A cold and dreary evening without dinner made at home found us navigating towards Tribu Grill in Union City. We've been to the Tribu Grill in San Bruno, CA and were not wowed. We were hungry and a quick look inside this branch made us go inside and order.
The ambiance was definitely better than the San Bruno branch. This one boasted of three large screen TVs that were not even tuned in to TFC! The place is definitely bigger than the cramped San Bruno restaurant and with baby in tow, there was plenty of room to rock the stroller while we ate.
I knew that Tribu Grill is known for their chicken inasal, but looking at the menu, they only offered the chicken with garlic rice, sort of a rice plate. We really wanted to order it a la carte and while one of the servers said we could order it a la carte, the other said the kitchen could not do it. I thought it was odd, as we were going to pay whatever the reasonable cost is for a la carte and we did want to try it; instead, we ended up ordering grilled liempo which came under-grilled. You could tell that the liempo was pre-cooked (boiled), then slapped on the grill, which would have been okay, but it just was not grilled enough. (top picture above) The pork was pale and I'm actually not sure if this was liempo because I did not see the recognizable fat strip, which is my favorite part.
We also ordered beef salpicao (bottom picture above) and that was tender and a bit salty and Worcestershire sauce-tasting. I also had the melon shake because I remembered I liked it a lot from the San Bruno branch, but this version came a bit bland and too foamy. About half of the glass was actual beverage.
Our total bill came close to $60 and with food that we weren't totally satisfied with, it was a bit expensive. Ambiance, great. Food, so-so. It all brings me back again to my little Filipino restaurant pet peeve, that we end up paying top dollar for food that we can actually cook better at home.
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