had us at hello, and we were able to overlook the lack of service cause the food tasted great, but when the food and service is no good, sorry, we can’t love you no more.
3 stars is an average for all three visits.

I feel a bit generous giving the three stars, but I’m giving an extra star for the novelty factor. Having never tried Philippine food, I felt the trip was worth it just for the experience.
We were there on a Friday night for dinner, and the buffet appeared to be well-​stocked and inviting. The space was small, but there were plenty of open tables. There was a TV playing what might have been a Philippine TV station or movie. The place was also stocked with dry goods and personal hygiene items, like a little convenience store.
The buffet was haphazardly labeled, so some dishes were quite the mystery to me. There was an assortment of flavors — from salty to sour to slightly sweet. The food was a bit greasy for my taste. There was a good amount of meat, including skewered chicken that was a hit at my table. The whole fish pieces had a jerky-​like texture. There were a couple of thin soups, a vegetable curry, rice noodle with vegetables, fried rice, and white rice.
I did delight in a purple yam dessert — cut into flat little rectangles like a cookie bar. This tasted fresh and wholesome, and just a bit sweet. There were about 2 – 3 other desserts that I had never experienced before — including white rice wrapped in banana leaf and a gelatinous coconut-​flavored bar. The dessert bar also had some fruits, flan, and peanut butter cookies.
For me, I think once was enough for this particular restaurant.

As one of the few Asians in Madison (let’s be honest here, there aren’t too many), I can definitely vouch for this place’s authenticity (and let’s be honest again, you wouldn’t know even if I was lying or not).
Anyways, Philippine cuisine is definitely something that takes a little getting used to. Because it’s influenced by so many different cultures (Malay, Chinese, Spanish, Latin, etc…), you will find a variety of foods cooked in a variety of ways.
They like to pair flavors up, especially something sweet with something salty or sour. There are a lot of meat-​based dishes, with chicken, beef and fish as the main staples. They also like to cook with bananas, mangoes, coconuts and eggplants, so expect dishes including one of those. When it comes to display, they are definitely not subtle about it. Entire fish heads will be left out, along with various cow parts, so get ready for it.
I could go into each individual dish we sampled, but that would take way too much work. I’d highly recommend giving this place a chance, but do come with an open mind (and taste buds).
This was definitely a unique experience for me, and I highly enjoyed my meal. The flavors aren’t completely in line with what I prefer, but I’m glad I gave this place a chance.
Plus, a buffet for ~$ 8 is a complete steal!

The other reviews on here somewhat swayed us into trying this place out, we found and bough a groupon too;
Once we got here, the buffet was very small, about 8+ items, the fish pieces were horribly dry and full of tiny bones, more like fish jerky with fish heads attached, most other dishes appear very dry, several hours old, only two other parties were at the restaurant on a Saturday night around 7 pm …
This was a bust and will never repeat…
Most items did not taste well enough to eat

It was difficult to decide between a four and five star review. They excel with their food and fail at the basics.
The coffee is instant and awful. The tea was instant and apparently some sort of tropical tea blend. It was worse than the coffee. All their other beverages are housed in glass convenient store coolers. The waitress was very nice but easily distracted.
However, their food is terrific. It’s a small buffet of about eight items. None of the food suffered the usual buffet pratfalls (old, chewy, burnt, or plain forgotten). The real treat is that all the dishes are homemade. The food reminded me of food I would eat at a person’s home.
The food is spiced but not spicy and because of that the dishes have a deep intriguing flavor that spice– babies could enjoy.
There is a subtly and beautifully spiced white cream sauce that comes with wonderfully large and freshly cut sweet potatoes and green beans.
The curry is excellent. It has the classic neon yellow glow of good curry sauce. It has large chunks of potatoes, carrots, okra, and beef. The beef is nicely tender.
Another dish was filled with various beans, vegetables, and chicken on the bone cooked to oblivion. It’s all housed in a succulent deep red sauce of chicken fat and paprika. It was a little like gumbo and a little like authentic goulash. It was masterful.
The fried chicken is very good although it does seem out of place.
The salmon was a single fillet nicely cooked and lightly seasoned. It flaked apart perfectly.
They have other dishes as well. Personally, I am suffering from food amnesia.
The food is fantastic. The atmosphere is lacking. The lay out is tight. The drinks are awful. The servers are mediocre. But, I reiterate, the food is fantastic.

Mabuhay serves up some excellent fish, as well as chicken adobo. We mozied in on a Sunday to get a little of this and that to go. I got the fried rice, a fried egg on top, the Salmon with veggies, and the Adobo. Hubster got the adobo and the fried half fish with head intact. We also got the dessert cakes.
EVERYTHING was excellent. The adobo was great, the fried rice one of those dishes that looks simple but tastes complex (how is it I can’t make fried rice!!!) and the fish was tasty. I also loved the cakes.
Only reason it is 4 and not 5 stars is because it was buffet and we didn’t get there right when everything was set out fresh, so it was certainly sitting out for a bit and was already picked through when we were there. Kinda like when you go to a gathering and get there a lil late. You still eat and it still rocks! But…
Mabuhay reminds us so much of our friends and family’s cooking that this is definitely a place we have on heavy rotation now that we’ve found it. Great home cooked food. Great classic foods. The whole fried fish is just such classic working man’s food. Not just any fish though, the oily fish: Anchovy, Mackeral, Sardine, etc…
As the only Filipino spot in this quaint city of ours, I hope they stick around.

David F. and I agreed that having dinner at Mabuhay was like going home after a long absence, where our moms/​grandmas make all of our favorite dishes and keep refilling our plates even after we are way beyond full. Except in this case, we were doing the refilling ourselves…
Although served buffet-​style, the food has a definite home-​cooked feel. I’ve never had filipino food before, but if I were a betting woman, I’d say that this is about as authentic as you can get! The food looks a little stale sitting out in the open the way they have it — and honestly I’m surprised that they are able to keep the insects out — but you can definitely tell that the food is prepared with a lot of care. For the selection of dishes that was available during the dinner hours, the $ 8.99 price tag was quite reasonable.
Now on to my favorite part of the meal: the steamed pork buns. Mabuhay’s steamed pork buns are hands-​down the best I’ve ever had. Better than those at any dim sum restaurant I’ve been to, both in the states and abroad. If it wasn’t for all of the refined carbohydrates, I would probably have the buns for breakfast, lunch, and dinner!
Finally, the owner of the restaurant is a super sweet filipino lady! As we were wrapping up our meal, she stopped by with a takeout tin full of suman (sweet sticky rice steamed in banana leaves) for us to take home and told us to grab some more on the way out. Seriously, how sweet is she? We probably looked like broke college students.
TIP: Bring cash to tip. There is no place to tip on the receipt if you are paying by card, but they definitely deserve it! :)

Pros:
–cheap (lunch $ 8, dinner $ 9, drinks additional)
–lots of meat
–decent # of desserts.
–white noodles are good and beef soup is good
–curry dish was excellent
–service is great; our waitress asked if we would come back again at the end.
Cons:
–decoration is a little lacking. lack of ambiance.
–location: wish it was a little close to the campus area
overall it was nice to see a new philipino restaurant in Madison.

The proper English translation of Mabuhay is «Welcome» but at the restaurant, it also could mean «Give your best guess to what you are eating»
This small restaurant tucked away in a strip mall is simple in it’s setup. A long steamer table filled with an assortment of rice dishes, soups, and entrees. Another table houses desserts of various forms… ice creams, mangoes, sticky rice, and a Filipino favorite-​cheesecake (Alright, I don’t know that for sure but who doesn’t like cheesecake!?). Beverages are self-​serve out of the cooler in the back of the room.
My friend and I came for dinner on a cold blustery Thursday night. This was our first foray into Filipino food and overall, I was satisfied. Nothing truly stood out and without any reference to what the dish was or what was in it, we were left guessing at what we were eating.
I appreciate the fact that everything is homemade and cooked by the owner and therefore I gave it an extra star in my rating. I worry that if it doesn’t tackle the basics, the restaurant will only be a novelty for those people looking to try a new food but not willing to come back as repeat customers.

For the Saturday lunch buffet, there was a pleasant energy when we walked in, top 40 music playing and families enjoying a meal on a sunny day.
For the meats, you have whole roasted pig, aka lechon. Shrimp two ways, breaded and fried or with steamed veggies. Two kinds of whole fried fish. Any place that serves fried fish with the heads still on deserves your respect.
Side dishes include stews that you would eat alone or atop rice, with ingredients like coconut milk, okra, red peppers, chicken; tomato paste, chicken, pork, green peas, and raisins. All were delicious.
I always look forward to dessert and there are desserts galore, including puto (steamed sponge cake), kutsinta (sticky cake), tupig (sticky rice with coconut cream, wrapped in banana leaves), ube (purple potato) flavored icecream, chocolate covered pretzels, and… jello! It’s not a buffet unless there’s jello.
Do not expect the menu to coddle you. The food is made with love, and there will be shrimp, pigs, and fish with their heads still on. There will be lots of meats and starches, so prepare to leave stuffed!

Went here for Sunday lunch, and WOW. This place deserves the five-​star status it currently holds for several reasons:
— Excellent food. I am no expert in Philippine cuisine, but I love meat, and this place has boatloads of it in a variety of styles: roasted pork, sausages, stewed beef with veggies, fried chicken (super crispy and well seasoned). The only negative was that the fish had been sitting out too long and was dry.
–Unique flavors. This was my first time eating Philippine food, and I was surprised by the interplay of sour and sweet in some of the dishes. Lots of okra too. And pork fat. Lots of it. YUM.
–Amazing dessert table! I have never had purple yam, and I tried three different desserts with it (a cake, a rice cake wrapped in what I think was a corn husk, and ice cream), the rice cake being my absolute favorite. It had that chewy, gluten-​y sweetness that I’ve longed for since leaving Korea, and the bright purple color was a plus for sure.
–CHEAP! My boyfriend and I each got a Pepsi, and the total was $ 22! They don’t even give you the option of tipping on the credit card receipt, so they really don’t expect it, but we left $ 5 because we liked the service a lot (one of the cooks brought out the ice cream to make sure we could try some before we left).

Philippine restaurants are hard to come by even in larger cities. My husband is Filipino and we’ve tried a few places while traveling, but I never thought we’d see one come to Madison. And I certainly never expected it to be this good. But it is. Zero atmosphere, but the food more than makes up for it. Everything we sampled from the buffet was outstanding, and as a previous reviewer mentioned the BBQ pork skewers are to die for. We’ll definitely be back.
It should be noted: it’s not even remotely vegetarian friendly. I think the only things on the buffet without some sort of animal flesh were the steamed rice and the desserts.
But, all you carnivores — please eat here, I want this place to stick around a while. :)

Well, it’s the only Filipino place in Madison, and it’s better than any that will come in, so it gets five stars!
Went for lunch with one of my friends – we were warmly greeted by the owner, who was super nice. There were at least a dozen Filipino dishes, ranging from egg rolls (lumpia) to sweet and sour salmon to a FANTASTIC barbecue skewered pork.
Filipino food at its finest. And the desserts?! Purple yam and mango ice cream, sticky rice in some kind of leaf I can’t describe.
Ugh. It. was. fantastic. And all of this for only $ 8?!
Wake up, Madison. You all need to go there. Now.