Restaurant Review: Calea Pastries & Coffee (Bacolod City, Negros Occidental)

Calea Pastries & Coffee

Calea Pastries & Coffee, a must try and a Bacolod landmark, is perhaps the city's most famous coffee and cake house.  

This nice go to place for a quick sugar fix, to relax or have coffee and cake with friends, usually fills up pretty fast during lunch and in the afternoon, especially on holidays and when there are conferences in town.   To avoid the crowds, visit during the odd hours (between breakfast and lunch). 

They offer a variety of rich and sumptuous cakes, pastries (tarts, pies, etc.), and cold/hot beverages (cappuccino, freshly brewed coffee, mocha latte, mocha frappucino, etc.) and their prices are reasonable, half the price you would normally pay in Manila (ranging from PhP75-95 per slice). 

However, Calea does not scrimp on ingredients, even if the cakes are very affordable.  The sandwiches (Reuben sandwich, Waldorf sandwich, clubhouse, etc.) served are big portions. They also serve very good pasta just perfectly cooked al dente, plus halo-halo.  Their cozy, very relaxing and tastefully done ice blue and white interiors have a cool retro look, with comfortable chairs and eclectic décor. 

The cozy, very relaxing and tastefully done interior

Choco almond cake

Their awesome cakes are to die for, not too sweet not too bland, just right for your taste.  

However, they have no dessert menu and their cakes lack name plates so customers have to go to the counter and point to what your heart, mind and taste buds desire or ask the food attendants for the names of the cakes to help you make your mind up. 

There are at least 15 kinds of cakes and pastries displayed in their tall glass-fronted refrigerators.

Pecan caramel cheesecake

 Their sinfully sumptuous bestsellers, pleasing to the eyes and sinfully delicious, are the white chocolate cheesecake (with raspberry sauce and topped with grated cheese), the mouth-watering chocolate mud pie cake (ice cream cake with thick chocolate syrup, ground cookies as crust and thinly cut walnuts and almonds) and pecan pie a la mode  (with vanilla ice cream on top).  

An array of unlabeled but delicious cakes

Apple pie

Also try the lemon pie, lemon mousse, pecan caramel cheesecake, banoffee pie, chocolate banana ganache, almond biscotti, oreo cheesecake, tiramisu, caramel crunch, vanilla ice cream pie, carrot cake, chocolate marshmallow ice-cream cake, pecan vanilla cheesecake, blueberry cheesecake and the heavenly French chocolate cheesecake.  

To say that their cakes were delicious is an understatement. For “pasalubong,"Calea provides a specially made box (PhP30) for transport from city to city or airport travel. 

Pies to die for

Calea Pastries & Coffee: Doors 1-4, Balay Quince Commercial Bldg., cor. 15th St. and Lacson St. (in front of L'Fisher Hotel), Bacolod City, Negros Occidental. Tel: (034) 433-8664 and (034) 433-3143. Open Mondays to Thursdays, 8 AM to 10 PM,  and Fridays to Sundays, 9 AM to 11 PM.

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