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The Best Cebu Restaurants to Splurge Over $40 On

When you marry food with luxury, it’s certainly going to be a rewarding experience. Here’s a list of our top 5 restaurants you can dine at for $40.

Cebuanos love to eat, evident in the fact that many restaurants and food spots are popping up all over the island. It’s almost as if food is one of the few things that they wouldn’t mind spending on. That being said, reward yourself with a luxurious meal at one of these restaurants. We made a list of dishes that are a must-try at these restaurants — we guarantee that you won’t regret it!

Photo taken from hungryhongkong.net

COWRIE COVE

Punta Engaño Rd, Cebu, 6015 Cebu

Described in the Philippine Tatler’s Best Restaurants 2011 as a menu that showcases “the best seafood dining”, Cowrie Cove’s selection of dishes promises pleasure for the palate. Enjoy a sumptuous selection of fresh seafood, succulent steaks and Asian-inspired dishes.

For starters, order Cowrie Cove’s Spanish mackerel confit and quinoa salad with organic tomatoes, ricotta and lime. Priced at Php505, this is their signature dish. You can also opt to go for another of their signature dishes, which is their caesar salad with grilled prawns, croutons, anchovies and parmesan shavings, priced at Php500.

Moving on to the main dish, if you’re up for seafood, why not try their slow-cooked octopus with Bohol prawns and potato confit? It’s priced at Php575, but if you’re not a fan of seafood, you can try their organic chicken and foie gras with corn congee and champignon, priced at Php560 — it’s also one of their signature dishes. Or, if you’re a vegetarian or just feeling a healthier option, they have a green tagliatelle with spicy tomato and sautéed spinach, priced at Php380. 

And of course, dessert! Try their chocolate semifreddo with greek yoghurt and mango tartar, priced at Php280.

 

ABACA BOUTIQUE RESORT

Punta Engaño Rd, Lapu-Lapu City, 6015 Cebu

Abacá Restaurant provides a full service California-Mediterranean inspired restaurant and bar. Their menu – which uses the finest local and imported ingredients – was developed by their executive chefs and includes wood fired oven roasted meats and seafood, homemade pizzas and pastas, freshly baked breads, tapas and a wide array of salads and appetizers. The award winning restaurant is open to the public for lunch and dinner.

For your appetizer, you can ask their staff for their daily soup, priced at Php395. Their salt ‘n pepper calamari is good too, with chili salt, lemon and traditional aiolo — priced at Php475. You can also opt for their Caesar salad with crisp egg, smoked bacon, lemon and a creamy parmesan dressing, priced at Php545.

Their wood-fired flatbread pizzas are also popular; try their prosciutto variation, with fire-roasted onions, mozzarella, parmesan and arugula, priced at Php525.

For the main course, their slow-roasted lamb shank paired with a creamy garlic mash and glazed vegetables is heavenly, priced at Php895.

To finish your luxurious meal, try their Tahitian vanilla creme brulee, priced at Php165, or their homemade fruit sorbet, Php165.

 

ENYE AT CRIMSON RESORT AND SPA

Crimson Resort & Spa Mactan, Seascapes Resort Town, Soong, Lapu-Lapu City, 6015 Cebu


Nowhere else but Spain boasts tapas with such intricate flavors, so Chef Chele Gonzalez has come home to Cebu and brought his family’s kitchen with him. Enye is quite the pleasant spot where the surprising aesthetic never surpasses the combination of amazing flavours.

Start off with their flavourful jamon y parmesano, with Serrano ham and parmesan mousse on toasted sliced bread, Php85. Or try their charcuteria or cold cuts, particularly their degustacion jamon that has Serrano and Iberico ham, Php390. If you’re up for seafood as a starter, you can have their gambas al ajillo, which is shrimp sauteed in olive oil with garlic and chili, Php460.

Their paella negra, or black ink paella with squid and octopus, is an indulgent main course, priced at Php690. Paired with a refreshing cucumber mule – made of cuke, ginger, ale, fresh lime juice priced at Php220, this makes for a pleasurable gastronomic experience.

Of course, you can’t have a luxurious meal without dessert! Try their tarta de chocolate y helado de vainilla, a chocolate-orange tart with vanilla ice cream, Php290.

 

PIG AND PALM

Negros Rd, Cebu City, Cebu

The Pig & Palm is the first Filipino restaurant from Michelin-starred British chef Jason Atherton and his wife Irha Atherton. Located in Irha’s hometown of Cebu, the restaurant offers a modern Spanish tapas menu with a focus on pork dishes. An adjoining bar serves innovative cocktails and bar snacks.

Their beef and foie gras mini burgers (that have bacon, cheese, onions and tomato relish) are very filling, priced at Php690. They also serve a pork truffle mac n’ cheese with toasted breadcrumbs, priced at Php595. Or, if you’re trying to keep away from eating pig (even though it’s evident that their menu revolves around pork), you can have their beer-battered fish and chips with tartar sauce at Php810.

To finish your meal, try their matcha Cheesecake with raspberry, yuzu (Japanese orange) and white chocolate, Php380. You can also pair your meal with one of their many wine choices.

KAYU

32 Sanson Rd, Cebu City, Cebu

Taking inspiration from the world, KAYU’s modern-fusion cuisine uses only the freshest and finest ingredients cooked with Chef Francis “Izzy”Sy’s imagination and passion. KAYU is derived from the Bisaya word “kalayo” meaning fire or passion.

Start off your meal with their shishito peppers, priced at Php150. Or try their beetroot salad with goat’s milk ricotta, tzatziki and guave gel, with an orange garam masala vinaigrette, Php270.

As an entree, try their braised shortrib with cornbread puree, braised shallot, beech mushroom and a demi glaze, Php950. Pair this with their virgin mojito, Php100.

To finish your meal, get their “potted” chocolate tiramisu, made of sabayon, a crunchy hazelnut meringue, coffee sponge cake, chocolate “sand”, strawberry gelee and vanilla sauce, Php240.

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Arts & Culture

Kundiman–A Collaboration Between Charles Lahti and Francis Dravigny at the Qube Gallery

by Oj Hofer

“Collaboration is like carbonation for fresh ideas “-Anonymous

Kundiman—drawn from the Filipino tradition of lyrical love songs marked by longing, devotion, and emotional depth—unfolded not merely as an exhibition but as a dialogue between two artists whose practices, though formally distinct, share a common goal: that creation is never singular, never complete, and never entirely one’s own. The word itself carries weight. In the Philippine cultural imagination, kundiman is not passive sentiment but a mode of endurance—a way of loving what one cannot fully possess, of honoring what exceeds one’s grasp—and to name an exhibition after it is to make a claim about the nature of making itself: that art, like the song, is an act of devotion directed toward something larger than the maker’s intention. It is a form that does not declare but lingers; not spectacle, but the quieter and more demanding thing called intimacy.

The collaboration between Charles Lahti and Francis Dravigny operates at what might be called the threshold of language—the place where gesture becomes structure and structure, over time, turns into meaning. Their working relationship is less a merger of two styles than a negotiation between two modes of listening: one drawn to the decisive mark, the other to the patient accumulation of woven form. Lahti’s mark-making is grounded, deliberate, and unambiguous in its commitment to presence; his lines carry the quality of breath, each stroke an event rather than a flourish. Observers familiar with East Asian ink traditions will recognize this sensibility immediately, for in Zen ink practice and Japanese calligraphy, the practitioner does not decide what to draw so much as prepare the conditions under which something may reveal itself—the mark that emerges from this discipline is not decorative but testimonial, evidence of a moment of full attention. Lahti’s work operates within this logic even when the cultural references are Western, and what anchors it is not style but stance: an ethical relation to the act of making that distinguishes genuine presence from the mere performance of spontaneity, a distinction far rarer in contemporary visual art than it ought to be.

“The line is not drawn but revealed—through stillness, breath, and a quality of awareness that the discipline of reduction alone makes possible.”

Dravigny’s woven interventions introduce a different, though deeply complementary, temporality. Where Lahti works in the decisive instant, Dravigny works in accumulation—the slow building-up of material over time—and his use of abacá, a fiber indigenous to the Philippine archipelago, is not incidental. Abacá carries its own history: long harvested by hand, traded across colonial networks, woven into ropes and sails, and more recently reclaimed as a medium of cultural expression, so that to bring it into an art context is to activate this history without necessarily declaring it. In Dravigny’s hands, textile transcends its usual function as background or support and becomes instead an act of preservation—a material archive that holds within its weave the gestures of another artist. This concept, which the exhibition implicitly explores, speaks to something the atelier tradition has long understood: that a work of art may pass through multiple bodies and multiple intentions and still emerge with coherence, provided each maker brings to the passage not assertion but responsiveness, the capacity to receive another’s action and carry it forward without erasing it. Dravigny’s woven interventions propose a similar ethic, made visible rather than concealed.

What Kundiman ultimately stages is not the product of collaboration but its conditions: the particular quality of attention required when one artist’s gesture enters the field of another’s practice, and the willingness to wait that such attention demands. The Japanese aesthetic tradition names this interval ma—the generative pause, the charged space in which meaning gathers before it resolves into form—and the exhibition’s restraint is precisely its argument. There is no excess, no spectacle, no rhetorical gesture toward significance, only a sustained attentiveness to process that runs counter to the dominant logic of contemporary exhibition-making, in which legibility is prized and impact must be immediate. Kundiman refuses this, trusting the viewer to do the work of attending, and in this refusal it finds its deepest kinship with Zen aesthetics: the discipline of reduction, the clarity of intention, the respect for what is essential over what is merely present.

“What Kundiman proposes is more radical than most exhibitions dare: that the self, in the act of making, becomes temporarily permeable—open to the gesture, the material logic, the devotion of another.”

The concept of interbeing—rooted in Buddhist philosophy and carrying the understanding that nothing arises independently, that every form is the result of conditions and every maker is in part made by what they make—finds in this exhibition its material proof. What was created here does not belong to one hand alone. It emerges in the space between, where gesture is received, transformed, and returned; where material listens and form responds and meaning unfolds not as conclusion but as continuation. The exhibition ends. The dialogue does not. This is the space between hands: where making becomes meeting, and where interbeing quietly, insistently gives rise to form.

Charles Lahti with his latest works—layering print with bandana textiles to create tactile, hybrid surfaces where image, pattern, and material converge.

Francis Dravigny in his Cebu studio—transforming abacá and found materials into layered, sculptural weavings.

A wall of interbeing—where weave, gesture, and form dissolve into quiet harmony and non-duality.

A flat surface transformed into a quiet weave—drawing the eye inward, where structure softens into stillness and resonates with Zen practice.

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Arts & Culture

Kundiman After Dark: Traditional 19th Century Filipino Musical Genre Continues to Inspire

by Kingsley Medalla

The Kundiman is a traditional 19th-century Tagalog musical genre that served as a profound source of inspiration for many sophisticated, classically trained artists. The name is derived from the Tagalog phrase “kung hindi man,” literally translating to “if it were not so.” These musical pieces were often performed as poignant love songs characterized by smooth, flowing melodies containing emotional depth. Originating as a serenade in poetic Tagalog lyrics, it features a minor-to-major key progression expressing longing, devotion, patriotism, and a yearning for freedom.

Sine Pop, a boutique theater in a 1948 post-war heritage house located in Cubao, Quezon City, serves as a charming venue for cultural events and intimate performances with a small ensemble. Recently hosting Kundiman After Dark, a recital honoring the legacy of Nicanor Abelardo (1893–1934), a highly esteemed Filipino composer and pianist hailed as the “father of the sonata form in the Philippines” and a master of the art of the Kundiman. Carlson Chan, founder of Sine Pop, clarifies their unique model: the performances are open to the public and are, as such, complimentary, as its primary focus is to promote the performing artists per se.

The performances featured beloved Kundiman classics including Mutya ng Pasig (1926), Naku… Kenkoy (1930), and a personal favorite, Bituing Marikit (1926). These musical pieces were brought to life through the solo acts and live vocals of tenor Erwin Lumauag, Japanese violinist Shiho Takashima (who has since made the Philippines her permanent residence), and the renowned composer, pedagogue, and pianist Augusto Espino.

“Nasaan Ka Irog,” written in 1923, drew inspiration from a romantic tale shared by Nicanor Abelardo’s friend, who went overseas leaving behind his beloved in the Philippines. Years after, this man eventually became a doctor and, upon his return, discovered that the love of his life had been married to someone else. He also learned that the letters he had sent were never delivered to her, as they were kept by the doctor’s family, secretly away from her. A classic case of unrequited love. Kundiman serves as the heart and soul and the pinnacle of Filipino musical artistry.

Violinist Shiho Takashima and pianist Augusto Espino

Tenor Erwin Lumauag

Art patrons; Pacita Agoncillo Sode, Marilou Khan Magsaysay, Patricia Cepeda-Sison and this writer Kingsley Medalle

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Arts & Culture

Art Beat: Scenes From the Manila Art Fair 2026

photography by Doro Barandino

“Art is unpredictable and goes in different directions. I have no idea. I would rather live the present moment.” —Bencab, National artist of the Philippines.

Vinta by Protegeri, collaboration art piece by Leeroy New, Solenn Heuseff and Vito Selma

Q&A with interior decorator and jewellery designer Doro Barandino

Which of the participating art galleries had the most unified and exciting theme?
Leon Gallery had the most amazingly put-together collection. Though the gallery engaged various artists, the overall visual effect felt like one unified theme. Leon Gallery used a sack-like cloth (most likely raw linen) as the background for the booth, and it brought the collection together. It had an old-world feel in a chaotic setting.

Who were the artists that were the most visually engaging?
The works of Carlo Tanseco were definitely my favorite. The artist used an eye chart (Snellen chart) as the background for the image of Dr. Jose Rizal giving us the middle finger—such an “in your face” message. The concept of our national hero as a modern-day provocateur was a wake-up call to everyone. Very subversive and underground material. I was also attracted to the works of Japanese artist Tadashi Kogure; they’re very architectural.

Was the choice of venue and its layout helpful in engaging the whole art vibe?
What I noticed was that the masters like Juan Luna, Fernando Amorsolo, and Fernando Zóbel still attracted the most viewers at the art fair. People are naturally drawn to their masterful strokes and historical significance, or perhaps these artworks are not readily accessible for public viewing. Or maybe those booths that carried the masters’ works were strategically positioned right after the registrar.

The choice of venue at Center One was a good move—it created a total art vibe. Manila Art Fair remains the premier art fair in the country today, showcasing the finest modern and contemporary art while offering curated projects and immersive installations.

The Standard by Thai artist Pitchapa at the Triangular durational, performance art.

Bato Bato sa Langit by Filipino artist Carlo Tanseco

Stocking Proportions Menumpuk Proporsi by Indonesian artist Labadiou Piko

Untitled by Indonesian artist Yunizar

Filipiny, wool tapestry by national artist of the Philippines,Federico Aguilar Alcuaz.

Untitled by German artist Valentin Elias Renner

Interior decorator and jewellery designer Doro Barandino is also a regular contributor for zee.ph

 

 

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