It’s called a carinderia but this isn’t your roadside eatery.

If you have time for lunch or dinner from today until Saturday, May 31, I highly recommend that you take a food walk through time at the Mandarin Oriental Manila’s Paseo Uno. Entitled Pasos del Tiempo, (A Walk Through Time), it’s a Filipino-Spanish Food Festival featuring guest Chef Ed Quimson, who has gathered some of his family’s treasured heirloom dishes and shares them with us.

My first visit to NP Kopi Tiam (North Park Kopi Tiam - NPKT) is on Valentine’s Day – of all days – in 2006. The serendipitous result of “nowhere-driving” in the Santolan area, it had only been open for a few months at the time. Having just finished a full lunch but angling for dessert, I drop in for a cup (and a glass) of coffee. Though the “NP” isn’t spelled out, it’s apparent once I go inside that the two letters stand for North Park: cue the “ahh!” moment of recognition. From the placemat paper-menu with its recognizable blue and yellow lettering to the wooden interiors composed of slats and sloping ceilings, every person who’s ever been to North Park (and that’s almost all of us) will instantly feel at home. Back in 2006, the restaurant was divided into two – the main dining area and ...

Man cannot live on chocolate alone; but woman sure can. Every time I get my hands on chocolate I’ve never tried before, I’m really not quite myself. Like an addict with his stash, a fiend with new shoes, a hag with a new bag, I’m a closet chocoholic. I run my fingers greedily across the wrappers, reveling in their smoothness. I put the bars up to my nose and inhale deeply: tantalizing little fragrances of chocolate have seeped through the paper fibers and up my nose, setting off alarm bells in the pleasure hotspots of my brain. Egads. My eyes are beads running through the letters swirling in hues of silver, russet, and champagne. Somehow I can make out the names: Funky Monkey (marshmallows and crispies); The Rock (hazelnuts and almonds); Health Nut (sugar free milk chocolate with pistachios and cashews); and B-52 (caramel and Bailey’s). In the radio of my mind, “Roam” by the B-52s starts playing. I remember reading about chocolate visionary Michael Recchiuti’s advice on how to taste chocolate: “… start [with the chocolate] with the least amount of sugar. Then ...

I first met Marion Bernardo when I bought one of her Expand-A-Bags at a bazaar back in 2004. I liked the bags so much that I gave several away to friends that year and wore mine to pieces. In 2006, Marion attended my Tea Party which she described in a subsequent email: “Thank you so much [for the Tea Party] you organized and hosted. It really changed my life. Somehow, it triggered something inside me, leading me to where I am right now.” ‘Right now’ is Marion’s shift from bags to her self-named baking business. I’m intrigued that the event had such an effect on her so I ask her to expound on the “dramatic” shift. “It [was] the simple idea of home bakers, some of whom are simply baking enthusiasts earning by working from the house. I was so inspired by the wonderful and delicious desserts we were able to try and even take home, that I was so encouraged to learn to bake after that [the Tea Party].” Marion admits to “few baking memories,” -- indeed, she only started baking in ...

Let’s talk about the top three grades of steak in ascending order of quality: Select, Choice, and Prime. Grade is dependent on several factors, but what’s essential is the more marbling in the meat, the higher the grade. Prime is hard to come by in Manila but it’s worth seeking out since all that marbling translates to bounteous flavor. At 22 Prime – the restaurant is at the 22nd floor of the Discovery Suites, hence the name – only meat that’s been graded Prime is presented. While meat of this caliber is usually attached to a snooty, skinny waiter with a fat bill, the atmosphere here is anything but. It’s casual and easygoing with touches of class that make it suitable for a date or special family dinner. Segmented dining areas afford privacy but also make it difficult to catch the waiters’ attention. Of course being at such a high vantage point, there’s a view of the Ortigas skyline during the day and a muted scattering of lights at night. Little ones are tantalized by the mini fishbowl ...

Note: This website champions the home bakers, because it’s from them that Manila’s best desserts come from. I hope that this article will be of help to those who aspire to be as successful as the home bakers mentioned here. *** A recent jaunt through a bakers’ bazaar leaves me feeling unsettled. All the booths are selling the same thing: what I call the “holy trinity” of desserts – chocolate cake, cheesecake, and carrot cake. There are variations to the holy trinity of course but those three are constant. A few bakers at the bazaar have their own version of cupcakes that prove to be miserable little things cloaked in fake buttercream made from margarine. Ick. Sonja has nothing to worry about. Sonja’s cupcakes In my eight years as a food writer, I have interacted with and interviewed numerous home bakers, those that bake and sell from the home; and in my three years with this website, I have dedicated countless posts to those who I feel have something delicious to offer dessert lovers. Having been a home baker myself, ...

First, I want to THANK YOU. It’s never easy to maintain a blog. The fact that I’m still here after three years and still chugging along is because of you. I made cupcakes to mark DCF’s past two birthdays, so I decided change was in order. This year, I’m celebrating with homemade kaya jam paired with brioche that I’d made the day before. The celebration is complete with strong coffee and softly-boiled eggs. A Round-Up Of The Year That Was… I find myself in a pensive, reflective mood today, my website’s third year. The past year was extremely mellow for DCF -- “scaled down and slowed down” to put it another way. This was the year I grew weary of food blogging, something I never thought I’d go through considering how frenzied my first two years were. The year that was was also a time for me to take a stand on what Dessert Comes First is all about. After I came out with that post, some readers felt I was defensive; others asked me if something “had happened” that made me come out with such an article. I was honest and answered that the article was ...