St. Marc's Cafe's Chococro (Chocolate Croissant): The Perfect Partner to Your Morning Coffee

St. Marc Cafe's Chococro doesn’t look like much but it is a little serving of heaven. It has been haunting me since I first tried it upon the recommendation of Joanna.

I have been a big croissant lover since I had my first bite of the buttery, flaky French version at Hotel Meslay in 1993 as a college graduate on my first visit to Paris. I became an even bigger fan when my mom and I enrolled in a croissant-making class at Heny Sison. I realized that achieving those crisp edges while keeping the inner layers meltingly soft takes hours of kneading and a fine-tuned technique.

St. Marc’s Chococro looks rather unadorned except for the dusting of almond bits on top and the dark chocolate peeking out of its edges. This isn’t the dainty bite of an ideal croissant, but the wisps of warm puff pastry giving in to a burst of what tasted like Gianduja-laced chocolate will get you at first bite. It’s something I’d like to have with my coffee every morning and a worthy replacement to my favorite pain au chocolat.

My niece Julia has her own favorite in St. Marc—the Golden Nugget, soft-serve vanilla ice cream with cereals concealed at the bottom of the cone. I had a taste of the ice cream, which had a rich texture and fresh, milky flavor.

We have Ben Chan to thank for bringing St. Marc Café to the Philippines. It opened its first store in 1998 at Ginza Maronie Boulevard in Tokyo. It has since grown to over 300 outlets globally, spreading happiness through its freshly baked bread and pastries.

St. Marc's Cafe
Ground Floor SM Megamall Fashion Hall, Mandaluyong
Ground Floor UP Town Center, Quezon City
2nd Floor Greenbelt 3, Makati

Mama Lou's: Frills-Free, Full-Flavored Italian Home Cooking

We circled UP Town Center once and still couldn’t decide where to eat. Joanna and I were conferring with each other about options when she said, “Why not Mama Lou’s? It was named best restaurant (by Philippine Tatler).” We retraced our steps and had our group added to the waitlist, which had 10 names before ours.

Mama Lou’s is a fairly recent addition to UP Town Center’s (UPTC) interesting (and growing) roster of restaurants and cafes. It is owned by French-Canadian Richard Tremblay who converted their family home in BF Homes, Las Piñas into an Italian restaurant named after his late-wife Marilou or Mama Lou. It has since expanded with branches in Nuvali and UPTC.

We ordered poutine because the teenagers have been craving for it since our visit to Terrace45. It’s hard to go wrong with this dish, it appears, because the individual ingredients—French fries, gravy and cheese—could very well stand on their own but are even better together. Mama Lou’s version doesn’t stray too far from the original, with tasty brown gravy and mozzarella cheese of the ideal proportions. And because we believe that everything edible should come with bacon on top or on the side, we had ours with a helping of our favorite incarnation of pork.

Mama Lou's Special

Pizza Bianca

Their thin-crust, Neapolitan-style pizzas are served perfectly flat and without edges, the sort you can stuff with alfalfa and roll. We ordered the Mama Lou’s Special, with bubbling mozzarella, prosciutto, mango (!) bits and arugula, and a drizzling of thick balsamico; and pizza Bianca, with cream, mozzarella, bacon and mushroom. They won’t earn the nod of the pizza cognoscenti who are partial to a charred and puffed dough but they are perfectly good pizzas that offer good value for money.

But I’m really all about the standouts. I think there was wizardry at work in Mama Lou’s truffle mac and cheese. Al dente elbow macaroni pasta was tucked in a medley of cheeses—an “original blend of cheese and truffle cream”, the menu describes—and topped with a slight toasted layer of mozzarella and cheddar cheese. It was pure, creamy perfection.

It was easy to tell that Mama Lou’s knows how to do pasta right when we tasted the spaghetti seafood olio, its version of aglio e olio pasta. With just sautéed garlic, a variety of seafood (clams, mussels and shrimps) and olive oil, this simple dish managed to transport me to Positano, where I had my best aglio e olio pasta to date.

My foodie family at Mama Lou's

Mama Lou's Italian Kitchen
UP Town Center
Katipunan Avenue, Quezon City
Phone (632) 9585563