Customers of ZUS Coffee, one of the Philippines’ most recognizable budget coffee chains, have recently been reporting an odd contradiction: stores are open, yet actual coffee is unavailable. Social media users have been complaining that many locations are only serving non-coffee drinks, with baristas often citing “machine calibration” as the reason.
[Read more…]Think about what you want in a great neighborhod cafe. You want enough space and sunshine so that it feels like you’re out of the home, and you need enough communal space for meeting up with friends or even business contacts. Probably more important than anything else, you want it to strike a balance between great drinks and still being affordable enough to patronize regularly. And if you’re gonna be running a neighborhood cafe in Metro Manila, Quezon City is a really great place to start. There’s a pretty equitable balance of homes and businesses, as most people working there also do live within the same city. These are the elements that lead to a solid group of regulars — customers you can expect to see in the cafe two to three times a week.
Enter Prominent, a gas-station cafe on QC’s D. Tuazon street. On first glance, Prominent seems to check all the boxes. The ambiance is bright and clean. The location is accessible without being busy. And the drinks are affordable, offering up the expected choices (Espresso, lattes, cappucino) alongside more experimental drinks like their new Honeycomb Latte and ChocNut Latte.
On this visit, we decided to try the ChocNut Latte. For the unfamilliar, ChocNut is a local Filipino candy bar that combines pulverized peanuts with cocoa with coconut milk. ChocNut has a distinct flavor and is inexpensive, which has lead to it’s popularity over the decades. Every pinoy kid knows ChocNut. It has also more recently been front of mind culturally because of it’s appearance in the Netflix anime series, Trese. And to be honest, this is probably why we chose this drink over the rest of the menu.
The drink itself was quite sweet, but not more sweet than a ChocNut. It’s essentially a cafe mocha with the chocolate swapped out for the crumbly candy bar. The espresso is then pulled directly out of Prominent’s newly upgraded espresso setup, which features a Compak E10 conical burr grinder paired with a custom Synesso S200. The espresso is a blend from Mandaluyong-based Plain Sight Coffee Roasters, dropping down into the cup to melt and caramelize against the ChocNut. Steamed milk is poured into the cup to complete the drink.
Taste-wise, this ChocNut Latte is a home run. It combines the need for coffee with a nostalgic aroma and flavor. Pure comfort in a cup. You probably won’t want to order it every day, but it’s an awesome afternoon or late night latte that you can go to once a week. It’s a treat.
Rounding out Prominent’s neighborhood cafe experience is their retail rack. Pick up a Kalita or Origami pour over dripper, filters, or whole bean coffee. But on top of that, Prominent if featuring another product that’s unique in the market: their own house-made workwear fashion line. The first to launch are a set of heavy cotton t-shirts and linen trousers. Both pieces come in a number of colorways and are embroidered with Prominent’s coat-of-arms-style emblem. True to the rest of the Prominent experience, the designs are clean, for day to day use, and balance quality hand-made product with prices that are affordable.
Due to pandemic and government lockdowns, our F&B and hospitality industries have been some of the hardest hit by the quarantines. Bars have the extra impact of a curfew and liquor bans that have covered much of the city. Now, more than ever, supporting Philippine made goods and independent small enterprises like Run Rabbit Run (RRR) becomes incredibly important. So if you are going to enjoy a few drinks at home, it’s a good idea to support local businesses, especially when their products are — without a doubt — world class.
In this video, Editor in Chief Kayo Cosio unboxes the package and gets on the line with some of the people involved in bringing us this special box set. We Zoom video call with Aaron Goodall from Don Papa, Enzo, and Christina of RRR. They graciously took time to show us how each drink is made.
Available at https://www.runrabbit.run/cocktails-to-go, this package is called “A Rabbit in Sugarlandia” and costs Php1600. It serves about 6-8 drinks, which averages out to about Php200-Php260 per drink. That’s a pretty awesome deal if you are used to paying Php450 for beverages of this quality.
In detail, here’s more about the drinks from the Run Rabbit Run webpage:
1. MASKARRA OLD FASHIONED A take on a rum old fashioned that perfectly balances the locally spiced tasting profile of Don papa masskara with a touch of aromatic bitters (INGREDIENTS : Don Papa Maskarra, Simple syrup, Angosturra bitters)
2. BANANA RUM DAIQUIRI A classic cocktail that is Balanced with rum, sugar and lime with a touch of banana liqueur. (INGREDIENTS : Don Papa 7yo, Banana syrup, lemon)
3. DON CHOCORONI A kingston negroni with don papa rum- that is infused with cacao husk to give this special negroni a rich balance of vanilla, chocolate and tart. (INGREDIENTS : Don Papa 7yo, Chocolate Tea, Campari, Martini Rosso)
Destruction and romance, rough and soft, industrial and organic — these contrasting elements make Flower Ranch Cafe a uniquely beautiful space. Chipped cement walls, brick, repurposed wood and metal sitting against delicate blooms and soft pastel colors seem like they shouldn’t go well together but here you see that they do.
Flower Ranch is first and foremost a flower shop and has been around for quite some time now. They recently rebranded and redesigned the shop, adding a coffee bar to the mix. Customers who come to have floral arrangements done can now enjoy a cup of coffee while waiting. But anyone can also just come for the coffee and enjoy the charming space. Sounds like a perfect Valentine coffee run, don’t you think?
Though Flower Ranch does not have enough space to accommodate couples going on a date this Valentines Day, they will be busy selling beautiful blooms and coffee for take out.
As a general rule, Daily Drink Magazine usually abstains from writing about a location within the first couple months of operation.
This is because of these two reasons: first, we don’t want to be caught up in PR frenzy. That means that even when we do visit a location during a media junket or PR event, we won’t officially post about it until we can return several weeks later to verify if our initial post is consistent to the experience we had at the media event. The second reason why we wait around 60 days is because people often read our publication weeks or months after we visited the location, and that means that we should be confident that our assessment will hold up over time. Or on the other hand, that we can avoid needing to give a lackluster review sure to any mishaps that come from a bar or café team not yet able to hit their stride in terms of consistency. We find this to be a way that we can be fair to both our readers and the establishments we cover.
Yet today we find ourselves bending that rule a little bit for what is perhaps Makati Poblacion’s best bar of all time.
Some time mid-last year, OTO was forced to close because of an issue with the building that they were in. But after less than 6 months, they have managed to reopen right across the street, with an even better floorplan. And most importantly, the whole bar team is back and firing on all cylinders — even after only 30 days of operations. We had 5 drinks here and they did not miss a beat! The team is back, the iconic interiors are back, and the electric vibe is back too. If anything has changed, it has only changed to be better.
Congratulations to OTO, a bar that is now both veteran and new kid in town.
Follow @oto.ph on Instagram.
It tastes like a coconut and orange creamsicle.
The Coco Crush contains Amarula, Bianco, and coconut rum, plus a little fresh lime, syrup, and a fresh orange slice for balance. With three kinds of alcohol, this signature cocktail packs quite a punch. To be frank, it’s almost too much punch. There’s a certain incongruence between having a very juicy and sweet beverage that hits you with all the alcohol of something much boozier, like a vesper or negroni. But if this is something you enjoy, it’s worth checking out, especially with a very affordable price tag.
Coco Crush is one of a handful of signature cocktails that you can find in Tortuga, a beach-themed bar on the second floor of the Lokal Hostel building in the Makati Poblacion area. The bar itself is nice and relaxed, a good place to hang out with friends because of its beach-art vibe in the interiors, the play of light, and the fact that you can carry on a good conversation in the space. Plus, if you are with friends who just want to kick back with beer, they have that, too.
Follow @tortugaph on Instagram.
Pulling up at a popular bar right after dinner has its benefits. For one, a bar like Makati Poblacion’s Run Rabit Run is usually packed in the evening. Arriving a little early at 8pm, we had the pleasure of chatting with the man at the bar: Enzo Luna.
Enzo is one of the city’s most personable bartenders, and that’s saying a lot. Since we had the opportunity to talk with him, we asked Enzo what his favorite thing to talk about with his guests is.
“Asking about their day is the most used opener,” says Luna. “And from there stems different interactions.” This is the key to both great conversation and great bar service: opening up discussions and listening.
“Mostly the ones I enjoy are knowing what they do as a career or hobbies they have… I get this feeling of wonder hearing stories from different paths and backgrounds. Especially if it’s from different industries.” He goes on to say that various people bring different points of view to the bar — and that’s OK. “People in business and banking to people in environmental protection. Basically, it’s knowing that everyone has their own experiences to share and learn from.”
Keep up the great work, Enzo!
It’s been eight years since the first speak-easy cocktail bar concept opened up in Manila. Hidden in Legazpi Village is a bar called Blind Pig. Unlike many speak-easy bars, this one actually does have a sign, but it’s written in Braille. Go up to the door and knock.
The bar is dimly lit, and in the dark, you may miss some of the finer details of the space. Walls and ceilings are paneled with metal paneling. Lamps have hidden notecards inside of them. All of which tell a story that’ such longer than. Just eight years. You feel like the founders built a location that was “what they always wanted.” And perhaps that’s why. Little has changed here over time. It was already what they wanted it to be: a secluded and quiet spot in an office district where to sit for hours sipping straightforward, fine cocktails with friends. Sounds good to us.
Ordering off of the menu, we had “The Vision.” Gin, Cointreau, black sesame syrup, celery bitters, egg white, and a little bit of citric acid from a freshly squeezed lemon. From the menu description, it would appear that the recipe actually called for calamansi. But as the bartender explained, they always serve their ingredients fresh at Blind Pig. That means that a freshly squeezed lemon is a better option than batch-squeezed calamansi that was prepped before the start of the evening’s service.
The drink itself was delightfully complex. Balanced and creamy, with acidly hits peeping out from under the black sesame flavors and aromatics. It was also surprisingly strong. A drink that can give you an almost immediate buzz, especially if you’re visiting the bar before having dinner.
All in all, Blind Pig fits into that “oldie-but-goodie” category. Which is perfect. It’s for old-souls. It’s non-sensational. But really? It’s pretty darn sensational.a
Habitual Coffee has been hard at work, raising the standard of specialty coffee in Manila. Over the years they’ve grown in experience, skill, and excellence in service. The owners have kept themselves very much involved in the process of building and expanding the brand from the very start.
Throwing back to 2015. It was a simple coffee bar in the front section of an interior design and lifestyle accessory store in the home depot area of Pasig. And though Habitual did have baristas, it was very much owner-run. Pictured here is Kaye Ong and her then boyfriend, TJ. Two of the brand’s three founders. The third is Raph Garcia, who is the partner who handles Habitual’s day to day business until today. Did we mention that this coffee bar was Aeropress-only? For those who have come to know and love the brand all these years later, know that the dream started like this. It’s very true to the fighting spirit of the Aeropress, that little brewer that could.
Today in 2020, Habitual has three branches. One in Quezon City, one in BGC, and the flagship store in Salcedo Village Makati. You can still order a pretty mean Aeropress brew.
