Sonya’s Garden Restaurant

Today is Roch’s mom Day!  I told my mom that I’ll take her to her favorite restaurant, Sonya’s Garden.

I discovered Sonya’s Garden Restaurant from my mom decades ago.  Since she loves Sonya’s Garden’s food and ambience very very very much, I learned to love the restaurant too! I actually even stayed at Sonya’s Garden Bed & Breakfast countless times. So today, I drove to Tagaytay so that I can bring my mom to her favorite restaurant. I want my mom to be happy and I’ll do whatever I can (even if it’s just the small things) to make it happen.

From Taguig, it took us 3 hours to reach Sonya’s Garden on a saturday morning.  We left at around 9:30 and reached Sonya’s Garden at 12:30PM.  While it’s a bit tiring to drive far, for me it was worth it!  I got to bring my mom to her favorite place and we both get to eat good food!

The best thing about Sonya’s garden is its ambience. I love the nature feel of the place. I love the fresh air, the flowers, the tablecloth & napkins, the setup of the furnitures and the farm-to-table food concept.  The place is just great for pictures!  You’ll see that every single table has their cameras out just to ensure that they have a beautiful remembrance of Sonya’s Garden.

I do have to mention though that the quality has gone down a bit 😞 I went straight to the bathroom before getting food.  The bathroom was not as maintained as before.  I know they changed a lot of things with the way they serve their customers but I really hope they do not become complacent coz honestly, both my mom and I were disappointed. I don’t think we’ll go to Sonya’s Garden as often as we used to be.

Sonya’s Garden used to serve bottomless fresh dalandan juice and I was so looking forward to that earlier.  But to our dismay, we were served Lipton tea (!) 😞 Another disappointment, huhuhuhu.

In the buffet table though, there was natural flavored water.  I didn’t get to try that. I was too focused on my disappointment of not having dalandan juice.

Most of the food now are served in the buffet table.  However, bread and its dips are still served at each dining table.  Everything was made in Sonya’s Garden (bread & dips).  The dips being served are as follows: basil pesto, white cheese, anchovies, bruschetta tomato toppings, mushroom pate, black olive tapenade, and fresh green peppercorn in olive oil.

Dressings and different sauces are in the table for us to use.  I especially love the Sonya’s Super Secret Salad Dressing. I think I can just swim the garden salad in that dressing.  It’s that yummy! 👍🏻

So yeah, the salad is now at the buffet table.  All the guests need to get up and get their own salad serving.  I think this change (from having the salad served at the table) makes sense. Considering how undermanned they are, the waiters won’t be able to keep up with the refill of individual ingredients in each table.  Well, I realized later on that they are really just trying to save money and food because service has gone bad. It was very hard to get the attention of the waiters and it was pretty obvious that they didn’t want to serve you and would pass around responsibilities to each other. Hayyyy.

Anyways, back to the salad..

It’s a Create your Own Salad thing with your choice of fresh ingredients.  The salad is made of lettuce and arugula.  Toppings available were fresh mangoes, pineapples, langka, eggs, cashew nuts, cucumber, onions, turnip and tomatoes.

I always choose only mangoes, turnip, lettuce & arugula and nuts for my salad.  Then I will always go for seconds.  Very few ingredients but oh so satisfying!  Sonya’s Garden makes the best salad!

With Sonya’s Secret Salad Dressing?  P-E-R-F-E-C-T!!! 😍

Once we’re done with salad, we went back to the buffet table to get pasta.  This is another favorite from Sonya’s Garden.  I especially love the unlimited servings of Salmon Belly! YUMMY!!!!!!!

So it’s linguine pasta, salmon belly, capers, black olives….

with two kinds of sauces: Chicken cream with mango (white) and fresh tomatoes in olive oil (red).

ratatouille and shitake mushrooms…

Again, my usual pasta combination whenever I dine at Sonya’s Garden is pasta with salmon belly, red sauce and shiitake mushrooms.  That’s it! Very minimalist but I love it! 🍝

Lastly for dessert, banana rolls and glazed sweet potato are available at the buffet table. I’m not a fan of both desserts so I usually skip this.  However, I do make sure I get the sinful chocolate cake and tarragon tea which the restaurant serves at the dining table after we finish eating our mains.  I wasn’t able to take a photo of both the chocolate cake and the tarragon tea because my camera lost its battery ☹️ When you go to Sonya’s Garden, always ask for the chocolate cake and the tarragon tea after your meal.  Those are great ways to finish the Sonya’s Garden Restaurant experience.

For me though, it’s all about seeing my mom smile and enjoy her food and time 😍 I love you mom!  Happy mother’s day! 😘

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Sonya’s Garden Restaurant
🏠Barangay Buck Estate, Alfonso, Cavite, PH (near the vicinity of Tagaytay City)
☎️+63 917 532 9097