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

Gino’s Brick Oven Pizza

Don’t be fooled by the name. The real star here is the burrata caprese—rich, refreshing, and primal—the essence of Capri on a plate.



The burrata is homemade, its outer curd of fresh mozzarella bursting with cream and kesong puti. It had a little more body than most of the burrata’s I’ve tried but it was perfectly seasoned, and beautifully served on a bed of aromatic pesto and ringed by slices of cherry tomatoes. It alone was worth the trip to Katipunan. But why stop there, right?

Thankfully, the pizza did not disappoint. We ordered three kinds—the buffalo chicken, Bianca verde, and SMEGG.

My favorite was the Bianca verde, with olive oil, kesong puti, ricotta, Parmesan, basil and arugula. I liked the way the creaminess of the cheese mingled with the spiciness of the arugula.

What makes pizza, however, is the crust. And I am happy to note that the dough at Gino’s delivers. The crust was crisp, chewy and charred, with a smokiness that can only achieved with a brick oven. I loved the blistered edges, although I would have wanted a little more air, like the puffed up crust as Mario Batali’s Pizzeria Mozza in Singapore.

The pizza fillings were spare with the number of ingredients but generous with the amount. Fresh out of the oven, they were soggy in the middle like other Neapolitan-style pies so the best way to enjoy them is to roll the wedge from the pointy end and cut or bite across.



The kids enjoyed the buffalo chicken (tomato sauce, mozzarella, buffalo chicken, blue cheese and Parmigiano Reggiano). It was deliciously piquant and went quite well with the spicy honey, one of the condiments at the table (my nephew, Joaki, however thought that honey on pizza was so wrong).

Gino's Spicy Honey

We also ordered two pastas—the carbonara and bacon sausage. They were good; you can tell that the noodles were fresh. But I didn’t think they were outstanding. A friend suggested we order the salted egg pasta next time. And there will be a next visit because I have my eye on the bacon Gouda and BOMB pizza.

Margarita Fores's Spaghettini Al Telefono

It takes time to build a relationship. While I revel at every new food find, there are a few that I return to like an old love. Cibo’s penne al telefono is one of them. At the tail end of summer, I joined Margarita Fores at Casa Artusi’s first Divertimento in Fattoria where she showed participants how to cook the spaghettini version of this Cibo favorite. You’ll read all about my Casa Artusi experience in Mabuhay magazine’s September issue. In the meantime, here’s the recipe to Gaita’s spaghettini al telefono:



Spaghettini Al Telefono

1 pack De Cecco spaghettini
½ kilo blanched and deseeded red tomatoes
1 tbsps. Olive oil
1 tbsp. chopped garlic
250 grams butter
1 liter cream
100 grams cubed mozzarella
3 to 4 grates of fresh nutmeg
100 grams Laguna cheese (white cheese)
A bunch of fresh sweet basil chiffonade
Salt and pepper, to taste

1. Cook spaghettini according to package direction in boiling, well salted water.
2. In a heavy pan, sauté tomatoes in garlic and olive oil.
3. Add cream, butter and nutmeg.
4. Put pasta in the sauce. Allow some of the salted water to drip into the pan so that the sauce would adhere better into the pasta.
5. Add the mozzarella and mix until the cheese starts to melt.
6. Season with salt and pepper.
7. Transfer to a platter. Garnish with Laguna cheese and basil. Serve.