Go from mass market brands to artisan brews in Manila
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I remember mornings when I was a child and my grandmother would make coffee from the burnt portion of the rice stuck to the bottom of her pot. She would boil it until the water turned black. It was not really coffee and it tasted awful, but the idea was there. It was meant to be an early morning pick-me-up for the very poor as they prepared for another day in the field, or out at sea, under the hot sun.
We have come a long way here in the Philippines from that Stone Age way of making coffee. We have evolved steadily to instant coffee, 3-in-1s, “designer” coffee and, now, coffee that zeroes in on the origin of it all: the beans and the hands that care for them.
Owners of speciality cafes here are bringing the attention back to the coffee itself. They do not just sell coffee. Some have “labs” and “training spaces” for patrons who have taken an interest in what is inside their cups, rather than in the pretentious mural on the wall or the Swedish furniture.
They do not hate Starbucks. Many, in fact, credit this mammoth coffee chain for reawakening Filipinos’ deep love for coffee. But they want to take it to the next level.
Here is a list of some of the best coffee places the Philippines has to offer.
1. SGD Coffee
But the coffee itself is the star.
SGD gets its coffee exclusively from a mountaintop region, known as Sagada, that is much cooler than the rest of the Philippines. While most coffee plantations grow robusta and liberica, a unique climate and soil allows a special type of arabica to grow in the region.
The coffee that comes out of this variety is smooth and neutral with an oaky aroma. It sits in that sweet spot between varieties with strong flavours and mass-market coffee.
This cafe has its own “coffee lab” that offers not just courses on coffee appreciation, but also experiments on ways to take coffee beyond the cup. It has developed a “coffee sauce”, for instance, that works surprisingly well with adobo, the quintessential Filipino dish of pork or chicken cooked in soya sauce and vinegar.
SGD Coffee is the place you go to when someone tells you: “Let’s talk over coffee.”
Open: 8am to 11pm daily
Tel: +63-917-826-9537
Instagram: @SGD_Coffee
Price of a cuppa: 120 to 145 pesos (S$3.30 to S$3.95)
