Restaurant Review: Manila Bakery & Cafe

Manila Bakery & Cafe - lunch on February 23, 2019

My parents also newly moved to Reno and I was driving them around to get the lay of their new land, so to speak. Back in their old stomping grounds, we were all familiar with the restaurants they liked to go to and where everything is. To try something new, trusty Yelp pointed us to the Manila Bakery & Café for Filipino food.

I’ve blogged before that, as a rule, we don’t eat out at Filipino restaurants very often. They’re not as prevalent as Chinese or Thai places, they tend to be a little more expensive than most Asian restaurants (except for Japanese cuisine) and, honestly, my mom is such a good cook that we almost never find anything as good at Filipino restaurants as what my mom makes in her own kitchen. 

However, we do try them when we find them and we found Manila Bakery & Café. Thanks to yelp, I discovered they have a lunch buffet on Saturdays so that’s when we went. When you think “buffet”, you probably imagine the long stretches of food like the buffet at a casino with its wide variety of dishes. This buffet was a lot smaller and only contained several dishes: chicken adobo, fried chicken, sinigang (tamarind soup), beef stew, a vegetable dish called pinakbet, pancit bihon (a noodle dish) and, of course, really good rice.

The dining space was really small. You lined up at the counter to pay for the buffet lunch ($12.99 per person) then waited for a table to clear. The counter had display cases offering a variety of baked goods, including Filipino baked goods like ube crinkle cookies, ensaimada, leche flan (Filipino version of a crème caramel) and siopao (Filipino steamed pork buns) and not-so-Filipino offerings like bear claws and cupcakes.

I didn’t get pictures of the buffet stand as, once we got a table and lined up for food, I didn’t want to hold up the line trying to take pictures of the dishes. The place was crowded, partly because it was so small, but also because it seemed like there were people wanting buffet. The waitstaff was kept busy replenishing the buffet dishes and clearing tables.

I’m quite fond of sinigang and the only thing about it is to really appreciate the broth, it’s best with rice. When you’re trying to cut back on rice, that’s not such a good thing. But the sinigang broth was delicious. The chicken adobo was also good. I wasn’t as much of a fan of the fried chicken as the breading was a bit tough and some parts had more breading than chicken. It was also a little greasy (deep fried, so, yeah). The rice was perfect though. I don’t like dry rice; this was moist and perfect.

This is a good place to go if you want quick Filipino food but I don’t recommend coming as a large party since the seating space is so limited.