KUYA J: The best Crispy Pata in Town

KUYA J: The best Crispy Pata in Town

No question about it, Kuya J Restaurant's best selling dish is the Crispy Pata. It is Crispy, delicious and freshly cooked. You could order this for only Php499



Our favorite Tokwa't Baboy! Delicious and meaty! For only Php190.

Yummylicious! One of the most popular appetizers is chorizo Dinamita, long green peppers stuffed with sausage meat and cheese, wrapped in lumpia skin and deep-fried. The serving is large enough to be shared by a group of 6 people.

The scallops are of the rare variety caught only in the deep waters of the Visayas region. Supplies are flown in daily from Cebu. They are smothered in a mixture of butter, crumbs, and cheese, then grilled until bubbly.


Lumpia presko is wrapped in malunggay-speckled skin and stuffed with crabmeat and crunchy bamboo shoots, adorned with alfalfa sprouts. Tokwa’t baboy is a tall tower of super-crunchy tofu cubes alternated with chunks of bagnet.




Pochero bulalo Tagalog has brown thick gravy naturally sweetened by saba bananas, kamote, and corn. The beef is a two-inch-thick bone-in shank.

Beef brisket and oxtail are the meats in kare-kare, which uses no instant mixes at all. Instead, Kuya J toasts peanuts and rice, which are then ground separately. At serving time, a handful of ground peanuts is layered atop the dish.



Delicious sisig!



Rice Humba is one of my favorites among Kuya J's wide variety of food offerings.

A scene stealer is the mango pandan. A popular Kuya J meal ender, composed of Cebu mango cubes and pandan-flavored Jell-O floating in a fruity, creamy, and cold soup crowned with a burst of spun caramelized sugar like sunrays.

Shavings of dried coconut meat top a brilliant concoction called tablea coffee flan. Supporting local farmers, the organic coffee is sourced from small-scale farmers in Batangas. The tablea is from Bohol, where housewives roast the cocoa seeds in small palayok (clay pot), stirred with bamboo-and-coco shell spatulas.

The president of the company Mr. Wing Lip Chang told us the history of Kuya J. When a fellow blogger asked him who is Kuya J? 

Are you curious too? Here it goes...

Once upon a time, there was a carinderia in Cebu City whose original dishes became so popular that suppliers could hardly keep up with the demand for fresh scallops, squid, catfish, and pig knuckle. Everybody called the owner Kuya J.

Unaffected by his carinderia’s success, Kuya J decided to pack up and go overseas, selling his business to a group with grand expansion plans for the small eatery. Today, Kuya J is going nationwide, with branches opening on Boracay Island, Iloilo, Bacolod, and all over Metro Manila.