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

The Wholesome Table: The Art of Eating Well

The only thing evil about what I ate at The Wholesome Table was the calories. To my surprise, this temple to cold-pressed juices, sprightly salads and all things organic and superfood-boosted was equally deft at fashioning comfort food classics from ingredients that were treated kindly.



This restaurant owned by husband-and-wife team Juan and Bianca Elizalde is an ode to the Philippines' agricultural bounty. They procure ingredients from local sources. They only use meat from grass-fed cows that were raised without artificial hormones and antibiotics. Their poultry products are free-range. They use seafood that are caught in the wild. They also abstain from using processed ingredients, except for their organic cheeses.



Truth be told, Judd and I weren’t lured to The Wholesome Table in Estancia Mall by the promise of eating wholesomely but by the prospect of eating well. The menu was promising. So were the plates being served to other diners. It didn’t hurt either that the setting recalled the experience of dining under a tree and among the stars, albeit in an indoor mall setting.



I enjoyed their take on tomato soup, which was thickened with vegetable broth. It was light and smooth, with chickpea croutons providing crunch and texture.



Because Judd’s love for meatballs is bordering on fanatical, he just had to have it. The serving was ample, with two big, flavorful and moist cubed portions bathed with bacon mushroom gravy, which was the embodiment of yum.



I ordered the fried chicken parmigiana. The chicken was baked with home-made organic tomato passato and Parmesan cheese. I thoroughly enjoyed this but the chicken was so good it might have been a better idea to request for plain old fried chicken with the tomato puree on the side.

My only regret about this meal was that there were only two of us and I ended up lusting after all the items I didn’t get to order. Had the entire foodie family (and friends) been with me, I would have convinced them to order the burrata, grass-fed meatballs, double mushroom melt, slow-braised pork, and salmon and basil cream pasta.

The Wholesome Table puts pleasure into eating virtuously. The service was efficient, helpful yet unfussy. It is easy to lose track of time amidst the evocative brick walls and distressed wood interiors. And the food is the deliciously nurturing sort, not only for diners but for the land.

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

The Frazzled Cook: The Pancake à la Mode Takes the Cake

 The Frazzled Cook’s décor recalls a charming country cottage furnished with flea market finds. It is certainly a pleasure to dine in.

However, you’ll have to be selective about your food choices because they have a few ungainly dishes, including the paella negra, which had overdone rice and lacked the full flavor of squid ink, and the pork chop, which was a bit tough.

The sizzling squid was flavorful. The squid was cooked perfectly, and the vinaigrette and pickled mangoes provided an interesting flavor element.

The scampi pizza could satisfy a craving if you’re not looking for the smoky, wood-fired variety. It is akin to 3M Pizza, albeit more generous with its toppings of tomatoes, bell peppers and kesong puti.

The barbecued short ribs were good but still short of fantastic.

The best option for mains or pasta is the truffle pasta with Portobello mushrooms and white sauce, an almost no-fail combination, if I may say so.

The absolute standout was the pancake a la mode, which was once described by Chuvaness as the best pancake in the world.

I don’t know if I will bestow it such singular honor but I have to agree that the pancake was pretty darn special. It was crisp around the edges, more dense than fluffy, and buttery as all things evil should be. After sharing one, we ordered two more. And we’re coming back for more.

While the pancake a la mode is, hands-down, the best bet for dessert, their other desserts are also good, like the chocolate mousse that Julia ordered and the crepe cake I got to try with my dear friend Yamine during our long-overdue reunion a month ago. 

Our meal ended on an interesting note when I ordered Alamid coffee. The waiter asked me if I preferred mild or strong. I opted for the former.

I was surprised when a contraption that looked like it was smuggled out of a science lab arrived at our table. It turned out to be a siphon coffee maker, which is ideal for making a delicate cup. Click on the video above to see how my coffee was brewed using this coffee siphoning method.

Dinner with my dear Yamine. This was our first visit to The Frazzled Cook. 

Weekend lunch with my foodie family

The Frazzled Cook
78 Scout Gandia,
Brgy. Laging Handa, Quezon City
Phone (632) 374-6879

Apartment 1B: Gourmet Comfort Food

If you’ve been following my blog or Instagram account, you’ll know that comfort cooking is the quickest to my heart. Trendy, cutting edge cooking has its place but they tend to come and go. Feel-good foods are forever.

One restaurant whose menu epitomizes home cooking is Apartment 1B, which earned its repute nine years ago as a neighborhood joint offering “gourmet comfort food” in Salcedo Village, Makati. It has since opened another branch in One Rockwell.

Its exhaustive menu is filled with much-loved standards such as meatloaf, beef pie, macaroni and cheese, and grilled cheese and tomato sandwich.



Judd keeps going back for the narcotizing embrace of its mushroom-gravy-laden meatloaf while I like hopping from one classic to another, like the roasted chicken and the three-cheese lasagna.



I always shied away from the osso bucco because I thought it was overly expensive at P1500. I finally succumbed and found it to be one of the best I’ve ever tried (the best so far being the version I tasted last year at Dante’s in Florence). The fork-tender, delectable parcel of Australian veal shank sprinkled with gremolata was sitting on a bed of saffron risotto rimmed by a pool of rich, luscious sauce. I could do without the risotto but the osso bucco was a triumph for meat.



For dessert, I often opt for the spongy cakes over cheesecake but the waiter assured me that the white Toblerone cheesecake is one of their best cakes. Delivering delightful bits of white Toblerone chocolate with every bite, it was a showstopper.