Dumaguete, the Philippine city that blends cultures – and dessert ingredients – with flair
Favoured by expats and catching on with tourists, Dumaguete is a Philippine city that stays true to its roots
My last visit to Dumaguete – a city on Negros Island, in the centre of the Philippines – was in 2018. The Filipino friend I travelled with had learned of my fondness for halo-halo shaved ice desserts and wanted to find the best place for us to eat them.
He found Bernie’s Halo-Halo (now closed). I was dubious: the traditional fruit toppings had been replaced by chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles, crushed chocolate cookies and lashings of chocolate sauce. I took a bite: it was rich, creamy, one of the best I’d had. Bernie’s owners, like this city, had pulled in foreign influences and created something that was greater than the sum of its parts.
The industry collapsed in the 1980s, but sugar still runs in the blood of the Negrenses, Dumaguete drawing dessert lovers to its many patisseries, of which Sans Rival is, well, without rival.
Trinidad “Tita Trining” Teves-Sagarbarria founded Sans Rival as a little pastry shop on San Jose Street in 1977. In 2012, her children converted the family’s ancestral home into a bistro, selling lunches as well as cakes.
