Can't Come to Boracay? Sunny Side Café's Pop-Up Brings the Beach to Metro Manila
If you needed just one reason to stand up from your Station 1 lounge chair and walk ten minutes to Station 3, it's The Sunny Side Café. Its extensive selection boasts a micro menu for eggs, a micro menu for rice dishes, a micro menu for pancakes, a micro menu for coffee, a micro menu for toast, and a micro menu for grilled cheese sandwiches, and more. The Sunny Side Café at the Sands Hotel earned its top 5 position on Tripadvisor by answering any kind of early-morning breakfast craving. The best part is that it's available every day.
The government-enforced closure of Boracay might've thrown a wrench in everyone's travel plans, but the owners of Sunny Side Group have an ingenious solution: They're opening a series of pop-ups around Metro Manila for the duration of the closure, with the double aim of keeping their staff gainfully employed and their customers happy.
Scheduled to open at Canvas, Westgate Center, Alabang, from May 18 to June 30 [edit: the popup has been extended to July 31], the Sunny Side Café is the second to launch in their Best of Boracay Series. (Its sister establishment, Coco Mama, is already available at the Salcedo Market every Saturday until June 2, and at La Union's Flotsam and Jetsam for the next six months.)
For the pop-up, The Sunny Side Cafe trims their Boracay menu in half, covering essentials and bestsellers. Still, the four-page spread (excluding the EDSA BDG coffee) can give the average city restaurant a run for their money. Co-owner Nowie Potenciano admits that it's no easy feat to uproot practically an entire restaurant to bring to Manila. "It’s immensely difficult because we have to bring in a lot of our equipment. We don’t have our usual suppliers and support network here, so it’s like starting from scratch," he says.
The motivation behind their determined efforts is their staff. "We’re paying for the housing and transportation of our staff from Boracay to Manila and back," Potenciano adds. The pop-ups, he explains, provide jobs for their employees who instantly lost their livelihood when the island was shut down. They're bringing in 40 people for the pop-ups.
Black sesame and green tea cream pancakes
To make the Manila iteration even more special, The Sunny Side is also offering a new item: black sesame pancakes with green tea cream. Tempted? Any self-respecting breakfast lover would make a beeline for Alabang with this menu.
The group's next pop-up is slated for June 16 to August 15. Spicebird as well as Street Market's Poketo and Fat Rice will take over one of the stalls in Century City Mall's Hole in the Wall.
