It’s tough to find a chocolate cake you won’t like when several mouthwatering options are available in the Metro, thanks to professional and self-taught bakers. While we appreciate the constant supply of chocolate-based pastries, it just gets harder to select the best of the best each year.
For this year’s list, we’re keeping the selection criteria straightforward: both cake and frosting must undeniably be chocolate, the base must be dense and consistent, and the cake itself must carry a flavor worth the added calories. Read on to find out which chocolate cakes made it on our list– a mix of newcomers and all-time favorites that’ll surely stay a while in the local pastry scene.
All SPOT.ph Top 10 lists are researched, paid for, tested and selected by the writers and editors. They are discreetly conducted without any notice made to the restaurants or their owners.
It’s no surprise that Wildflour’s Salted Chocolate Cake remains the most-loved chocolate cake because it ticks the right boxes: good frosting-cake base ratio, a powerful mishmash of flavors, and a huge serving size. The towering chocolate block interlocks layers of rich icing and light sponge cake with spots of salt crystals, each forkful powerful but feathery all at once. Take just one bite and you’ll be left with nothing but “Wow”.
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THE KITCHEN MAVERICKS
It’s not just skillful service and innovative recipes that are reeling in a discerning crowd of diners to these restaurateurs’ establishments.
Chef Allen Buhay
IMAGE Kai Huang
The chef and partner has catapulted Wildflour Café+Bakery into one of Manila’s favorite dining establishments and now oversees all four of its kitchens. He honed his craft working at Jean-Georges in New York and at Church & State in L.A. after studying at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Pasadena.
Chef BJ Mantuano
IMAGE Khai Van Kampen / Esquire Philippines
Raised in California, BJ helms one of Manila’s most well-loved casual dining spots as the sous chef of Wildflour Café + Bakery. Before that he worked with chef Cyrille Soenen of Brasserie Cicou.
(Originally posted on June 10, 2016, “Iconic Pink’s Hot Dogs from Hollywood opens in Manila: A look at the food” by Vernice L. Tantuco on Rappler, https://www.rappler.com/life-and-style/best-eats/136031-pinks-hot-dogs-manila-branch-opening)
CHILI CHEESE DOG. Pink’s Hot Dogs birngs their famous chili cheese dogs to Manila. Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
MANILA, Philippines – For the first time since they opened in 1939, Pink’s Hot Dogs has opened its first branch outside the US, right here in Manila.
The branch, at Shangri-la The Fort, Bonifacio Global City, is a sit-down restaurant, but its interiors were made to look like a food stall, inspired by the first Pink’s that opened in Hollywood decades ago.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
Customers can choose to sit at the picnic tables or head straight to the counter to get their hotdogs, fries, or burgers to go.
OPENING DAY. The restaurant was packed when it opened at 5 pm on June 10, 2016. Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
Originally, Pink’s was a hot dog stall opened up by Paul and Betty Pink.
Today, Pink’s Hot Dogs is managed by Paul and Betty’s family, Richard, Gloria, and Beverly Pink, and has many branches across America. It’s also frequented by famous celebrities – Kim Kardashian and Betty White have been spotted at Pink’s, it’s reportedly Brad Pitt’s favorite, and Bruce Willis proposed to Demi Moore at a Pink’s.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
According to Walter Manzke, co-owner of LA’s Republique and Manila’s Wildflour and Farmacy, the Pinks approached him and asked about bringing Pink’s to the Philippines.
“It all started with a simple conversation, we met, started talking, and they told me they’ve always wanted to open in Asia and tried several times and it didn’t work out. And because of my connections here with [Wildflour co-owner Ana de Ocampo] – my sister-in-law – and Wildflour, we decided to go for it and bring it here,” he recounted to Rappler on June 10 before the restaurant opened.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
We visited Pink’s Hot Dogs’ Manila branch on their opening day, Friday, June 10, and tried some of the hot dogs on their menu.
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Pink’s is known for their signature chili cheese dog – The Hollywood Legend (P280)– topped with their famous chili, cheddar cheese, and chopped onions.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
Underneath the East LA Street Dog’s (P280) mound of toppings – ketchup, mustard, mayo, grilled onions and peppers, and pico de gallo (tomato, onions, and fresh serranos) – is a hot dog wrapped in bacon.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
Try the Buffalo Wing dog (P280) for something a little different – this one is topped with spicy wing sauce, crispy chicken skin, blue cheese, carrots, and celery.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
For something with a kick, the Don’t Mess with Texas (P280) comes with pickled jalapeños, barbecue sauce, cheddar cheese, grilled onions, and coleslaw.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
All of Pink’s Manila’s hot dogs come in buns baked in Wildflour. On the side, Pink’s offers home made fries (P130) and onion rings (P160) to go with their burgers and hot dogs.
Photo by Vernise L. Tantuco/RapplerPhoto by Vernise L. Tantuco/Rappler
Pink’s Manila also has an ice cream truck inside, offering some of Farmacy’s ice cream (P150 single scoop, P190 double scoop, P230 triple scoop).
Walter & Margarita Manzke bring accessible dining to two different settings
AJPress photos by Ding Carreon
On an unusually warm fall morning, the scene at Republique — a French-leaning eatery in Los Angeles — captured that quintessential laid-back aura familiar to those who frequent cafés across the city. Natural sunlight penetrated the glass windows and shone down the open-air atrium, as the rustic communal tables filled up with an assortment of patrons either shielded behind their laptops or engaged in discussions with one another.
Dishes like a Shakshouka (fried egg, stewed tomatoes & peppers, black kale, yogurt, cilantro, baguette), a slab of French toast, and pork belly adobo fried rice exited the kitchen and made their ways to patrons who had a moment to dine leisurely. Earlier, as what typically happens every morning, a line formed for the newly baked, aromatic pastries (anything from a pecan sticky bun to a flaky chocolate croissant) graciously arranged behind the glass counter.
The casualness of it all felt more like a Saturday around brunch time, rather than during the middle of the week.
By 6 pm, the service transitions into a relatively more refined, sit-down setting where decadent items like caviar, escargot and foie gras are on the menu, as are dry-aged and braised meats and dishes with cross-cultural elements. Yet, absent are stiff, white tablecloths or rigid dress codes that need to be followed in order to dine there.
The dualism — literally night and day — of the space is the brainchild of chef Walter Manzke and his wife Margarita (or Marge, for short), alongside restaurateur Bill Chait, as a way to make a dining establishment accessible for any meal of the day, while still delivering quality ingredients and dishes.
Since 2013, the restaurant/café/bakery/wine bar has inhabited the walls of a historic, Old Hollywood building conceptualized and built by Charlie Chaplin in the 1920s, which later became the joint site of fine-dining restaurant Campanille and city-favorite La Brea Bakery. The building has since been restored for Republique’s purpose, using Yakal wood for the furniture and thousands of tiles imported from the Philippines, where Marge is originally from.
The daytime concept was an undertaking pushed by Marge, who heads the pastry department; however, it wasn’t initially well-received.
“When we opened at dinner, it fell into place quite easily. But this whole concept of breakfast and lunch was a huge challenge. Most of our clientele didn’t accept the idea of doing this counter service. They wanted it to be a restaurant and not a café,” Walter said. “When we opened, Marge was here at 4 in the morning baking pastries and filling up the cases, only to sell five of them and watch the staff eat the rest.”
But, being open throughout the day resonated with those who want to nosh while doing work or have a decent meal in the middle of the day.
“It really paid off because it is an important and successful part of this business. It makes it two restaurants — we have people who come here every day and go through dinner sometimes, those who only come in the day [and] people who only come at night. We definitely have two restaurants with two different clientele,” Walter said.
In creating the dinner setting, Walter synthesized his previous culinary experiences by taking elements of French cuisine and fine dining, as well as the cultures of those working in the kitchen. Drawing from Asian influence, dishes are served in more generous, family-style portions, enabling diners to taste a little bit of everything and not be limited to the parameters that come from a fine dining establishment.
“All of that is blended together as a restaurant that is young, vibrant, has energy and is most importantly, very easy and unpretentious,” he added. “I always wanted Republique to be a place where you could come for any reason at any time. It’s as important for me that it’s a place that when you’re driving by and you look into the window that you’re draw in and you just want to come into the bar and have a drink. You can come by during the day, have a cup of coffee and work on your laptop, just like it’s any other café. You can also come here for a special occasion, and everywhere in between. It’s a place where you should be comfortable to come for any reason at any time.”
In just two years, Republique has won over critics, topping best-of lists, including Los Angeles Magazine’s ‘Best New Restaurant’ for 2014. Forbes has named it a restaurant slated to become an LA classic. Marge’s pastries have garnered her the title of LA Weekly’s Best Pastry Chef for 2014 and a nomination for Outstanding Pastry Chef by the James Beard Foundation earlier this year.
A culinary power couple
Chef Walter Manzke and his wife Margarita (Photo by Michelle Park)
Walter and Marge respectively grew up with a love for food. In San Diego, he was surrounded by seasonable produce in his family’s backyard and went on to study business and restaurant management before going on to famed kitchens, such as Patina, El Bulli and Le Louis XV in the Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo under Alain Ducasse.
In the Philippines, Marge grew up in the kitchen at a restaurant in Quiapo and at White Rock Resort, a hotel and restaurant outside of Manila, both of which were owned by her parents. She studied pastry at Le Cordon Bleu in London, then received a degree in culinary arts at The Culinary Institute of America in New York.
Their worlds converged in Los Angeles, where Walter returned after working in Europe and where Marge began her career at Spago and Patina.
“We met at the kitchen at Patina. I was the chef du cuisine there and Marge, most of the time she was there, was working at the fish station. Then when we started dating, I was the manager and that’s really not the right thing to do so she left and began working with a friend of mine at? Mélisse [a Michelin-starred French restaurant in Santa Monica] and became the sous chef there,” Walter said.
The couple worked together again when they moved to Carmel in 2002, where they spent five years at places like Bouchée, Cantinetta Luca and l’Auberge Carmel. At Bouchée, Marge developed her pastry skills by baking bread and other pastries by scratch.
“We wanted to leave Carmel [and] felt that it was time to open a restaurant. We knew Carmel was not the place to do so because it was a little too sleepy,” Marge said. “But it was a long road before we even opened [Republique].”
Added Walter, “there was something that steered us back to LA. Going from working as an employee to opening a restaurant is difficult for anyone — it’s a huge step. It’s a whole new set of skills and everything. We decided that in order to do that, we had to work for somebody to get to know people and LA again because we had been gone for five years.”
In 2007, they re-opened Bastide, which lasted for two years, and went on to work at Church & State, where Walter was the head chef and Marge was a server, and later pastry chef. The first conceptualization for Republique was planned for a location in Downtown’s Arts District, before it had developments like today.
Bringing the brunch culture to Manila
AJPress photos by Ding Carreon
In between talks about their own restaurant, the couple experienced a period in which they described what seemed like “everything in the world was going wrong for us.” Then, Marge’s sister, Ana De Ocampo, approached them about a restaurant project in Manila.
By 2012, the couple, along with Ana and Church & State’s former sous chef Allen Buhay, opened Wildflour Café + Bakery in Bonifacio Global City.
“We got more and more involved in that and decided to be partners. My sous chef from Church & State, Allen Buhay, was interested in moving back to Manila, where he is [originally] from,” Walter said. “Now he’s our partner and he runs the day-to-day operations in the kitchen, while Ana runs the majority of the business and operations. They’re the ones there doing most of the work.”
Opening the restaurant was a challenge because, at the time, that part of Fort Bonifacio didn’t get a lot of foot traffic. The slow business almost made the Manzkes tune into the criticism and pack up back to Los Angeles.
“Everything about Wildflour, people criticized. When we opened up, we had these black stenciled, barely visible signs on the window, which we still have, and people were saying we had to put up big signs. Everybody thought the decor was bad. All we heard was every reason why we would fail. It was just kind of doing what we knew and liked here in LA and it all fell into place,” Walter said.
But after a few food bloggers posted about the restaurant, tables were constantly filled within the week, to the point where people would walk out because of the slow service.
“We went from one extreme to the other and we hadn’t planned for that. But every day after that going forward, Wildflour, especially during lunch, has never had a slow day,” he added.
The couple calls Wildflour, “an accessible middle-class restaurant” and Republique’s counterpart in the Philippines, crediting its success to Filipinos’ connectivity to overseas food trends and more disposable income from the younger working generation. Essentially, they want what people here in other big cities are eating, and have the spending power to get it.
A lot of similarities can be pointed out between the two restaurants: an open kitchen floor plan, wooden furniture, exposed brick walls, cases with pastries baked in house and brunch items, from the signature Croque Madame to kimchi fried rice.
Those dining there won’t feel as if they’re in Metro Manila, but rather catapulted into the middle of the brunch culture in a city, such as LA or New York.
“As far as restaurants in the Philippines, with the ambiance of Wildflour, I don’t think there’s anything like it. It’s very much like you can take the restaurant and put it in LA or San Francisco or New York. People like to feel like they’re in a different place. When you enter, you feel like you’re not in the Philippines,” Marge said, also emphasizing the ingredients used to prepare the dishes.
Wildflour is also famous for replicating Dominique Ansel’s “cronut,” during the height of the trend, branding it a croissant-donut that attracted hordes of customers, only to be sold out in just a few hours.
“The cronut trend is definitely the thing that made me believe and confirm what I’m talking about: Filipinos have a close eye on the rest of the world and when they see something, they want it more than anybody and are willing to stand in line and fight over it. They literally will do anything to get it. I think that what Marge did with the cronut was us feeding Dominque Ansel’s PR.? It started when he started it and died [for us] when it died for him,” Walter said.
Marge continued, “even with the cronut, if we didn’t make our own croissants, we wouldn’t have been able to do it…We can make a lot of things and not just get stuck with what we can get from others.”
To date, there are four Wildflour locations at the Podium Mall and Makati’s Salcedo Village and Legazpi Village, and there are plans to open more. Next to the location at Fort Bonifacio, the team recently opened Farmacy, an ice cream and soda fountain, where they make their own ice cream flavors and cones.
But in the coming year, the couple is most excited about importing Pink’s Hot Dogs to the Philippines, once the construction of the Shangri-La Hotel in Fort Bonifacio is completed. Richard Pink, who came into Walter’s other restaurant Petty Cash (a taqueria) for dinner one night approached him about bringing Pink’s to Asia, which was always a plan for the iconic hot dog stand.
“I’ve been told the people there love everything American. It wouldn’t surprise me to have to tailor to Filipino tastes a little, but our menu will have that Pink’s style everyone’s familiar with. We are even importing the hot dogs,” Pink said in an interview with The Daily Meal.
Patterned after an “LA-style Biergarten,” the Manzkes shared that it will have a bar, picnic tables, stands for hot dogs and hamburgers and ice cream from Farmacy.
“It’ll be a fun place [and even] more accessible than Wildflour. We’ll keep the same formula of Wildflour in that we’ll bake all the bread, make all the fries from scratch — it’ll be quality ingredients,” Walter added.
As for the future of Republique — despite its praises — the Manzkes said that it is continually a work in progress, and it never feels like the restaurant is fully opened yet.
“All of this exists because of Marge’s support. For me, the most important restaurant is in the Philippines and it’s maybe, who knows, where our future is. But we’re very fortunate to be at both places and I’m very honored and humbled of our success there. I have a lot of people to thank for it. We’ve provided great jobs a lot of people in the Philippines,” Walter said.
(Originally posted on December 21, 2014, “Wildflour’s Farmacy Introduces Soda Fountain Concept to Metro Manila” by Gela Velasco and Pam Santos in Pepper.PH, www.pepper.ph/new-food-now-the-farmacy)
Not everyone’s childhood memories involve drinking from soda fountains or sharing milkshakes with friends like Archie’s gang, but fizzy soft drinks and American-style banana splits do hold a familiar taste and sense of nostalgia to some. Whenever we think of a 50’s diner, we remember red vinyl seating, cheap neon lights and most of all, tall clear flutes holding thick milkshakes or a bubbly concoction topped with ice cream. Thankfully the guys behind Wildflour have opened The Farmacy Ice Cream and Soda Fountain, which not only serves an array of traditional ice cream flavors but also those classic milkshake and soda favorites.
Enter the Farmacy’s narrow space and you’re instantly welcomed by the smell of fresh, homemade ingredients. Behind the bar is a medicine cabinet with a build that harks back to the days when sodas and ice creams were served in pharmacies during the Prohibition Era. “Soda fountains originated from pharmacies,” Allen Buhay elaborates. “It was part of the whole prohibition era, when alcohol would be hidden in the ice cream.” Although The Farmacy makes no promises about their ice cream or soda healing any ailments, the various comforting ice cream flavors, classic sundae combinations, and other sweet treats are sure to leave you feeling fuzzy inside. Their traditional ice cream flavors include chocolate, hazelnut, strawberry, pineapple, melon, blueberry, black sesame, and butter pecan, among others. They also have a quirky selection of flavors such as Moonshine, Lemon Curd with Blueberry Topping, and Gianduja.
“If you notice, our ice creams don’t offer any fancy or weird mixes,” owner Ana de Ocampo tells me. “When you taste it, you know exactly what it is. Everything we use here is from fresh fruit. We try to go away from the processed stuff,” Ana continues. The ice creams are not only healthier than the usual fare in supermarkets and fast food chains, but also made fresh daily. Ice cream batches are made daily in the store. We don’t have a commissary; it’s all done here.” Ana assures us.
Berry Float (PHP 255)
Take a spoonful of their Banana Split and your palate will be spoiled by the balanced sweetness of the strawberry and vanilla ice cream. The whipped cream isn’t too thick and adds a light texture to the scoops of ice cream underneath. If you want to indulge in chocolate, we suggest finishing off the Rocky Road Sundae. The Farmacy elevates a well-known combination by mixing chocolate ice cream with roasted almond, homemade marshmallows and shards of dark chocolate. The marshmallow wasn’t too sticky or thin and melted instantly in our mouths. The roasted almonds reminded us of almond roca, but served with the warmth of an in-house made treat.
Sundae
The ice cream’s balanced sweetness comes from using the fruit’s sugar. “Most of the sweetness is from the fruit,” Ana explains. “We try to stay as natural as possible. We don’t use (anything) artificial.” The same care and quality is assured in the rest of their offerings: “We don’t scrimp on ingredients. You’re served good chocolates. The hazelnut and pistachio provide the best taste for those ingredients.” Despite the concept being American in origin and in nature, other ice cream flavors are made from locally available fruits such as pineapple, guava, and watermelon. “These are flavors you don’t normally have in other places,” Ana says. Parents may find a sweet and effective way to introduce more fruit to their children’s diets.
Even their sodas are homemade and promise the full on taste of each fruit. You can drink up the fruity sweetness of melon, pineapple, vanilla, calamansi and even guava. The ice cream floats, such as the Very Berry Float (PHP 255) assaults your palate with the soda’s light spritz and the ice cream’s fruity goodness. One sip of the Very Berry Float immediately tickles your tongue with the blueberry soda, while treating you to the thickness of the strawberry ice cream. Other float options include classics like the Vanilla Coke Float and the Rootbeer Float. Customers are also free to mix and match their favorite ice creams and sodas according to their preferences.
The Farmacy isn’t just a place for families and friends to gather come brunch time. Late into the night and early into morning, you can sober up to an ice cream sandwich or have a little more alcohol with any of their Farmacy After Dark drinks, which include a Rum and Coke Float and Guiness and Vanilla Ice Cream. If ice creams are too sweet for your liking, dates are free to chill out a little over a cup of coffee or a thick, warm cup of Matcha Green Tea.
Whether you’re partying into the wee hours of the morning, craving for some old fashioned sundae, or feel like taking out the family on a Sunday, the Farmacy is sure to serve a treat. We can’t promise a longer life after you’re tempted to indulge in every ice cream, but you’ll have certainly lived fully after each try.
“The Manzkes Open Wildflour Cafe + Bakery in the Philippines” by Daniela Galarza in the Eater LA, la.eater.com/2012/9/10/6548181/the-manzkes-open-wildflour-cafe-bakery-in-philippines)
Margarita (Marge) and Walter Manzke may be the most camera shy of all of LA’s culinary power couples. They don’t employ a full-time publicist. They don’t post their tattoos or travels or kitchen experiments on Twitter. But whenever and wherever they pop-up, the execution, service, hospitality and food always shines. Unfortunately for Angelenos, Walter Manzke’s newest project, with wife Marge, is a 16-hour flight away.
This summer, the Manzkes quietly opened Wildflour Cafe + Bakery in Manila, Philippines. The classy joint looks like it would fit well into the current LA bakery/cafe/marketplace craze. Marge and fellow baker Ana de Ocampo have whipped up house-made breads, sticky buns, bombolini and dozens of other pastries that fill a display case. Meanwhile, savory items on the menu include Walter Manzke’s well-loved Tarte Flambe, baked escargots, and bahn mi sliders. Could this be a concept that the Manzkes might bring to LA? Fingers crossed
