Food Trip: Cookie Bar Manila [Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident]

Hello! It is a busy time for me friends (I know, what's new right?) but I just have to squeeze in this story about Cookie Bar Manila -- a new cookie shop here in my lovely neighborhood of Kapitolyo.

Last week, my cousin Lek and friend Clang came over to my place to hang out because it was Pasig Day and there was no work. We had pizza and pasta delivered for lunch and stuffed ourselves silly, but when the afternoon came, we felt the need for merienda (afternoon snack). We thought it would be the best time to pay Cookie Bar a visit since we've been checking out the shop's Instagram account for a while and the cookies look beyond tempting. 

Cookie Bar is located at East Capitol Drive and is only a very short drive from my place. In fact, it's walking distance, but we've been having unpredictable weather so we opted to drive there instead. It's easy to find because it's right in between Poco Deli and Thai Dara. Just look for the black gate with the pink and brown striped Cookie Bar sign and press the doorbell beside it. 

THE VIBE

Cookie Bar is a tiny bakery. The shop is also the kitchen where the actual cookies are made. They have a couple of small tables out front, but it's really not a cafe or restaurant. Most people go there for cookies to-go. You can call and order cookies by the box beforehand, but you can also buy per piece at the store.

Freshly-baked cookies still on the tray was the sight that greeted us when we first came in. They have quite a variety of yummy cookie treats. There are Cookie Cups, which look like little cupcakes with a whole range of different toppings. Stuffies are cookies stuffed with Oreo, marshmallow, Nutella, or Reese's peanut butter cups. Jumbo Cookies are double the size of your average cookie. Vegan Cookies are made without dairy and egg. Nutella Bites are cookies topped with Nutella. Then there are the novel Cookie Shot Glasses, inspired by the creations of Dominique Ansel (the creator of the Cronut). 

Food Trip: Epic Coffee Roastery [Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident]

Kapitolyo is brimming with restaurants now, but cafes only started popping up recently. There used to be just one coffee shop in the entire neighborhood, and whenever I found the place full I always wished that more cafes would open here.

When Epic Coffee Roastery opened, it was like the answer to my wish. At last, here was another neighborhood cafe I could go to for a breather and a cup of joe. I've been there a few times, and each time has been really nice. 

The Epic sign from outside

Epic is a quaint little cafe on East Capitol Drive -- Kapitolyo's main food street. The place offers coffee and cakes of course, and it recently started serving sandwiches as well. 

It was put up by the same people who own Poco Deli, which automatically gives it a plus in my book. Poco Deli is one of my favorite restaurants of all time, so it's easy to fall for their cafe extension of sorts. Epic even has a Poco Deli menu that you can order from, which is pretty cool since it kind of brings the best of both worlds together. 

Cake and coffee

Home Base: The Life Domestic - Birthday Breakfast and Dinner at Kanto and Mozu

I just realized that I never posted about my birthday here. It was pretty uneventful since it fell on a weekday this year, but I celebrated it with my husband in the best way possible given the circumstances. How? Why by starting the day with a food trip and ending it with another one, of course!

We woke up early to have breakfast before work at our new favorite 24-hour all-day breakfast place, Kanto. It's a hole-in-the-wall kind of restaurant that serves gourmet food -- what a juxtaposition, right? It's a new neighborhood discovery for us, and I'll be posting more about it on Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident soon. It was one of the very few places open so early in the morning in our area that's not Jollibee or McDonald's, so it was the obvious choice for us.

Kanto

Food Trip: Silantro Fil-Mex Cantina - First Visit [Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident]

Silantro Fil-Mex Cantina is one of the newest restaurants to open in Kapitolyo. I thought it would be great to start off the Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident series with a fresh place. 

This newly-opened eatery was a random discovery. The husband and I rarely ever venture down East Capitol Drive, but one Sunday, we decided to hear mass at the Kapitolyo church for a change. We had to park a few steps away from the church, and on our way back to the car after the service, we spotted Silantro. We were actually planning on having dinner somewhere else in the neighborhood, but we readily changed our plans because we were so hungry that we were quite happy to find a place already right in front of us. I didn't have my camera with me because I didn't know I was trying a new restaurant that day, but I was mighty glad we found this place. 

Packed on a Sunday night

Silantro is a casual dining kind of restaurant. It has an al fresco area and an airconditioned area, but the place is on the small side, so expect it to be packed at dinner time, like it was when we went there. We liked that it's packed though, as that boded well for the quality of the food. Luckily, we were first on the wait list and we only had to wait a few minutes.

The Munchies: The Start of the Kapitolyo Food Trips

When I first moved to Kapitolyo in 2009, it wasn't the vibrant food hub that it is today. I've been coming to the area for years, since my husband has been living here since our college years. It was a quiet area, and there weren't a lot of good restaurants. Our favorite places to eat at were few, because there really wasn't much to choose from.

One is the Pasig institution that is Three Sisters, which serves one of the best barbecue sticks in Manila. Another is Poco Deli -- a quiet, tiny, corner deli that serves fantastic comfort food. Tokyu over at the Pioneer Center serves very affordable, but great Japanese food. Jade Palace, an authentic Chinese place just off Kapitolyo in Shaw Boulevard is another favorite. There are others, like Cafe Juanita and Kainan Au Gusto, and Bahay Pansitan that served Filipino food and have been in the area for ages, Good Burgers, which does quick burger deliveries, as well as Lia's bakery, but somehow we never ate much at/ordered from those places, or never went to them at all.

Then, Charlie's Grind and Grill with its Black Angus burger, and CAB Cafe, with its scrumptious desserts opened, and those quickly became our new favorites. After that, the neighborhood simply went food crazy. Fast forward to four years later and Kapitolyo is now a bustling, busy neighborhood, absolutely filled to the brim with cool food and parking problems, heh. The best part about it is that new restaurants are still popping up all over!

Even LooLoo's Fearless Foodie's Field Guide to Kapitolyo Map couldn't fit everything in. A lot of restos aren't here. 

Since my husband and I live smack dab in the middle of this wonderful foodie neighborhood and this is a new blog, I thought I would do a Kapitolyo Food Trip series. I will be writing about my old haunts, as well as document my experiences when I try out all the new restaurants. If you haven't been to Kapitolyo, I hope this convinces you to come here, and if you've already been to Kapitolyo, I hope this persuades you to come back again and again. This neighborhood just keeps getting better and better, and I'm very lucky I live here.

All Kapitolyo food trips will be up at this tag: Food Tales of a Kapitolyo Resident. Keep checking back for new posts. This is going to be fun!