Vogue Café Is Coming to Vogue Threads Manila 2026

In between Vogue Talks and portfolio reviews, guests get to experience chef Rhea Rizzo’s cooking from Silang favorite Mrs. Saldo’s in Manila, at the first Vogue Café in the Philippines.

At this year’s edition of Vogue Threads ManilaVogue Threads ManilaVogue Philippines' annual fashion platform for emerging talent, featuring exhibitions, masterclasses, talks, portfolio reviews, and Vogue Faces. Vogue Threads Manila connects young Filipino creatives with industry leaders, and it showcasesGo to Vogue Threads Manila Glossary, Vogue Philippines is opening the country’s first Vogue Café.

Established globally by Condé Nast International Restaurants, Vogue Café is an expansion of the Vogue brand into hospitality, offering a space that embodies the magazine’s lifestyle and fashion. The first few cafés launched in cities such as Dubai, Kyiv, Moscow, and Berlin, and it is now making its way to Manila.

For its Manila pop-up, Vogue Café will feature a menu curated by Rhea Rizzo, owner and chef of Mrs. Saldo’s in Silang, Cavite. Inspired by her travels and career overseas, she has created a menu that combines Filipino cuisine with international flavors.

The first dish on the menu is Pork Jowl Inasal Toast, which is a product of two food memories that have stayed with her. “When I lived in Napa [in California], weekends often meant driving into San Francisco in search of good bread, visiting places like Tartine and Josie’s Bakery and trying their different sourdough toast creations. Then, during a six-hands collaboration I did in Bacolod last year, I had one of the most memorable inasal dinners at Aida’s,” Rizzo says.

The next dish is also a memory that comes from her time in Napa. During the weekends, she and her family would drive to Healdsburg, Yountville, Tiburon, or Berkeley in search of a good brunch place. A family favorite was Eggs Benedict, so she knew that at some point, she would have to make a Filipino version of the dish. So, at Vogue Threads Manila, she presents the Beef Belly Etag Benedict. Instead of ham, she uses etag from their farm and amazake made from their koji, with both taking a week to process. Etag is a traditional Cordillera cured pork.

For the third dish, she turns to her childhood memory of hearing the binatog vendor pedaling his bike in the morning. While usually served with butter and cheese, her Binatog Fried Corn Ears is a combination of the Filipino binatog and Mexican elote, served with crispy sili leaves, garlic, and crispy corn bits.

Next is her Dinengdeng Salad, which takes inspiration from a visit to the Cordilleras last year. There, she was introduced to Cordillera cooking, which mostly uses vegetables with as little salt as possible. “I was told that the elders taught them to respect and keep the unadulterated flavor of the land,” she says. “I wondered, what would Alice Waters do if she were given the vegetables and fish that come from these fields and mountains?”

She interprets dinengdeng through this lens, letting the vegetables be the center of the dish, while bringing ingredients from her favorite collaborators such as Kaya Kusina’s Kiwot stingless-bee honey.

And of course, it’s not a Filipino feast without pancit. For Vogue Café, she presents Pusit Malabon, her rendition of the pancit Malabon. The specific pancit Malabon she’s taking inspiration from has a thick sauce with inky dark squid staining the bright annatto-orange color of the noodles. From there, she combines it with one of her favorite dishes: cacio e pepe. To add more local flavors, she uses kesong bato from Wild Pastures Cheese in Bacolod.

Drawing on her memories from Bangkok and Indonesia, she serves the Maranao Riyandang. “The more I travel, through Southeast Asian cities as well as places in Mindanao like Davao and Cagayan de Oro, the more I realize how interconnected our foodways are, particularly in the south,” she says. Riyandang has its roots in the Malaysian rendang and the kiyuning rice of Indonesia. “It’s my way of looking at Filipino food not in isolation, but as part of the larger Southeast Asian story it has always belonged to.”

When she was growing up, her grandmother served fried chicken with dinuguan. That memory taught her that fried chicken could be served alongside a bold, savory, Filipino sauce. For Vogue Café, she serves chicken in the form of Bagoong Honey Fried Chicken, which borrows inspiration from the Filipino kare-kare and the Malaysian nasi lemak. “Here, the fried chicken becomes the centerpiece, with bagoong, honey, and the flavors of kare-kare bringing together the sweet, salty, and deeply savory notes I love,” she says.

For desserts, she offers three dishes: Cheese Ice Cream & Banana & Pâte à choux, Halo-halo Cobbler, and Mamon & Egg Etag Ice Cream.

The cheese ice cream dessert comes from the childhood memory of eating the same ice cream tucked inside a soft bun. In her version, the bun becomes a pâte à choux, filled with banana and coconut crémeux. She also adds yuzu and barako coffee, as well as crispies made with unoy rice. The Halo-Halo Cobbler is influenced by the Filipino dessert and the peach cobblers she used to make in Napa. The dough is made with pili nuts from Bicol, sourced by Kaya Kusina.

Lastly, she combines her love for bibingka and her “obsession” with making etag from scratch, as well as her experience eating ice cream with jamón in Spain. “I remember thinking how brilliant that sweet-and-salty combination was. It made me think about how naturally Filipino food embraces the same tension,” she says. Instead of bibingka, she uses mamon and a tablea ganache to tie everything together.

Along with the food menu are alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages by Mrs. Saldo’s. They are serving The Pink Lady “The Trish,” a vintage cocktail from the 1930s; Puto Bumbong Milk Punch, inspired by the Christmas dessert; and Manila Buck, a highball flavored with pandan.

For coffee, they have the Coffee Pandan Latte with Sago alongside coffee classics: Americano, cappuccino, flat white, and hot/iced latte. As for juices, they will be serving Mrs. Saldo’s Iced Tea and Pandan Tarragon Juice. Lastly, they will also be serving a Special Ube Mocktail, the non-alcoholic version of their Puto Bumbong Milk Punch.

These dishes and drinks will be available exclusively at Vogue Café for a limited time during Vogue Threads 2026, running from October 26 to 28, 2026. For access, visit the Vogue Threads Manila microsite for more information.