La Cocina de Tita Moning

A couple of weeks ago, we went on a walking tour of Intramuros, the historical heart of Manila. At the end of the tour, the guide told us about a special restaurant that served delicious home made Spanish food in an old historic mansion. We were told that they don't take walk-ins, you have to make a special booking - unless of course, we wanted to go that night. We thought it sounded interesting, so along with two other girls, we followed the lady dressed in a black & white maid's uniform to a van that would take us to the restaurant.

We figured, after doing the Intramuros tour, that the restaurant would also be in Intramuros, probably just around the corner. After driving for about ten minutes it became clear that we were leaving the walled city and headed across town. This was about the point we all started to question whether it was a good idea to get in a strange van without any idea of where it was going...

The streets started to get quieter and quieter until we ended up driving past a lot of big walls and gates with mansions behind. We even passed the Presidential Palace. We eventually pulled into a long driveway and drove behind the house to a beautiful outdoor dining area.

This wasn't even the actual restaurant - we were served drinks and hors d'ouvres and told to order our meal from the menu while they prepared the house for us - every group dining at La Cocina de Tita Moning gets a tour of the house!

The house was built in 1937 for the Legarda family.

Dr. Legarda's library

I loved all the old furniture in the house and it has been preserved very well by the later generations of the family, who still own the house.

Dr. Legarda's home clinic. The big black thing is an antique x-ray machine, and the skeleton is real, from the cadaver used by Dr. Legarda in medical school. Apparently in the old days, cadavers weren't provided to medical students by the university, students had to 'find their own'. I hate to think how that worked!

My favourite room was the girls' dressing room. Dr. Legarda's daughters were ballerinas and this room has been set up to display some of their costumes. I fell in love with this beautiful dressing table!

I love this lamp base decoupaged with old liquor bottle labels

This photo was taken looking from the living room to the dining room. We were asked to wait in the living room until our dinner was ready, and entertained ourselves looking at the family photo albums on the coffee table. I didn't take any photos during dinner because I never think to do that - the food was too good and we were loving the experience of being served delicious food in a formal dining room on family heirloom china and silverware. It was all so fancy!

It was a very surreal night. Not at all what we had expected to do for dinner that night, but everything was... delightful. Not a word I use often, but I think it perfectly describes our evening at La Cocina de Tita Moning. Delightful.