Regina Troy Barrios

Where Miranda Priestly Would Actually Eat In Manila 

Article (news)

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17783928040281.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Miranda Priestly: she has the only table that matters | Image still from Devil Wears Prada </span></span></span></div><p>There are two things to understand about Miranda Priestly.</p><p>The first is that she does not have a &quot;usual table.&quot; She has the only table that matters. If you don&#x27;t know which one that is, you don&#x27;t belong at the table.</p><p>The second is that on Sundays, her standing order is a bacon waffle. But we&#x27;ll get to that.</p><p>With <em><strong>The </strong></em><em><strong>Devil Wears Prada</strong></em> back in theaters—and a whole new generation discovering that being yelled at by Meryl Streep is, somehow, aspirational—we can&#x27;t help asking: if Miranda were based in Manila, overseeing a regional edition of <em>Runway</em> and terrorizing a fresh crop of assistants, where would she eat? And before you say Smith &amp; Wollensky in BGC: no. That she dined at the New York original is precisely why she wouldn&#x27;t touch the Manila outpost. She has never been predictable.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.instagram.com/michelinguide/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MICHELIN Guide</a>, bless its heart, recently attempted an answer. They published a list of<a href="https://guide.michelin.com/en/best-of/the-best-restaurants-for-power-lunches-in-new-york-city" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> New York restaurants where Miranda Priestly would do lunch</a>. It was very confident and very wrong. Miranda does not need the red guide to tell her where to stage a power lunch—she has never needed Michelin recognition for anything—and the suggestion that she might would produce amusement and contempt in equal measure, in that particular Meryl Streep register where the two are, frankly, impossible to tell apart.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1778392912975Michelin.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">The Michelin Guide article: Very confident. Very wrong | Photo: The Michelin Guide on Instagram </span></span></span></div><p>So. This is her Manila restaurant list, correctly done.</p><p>The first stop is a dining room on Nicanor Garcia Street in Makati that the right people have quietly kept to themselves for years. <a href="https://www.instagram.com/michelinguide/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Sala</strong></a>, by Chef Colin Mackay, is old guard in the best sense: rigorous, tasteful, entirely uninterested in the wrong kind of attention. Miranda has been ordering the same thing there for years. The dish is actually no longer on the menu, but the kitchen makes it for her anyway.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1778394366933Sala Bistro.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">The right people already know where this is | Photo: Sala Bistro</span></span></span></div><p>For business, she goes to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/m_dining.bar/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>M Dining</strong></a> on Chino Roces. The building is unmarked enough to drive past twice. Inside, Tom Bascon&#x27;s kitchen runs on precision and a certain Negrense stubbornness; his food is modern European, cooked with the conviction of someone who has thought carefully about every dish and is not particularly interested in your opinion of the result. She orders the cheese soufflé, always. She eats almost nothing else, says very little, and is out the door before anyone dares bring up the dessert menu.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1778393202056Sala.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">M Dining is quietly, expensively beautiful—exactly the kind of place where serious things get decided over a cheese soufflé | Photo: M Dining</span></span></span></div><p><a href="https://www.instagram.com/thepeninsulamanila/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Old Manila</strong></a> at The Peninsula is a different matter entirely. She goes because it&#x27;s one of the few rooms in Manila where she doesn&#x27;t have to perform being Miranda Priestly. She orders a burger, medium-rare, with a regular Coke, three ice cubes, one twist of lemon, because that&#x27;s what she wants for lunch. Occasionally it&#x27;s a steak tartare. Miranda doesn&#x27;t like frills; she has enough of those at work.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1778393325997peninsula burger.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">A Peninsula burger. It&#x27;s not Miranda&#x27;s order, but close enough | Photo: The Peninsula Manila</span></span></span></div><p>When she&#x27;s in a celebratory mood—or wants to honor someone with her full attention, which amounts to the same thing—Miranda goes to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/modan.mnl/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Mōdan</strong></a>. Chef Jorge Mendez runs his progressive Japanese restaurant out of the ground floor of his own home building in Cubao: it has twelve seats, one communal table, and a menu that answers to no one but him. Miranda found it before the guides did. When she goes, she brings at most two guests, and Mendez closes the restaurant for the evening. Just for them. Miranda didn&#x27;t ask for this. She didn&#x27;t need to.</p><p>She&#x27;s heard about his ramen place on Maginhawa, but she hasn&#x27;t gone yet. She&#x27;s still thinking about it.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1778393390917Modan.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Miranda just loves Mōdan&#x27;s snow crab claw and asks for it even after it was phased off the menu | Photo: Mōdan</span></span></span></div><p>Then there&#x27;s <a href="https://www.instagram.com/ootoya.ph/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Ootoya</strong></a>, which she stumbled onto and has quietly decided she likes. A Tokyo institution founded in 1958, it opened its first Philippine outpost this year at Grand Hyatt BGC. They serve washoku in the teishoku format: a tray, a main, rice, miso, pickles. Chic in its simplicity, which Miranda recognizes immediately. She comes for weekday lunches, orders the charcoal-grilled mackerel, and eats every grain of rice. Yes, the rice. Don&#x27;t make it a thing.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/177839342687711.JPG" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Miranda finds Ootoya&#x27;s simple tray of a main, rice, miso and pickles very chic. She&#x27;s not wrong.</span></span></span></div><p>The <a href="https://manilapolo.com.ph" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Manila Polo Club</strong></a> is possibly the most telling entry on this list. Nobody goes there for the food, and nobody pretends otherwise. What matters is that the staff have been there for decades—the doorman calls her Miss Miranda and knows her driver by name—and she need never ask for anything or explain herself. They already know: the table, the drink, the temperature of the room, the precise degree of solitude she requires that day. This level of institutional memory is genuinely rare in Manila. Miranda has decided it&#x27;s non-negotiable.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17783937058384.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Whether it&#x27;s a power lunch or a dinner party, Miranda&#x27;s taste is always, irritatingly, exactly right | Image still from Devil Wears Prada</span></span></span></div><p>At home, the rules shift just a little. Her cook was pirated, decades ago, from the old Intercontinental Manila, the one that opened in 1969 and closed on New Year&#x27;s Day 2016. Margaret Thatcher ate there. Luciano Pavarotti ate there. The prime rib at Prince Albert Rotisserie was carved tableside with a reverence you don&#x27;t see anymore, and the Crêpe Samurai from Café Jeepney was the kind of dessert people still describe the way they describe a lost love. Her cook knows all these recipes, and this is what gets served at her dinner parties. Dishes that no longer exist in Manila. You can&#x27;t order them anywhere, but Miranda has someone who makes them.</p><p>And then there are the wines. She&#x27;s never shopped for them. What she has is an arrangement with a sommelier, one of those quietly exceptional people who operates without a restaurant affiliation but sources directly from estates. He came recommended, it is said, through the kind of old Manila family that collects Burgundy as a matter of course, and whose wine knowledge Miranda respects without ever having said so directly.</p><p>Finally, there are Sundays.</p><div><br/></div><div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/17783938744025.jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner">Sunday is the one morning Miranda is just mom | Image still from Devil Wears Prada</span></span></span></div><p>On Sundays, for breakfast with the twins, a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/pancakehouseph/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><strong>Pancake House</strong></a> order arrives at the house. A bacon waffle for Miranda; the twins have their own order, which they&#x27;re allowed to choose themselves. They used to order from the Makati Cinema Square branch, but that branch is now closed, a fact Miranda received as a personal affront. The new source has not been disclosed.</p><p>The bacon waffle is served on<strong><a href="https://www.instagram.com/villeroybochph/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Villeroy &amp; Boch</a> </strong>plates<strong></strong> with the good silverware. There&#x27;s no syrup—Miranda Priestly does not do syrup—but there&#x27;s butter: real, cold, European butter. And the twins are allowed to dawdle and take their time. Because it is Sunday, and this is the one meal that belongs to just the three of them.</p><p>That&#x27;s all.</p>

<p>A sharply observed, deliciously specific fantasy of where Miranda Priestly would actually dine in Manila—from discreet Makati dining rooms and old-money institutions to Cubao omakase counters and Sunday Pancake House rituals.</p>

A sharply observed, deliciously specific fantasy of where Miranda Priestly would actually dine in Manila—from discreet Makati dining rooms and old-money institutions to Cubao omakase counters and Sunday Pancake House rituals.

Where Miranda Priestly Would Actually Eat In Manila

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Where Miranda Priestly Would Actually Eat In Manila

Troy Barrios

Published May 08, 2026 02:55 PM PHT

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Updated May 10, 2026 05:00 PM PHT

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devil wears prada

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