DINING | Faustina's Los Baños: Tiny place that packs a punch

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Outdoor seating at Faustina's in Los Baños.

I nearly forgot about this already until I browsed through some photos. A lot of you may have already known about Faustina's in Los Baños, Laguna but allow me to share our restaurant experience nonetheless.

Design and ambiance
At first I thought Faustina's was another one of those restaurants serving Filipino dishes, that it's this big, popular place with a traditional Pinoy ambiance. After driving through side street after side street per Google Maps's instructions, we finally made it in front of a white, contemporary low-rise building. And there was none of that typical native styling I cluelessly expected.

Turns out Faustina's looks more like a small cafe with white walls, a purple accent wall, brown furniture, and a slew of cutesy little touches. There are only about five small tables inside although they've stationed a couple more tables with built-in benches outside and turned the sidewalk into an alfresco dining area. It feels like a coffee shop or a milk tea place where you expect them to serve nothing but drinks and pastries. It's nice and clean, though.

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Very small space but I do like the interiors.

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From another angle.

The food
Contrary to my impression that they only serve pastries, apparently this restaurant is known for its ribs and pizza. Yes, they do have a full menu of savory dishes from soup, pasta, and sandwiches, to rice meals and magpies. But of course they also serve desserts.

True enough the ribs were delicious, particularly the sauce. The meat was tender but I found it a tad too thin. As for the pizza, damn was it good! We tried the Hungarian sausage and onion, one of their bestsellers, and it was so full of flavor. They arguably don't scrimp on ingredients here, especially cheese. The tomato and white cheese pasta was also fairly good.

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Silindro ribs (Php 210), served with rice and buttered veggies.

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Tomato and white cheese pasta (Regular, Php 174; Junior, Php 99), for some light fare.

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The Hungarian sausage and onion pizza (Php 372) was a winner.

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Magpies ala mode.

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Cutting through the personal muffin-sized pies: top, apple; bottom, peach mango.

For dessert we had magpies ala mode: peach mango (Php 60 + Php 25 for the ice cream) and apple (Php 63). They took a bit long to arrive because they had to bake it fresh. Both were good, though not necessarily to die for. For me the apple was better than the peach mango variant. Savory options are also available.

You can also check out Faustina's full menu here.

Service
Though not necessarily snappy, the waitstaff were pretty much easy to call. And save for the pies, we didn't have to wait long for our food.

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In hindsight
It may be a little hard to find but for the food alone, Faustina's is worth coming back for. The place ain't too shabby either. After all, they've been around for several years already.

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Interesting wall clock. If you need utensils, just pull one.

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As for directions, I really couldn't tell how I got there. I say just place your trust in Waze or Google Maps like we did.

 facebook.com/faustinas.lb

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