Everyone who knows me for a while knows that Baguio is just about my favorite land-based vacation place in the Philippines. I like the relaxed, cold weather (colder than Manila) mountain atmosphere and the quaint charm of this mountain province. Ever since 2006, our family have visited Baguio annually for our year-end vacation. Through the past 10 years, Baguio has gradually gained a new reputation as a foodie place with lots of new cafes and excellent eating places being opened. I’ve had the great blessing of being able to try some of them. Most of them are really good, but I’ve yet to find one that makes me sit up and say “WOW!”… until now.
My good friend, mentor, learner of the Scripture, awesome photographer and brother-in-CHRIST, Nathaniel Ngo Sy spent sometime in Baguio last year as part of his internship/practicum for his Biblical studies and he, being the awesome foodie, tried all the foodie places there and declared one as his ultimate Baguio eating experience – Foggy Mountain Cookhouse. He then urged me to give this place a try. So tried it I did.
Foggy Mountain Cookhouse (https://www.facebook.com/chefscookhouse/?fref=ts) is the brainchild of Chef Marianito Reyes , better known as Chef Babes. Chef Babes used to be part of the hustle and bustle of Manila but decided to live a more quiet life by migrating to Baguio. There is a saying that you can take the chef out of the kitchen but you can’t take the kitchen out of the chef. The desire to create culinary masterpieces was too great for Chef Babes to resist that was why he decided to open his home and convert it to the Foggy Mountain Cookhouse.
Foggy Mountain Cookhouse is a reservations-only place (due to it’s limited seating capacity) and is located along 172 St Joseph Street, San Carlos Heights, Purok 24Baguio City, along Naguilian Road (click on the address for a map to the place). During off-peak season, the place is about 15 minutes away from Camp John Hay. But during peak season, the drive will stretch to 30-40mins. Thanks to Waze, the place is fairly easy to find. Once you reach the place, you will understand why Chef Babes decided to name the place as such. Foggy Mountain Cookhouse offers a breathtaking view of the mountain side that is often enveloped by fog that moves in and out of the view.
The place has a really comfy home feel (because it is, after all, Chef Babes’ home). He converted all his open space and living room into his main eating area with tasteful decors and distressed wooden tables.
Of course, all these talk won’t mean much if the food doesn’t live up to our expectations. And live it up it more than does! You can check out the food selection on Foggy Mountain Cookhouse’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/chefscookhouse/?fref=ts). Chef Babes requires guests to book in advance and order in advance as the place is reservations only and is almost always fully booked. Ordering in advance also allows Chef Babes time to prepare each order properly as he is involved in each process, from the preparation, sourcing of ingredients to the actual cooking. The place was fully packed when our group of 20 arrived there Dec. 31, 2016 for our lunch reservation. We were seated along the balcony which gave all of us a breath-taking view to go with our meal. We had to wait a awhile before our orders came out since we were such a large group and the place was packed. But the wait was well worth it! Chef Babes came out personally to meet with us and apologized for the delay.
I will not bore you with the details of how each dish tasted because I am not good with words when it comes to using foodie terms in explaining how food tastes. You will just read a lot of words like”SUPER GOOD”, “DELICIOUS”, “AWESOME”, “MOUTHWATERING” being repeated by me. So I will just let your see the photos I took of them and let you imagine and anticipate with excitement the pleasure your palette will experience once you have a chance to try it out yourself.
Chef Babes said to me, he hoped Nats didn’t oversell the place. I assured him, he didn’t because not only were my expectations met, they were surpassed! If you are a foodie or simply enjoys good food then you owe it to yourself to try Foggy Mountain Cookhouse when you are visiting Baguio. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 🙂
I am not paid in anyway to write this mini review blog. I just want to share my wonderful experience with all of you. Since the place was packed when I was there, I had no chance to take interior shots, so all of the interior shots of the place, including the b&w shot of the house and several food shots were taken by Nats with his Nikon D800 and Nikon 24mm f/1.4G during his internship there. ( Photos taken by Nats are labelled and attributed to him). The rest of the food shots, the foggy mountain views photos were taken by me with a Fuji X-Pro 2 and a Fuji 16-55mm f/2.8 lens.
Please do click on each photo for a higher resolution view. Do drop me a comment or two as I love to hear feedback from you to help improve my blog. Thanks and God bless 🙂
Daniel's Lighthouse 
Great review!
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Thanks so much, God bless 🙂
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