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COCONUTS HOT SPOT — On the ground floor of the same nameless building as the first cat café in Manila is The Breakfast Table. It’s easy to miss, as it’s right under the staircase, and easy to dismiss as another one of them mediocre pinterest projects.
But you may want to slow down with your judgments until you get a sip of its Taho Shake. Then you would’ve freshened up, minds and eyes opened to see that the tiny place is inspired — from its interiors down to its food.
It’s a narrow joint decorated to make you feel like you were in a country beach house — there are a couple of paddles as accents on the white walls. Across it, distressed wooden panels define the couch seatings. Pails hanging from the high ceiling are used as chandeliers. And wow, so much denim. We especially like the placemats — made with old denim pants, they feature jeans pockets where utensils are neatly tucked in.
While not as frilly, the food at Breakfast Table is solid, and for what it is and how it tastes like, it’s rather a tad too affordable. The Eggs TBT (PHP195) is Breakfast Table’s take on the Eggs Benedict. But instead of using ham or bacon, they use tinapa, and the results are lovely. The hollandaise sauce adds to the blanket of poached eggs and balances the little pieces of tinapa, served on white bread.
We’d much prefer the longganisa pieces of the Eggs 360 (PHP195) to be crunchier and the fried eggs, softer, but what are we saying? We practically sniffed both pieces of the open-faced sandwich that comes for every order. We like that they used pandesal for this.
The Binagoongan Omurice (PHP185) looks a like a plain jane but break open the egg and in it you’ll find rice bursting with so much flavor.
Even if the joint was littered with so many crying kids and the indoors was a tad too warm, two of the many things we ordered will definitely have us back: The aforementioned Taho Shake (PHP99) solves the AC problem, while the delicious Tablea Pudding (PHP50) silences the kids and our inner demons.
We like to commend Breakfast Table for being able to present the Taho Shake as a well-balanced drink — no gross clumps of taho here, mosdef. But more than that, we especially like the proportion of the taho to the syrup and the tapioca balls. We could’ve easily downed two tall glasses of the shake in a sitting.
The Tablea Pudding meanwhile doesn’t taste as though they scrimped on the chocolate. It’s bitter, not drowning in milk and sugar, and most importantly, it’s not rich. Served in a small cup, it’s a great way to end the meal, French press of sagada coffee in tow.
1-H 189 Maginhawa St, Sikatuna Village, Quezon City. +63 2 4333597. 7am-10pm.
Eggs TBT, The Breakfast Table’s version of Eggs Benedict, featuring tinapa instead of ham or bacon
Eggs 360, an open-faced sandwich of chunks of longganisa on a bed fried egg
The Binagoongan Omurice may look like a plain jane but inside this a burst of flavor
The well-balanced Taho Shake
