With their home-cooked specials, a detour to this neighborhood café is always worth the effort

While everyone is still deep in slumber and dreaming, Apero’s baking staff reports to work at 2 in the morning to start preparing and hand-mixing dough. “We start baking at 5 a.m.,” says the café’s part-owner Valline Go, ensuring that their bread is freshly baked every day. Meanwhile, the hot kitchen chefs make their daily trip to the wet market to source freshly caught fish and seasonal ingredients they could play with to offer on the specials board. Apero, the newest café in Corinthian Hills, departs from shortcut cooking and is an advocate of bringing back slow cooking to Manila’s dining scene.

This neighborhood pit stop, with its view of the bustling city, offers two menus—AM (from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) and PM (from 4 p.m. to 11 p.m.)—making it a refuge for harried working people looking for quick breakfast takeaways, titas who brunch, and even couples craving for quality steak and drinks. Basically, they could serve anything you’re craving for at any time of the day.

Enter the modern, tropical-inspired café at 8 in the morning for a quick breakfast run and get energized by the smell of brewing coffee and baking bread. The best example of familiar flavors presented in an unexpected package is their sourdough croissant. This naturally leavened bread has the same flaky crust of the croissant, but has the pleasing chewiness of sourdough inside. Butter and jams that go with the bread are also made from scratch, with Apero fermenting their own butter and importing berries for their jams. For a more filling meal, they offer a hefty serving of specialty porridge waffles with home-cured corned beef and peppercorn