Dumaguete City’s beloved Buglas Isla Cafe opens its first branch in Pasig, offering traditional flavors within a peaceful, cozy atmosphere.
Buglas Isla Cafe in Arcovia is peaceful in the morning when the breakfast crowd has left and right before the lunch crowd arrives. Sunlight streams through floor-to-ceiling glass windows, kissing the columns of old wood and capiz shell screens. Those who have been to the original Buglas Isla in Dumaguete City will recognize that feeling — relaxed, like sinking into a long-awaited vacation or visiting a treasured family home. And that is exactly the vibe that the owners of the cafe want to convey.
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Dumaguete City is the capital of the province of Negros Oriental. Facing Cebu province to the east, just 25 minutes by ferry across the Tañon Strait, and about a 220-kilometer drive away from Negros Occidental province (with its capital city Bacolod to the northwest), Dumaguete’s location allows food from Cebu and Negros Occidental to mingle with its own Dumagueteño fare. Its traditional cuisine is one of simple flavors, fresh ingredients, sinugba, and a love for seafood and pork. They also have international flavors like samgyupsal, shawarma, paella, and everything in between — all tied together by the genuine warmth, hospitality, and unhurried way of life.
“The most challenging part was replicating the authenticity and humbleness of service that is so typical in Dumaguete, bringing it to Metro Manila, and sustaining it. But that’s part of the charm of Dumaguete, and we really want Buglas Isla Cafe to carry that. It took a lot of training and HR work,” said Anthony Raymond, Chief Operating Officer of Riesa Management, Inc., the company behind Buglas Isla Cafe. He adds that translating the feel of the old hacienda that houses the original Buglas Isla in Dumaguete was easier. Old wood for the pillars and curved balusters to line the bar were shipped to Metro Manila from Dumaguete. Making it feel more like a hacienda home was the use of rattan, capiz shells, yellow lights, and cement finish walls.
Buglas Isla has the menu of an all-day cafe. There is a section for breakfast and brunch with ube pandesal, budbud kabug (a Negros Oriental specialty suman made from millet), eggs Benedict, tapa, chicken and waffles, smoothie bowls, smashed burger; and a pizza section, including the Buglas Signature with Cebu longganisa, Dumaguete chorizo, bacon, and pineapple. For a hearty breakfast, get the Ribeye Bistek Tagalog.
In Dumaguete, barbecue is called “tocino”. “It’s the heart of our cuisine. Sinugba, food grilled over charcoal,” explains Anthony, whose family has its roots in Dumaguete. There, pork BBQ is tocino—skewers of everyone’s favorite sweet, cured pork breakfast food, grilled till the edges turn smoky and toasty. At Buglas Isla, tocino is not just pork, but also juicy chicken tails, intestines, and gizzards, crisp chicken skin, and Cebu longganisa. The restaurant has taken Dumaguete’s ubiquitous street food and made it their own. It is marinated, then grilled over binchotan charcoal, a special Japanese oak charcoal that’s long-burning, virtually smokeless, and odorless. The tocino is dunked into another sweet glaze, briefly grilled again to caramelize, and finished with a brush of Buglas Isla’s special chicken oil.
The same can be said of all Buglas Isla’s dishes. The chicken oil served as an accompaniment for the tocino is infused with lemongrass, onions, and other aromatics for one month. The restaurant also makes its own sukang sinamak. The Dumaguete Lechon is crisp-skinned, and tasty to its center, redolent of lemongrass and garlic.
Beef Kansi is also on the menu. It is a dish often described as the Negrense version of sinigang. It is composed of slow-cooked beef shanks and meaty young jackfruit cooked in a broth soured by batwan, a fruit that grows in Negros Island. The batwan broth and the citrusy and peppery flavors of lemongrass, ginger, and annatto are what give kansi its Negrense flavor.
And then there is the famous Dumaguete chorizo or chorizo bungkag. Quite a number of families in Negros Oriental are of Spanish descent, and most have their own heirloom recipe for chorizo that is garlicky with paprika, and cooked without a casing or bungkag (a Cebuano word for fallen apart or disintegrated). Anthony’s family is no different, and it is his grandmother’s treasured heirloom recipe that Buglas Isla uses.
Sans Rival and Silvanas, two sweets Dumaguete is famous for, are on the menu of course. The Silvanas are Buglas Isla style — several inches thick, as big as a hand, filled with butter cream. There is also an intriguing Taho Cheesecake and Puto Maya with Sikwate (purple rice suman paired with native chocolate).
Buglas Isla Cafe in Arcovia is the first of several branches planned around the country. A second recently opened in the group’s Cala Laiya hotel in Batangas, and a third is set to open soon in Alabang. “We want to bring Dumaguete’s cuisine to the rest of the country,” Anthony expresses.
Buglas Isla Cafe is located at The View Deck, Arcovia City, E. Rodriguez Jr. Avenue, Pasig City. They are open daily from 7:00 A.M. to 10:00 P.M. For reservations or inquiries, call (0919) 0709900 or landline (02) 873 3339. Check out @buglasarcovia on Facebook and Instagram.
Food and interior photos courtesy of Buglas Isla; people photo by Pepper Teehankee.
