Cafe Lidia Marikina Honest Review

On our way back from Tinipak River last November 1, we were very hungry. You’d think since it’s a relatively chill hike compared to what could have been (aka a trek up Mt. Daraitan) that we would be relatively full of energy, but nooo, we were really hungry and tired and hungry. Normally this wouldn’t be an issue since there are tons of restaurants on the way back to Manila. In fact, these are destination restaurants that people really go to – great food, amazing views – so I was pretty excited to check them out.

Lo and behold, every single restaurant told us that the food orders would take around 1-2 hours to fulfill. That’s crazy. There were seats, but their kitchen couldn’t cope up. I guess they were shortstaffed. Or maybe they ran out of supplies? It’s weird though because it seemed like all the Antipolo restaurants were affected by this. Such a shame.

Thankfully, our friend recommended Cafe Lidia instead. She said it’s really spacious (important during these COVID times), has good food (both taste-wise and serving size), and generally decently priced.

At a glance, I have no idea how anyone would know this restaurant exists because it’s along this small side-street, which no one would traverse unless they really meant to come here. I guess that’s actually an indicator of the restaurant quality, that people do find out about them through word-of-mouth and this is how they grow their customer base.

I also really appreciated the fact that they had a dedicated parking space for customers. This certainly makes it convenient for customers!

In terms of the interior, it’s really spacious. I suspect this used to be an old house, converted into a restaurant as the interiors didn’t seem very conventional. The acoustics were a bit of a mess though. I could hear what people were talking about 3 tables over (of course, their voices were also very loud, and I have very big gossipy ears haha)

We each ordered different dishes, so I’ll only talk about the ones I personally tasted. Food-wise, I liked the pizza the most!

We got their House Premium, which came in the form of a 12-inch thin crust pizza with tons of toppings that I cannot remember. All I know is: the crust was delightful (thin crust ftw!), and the toppings were very generous and tasty.

We also got the shrimp and garlic pizza. While that was good, I thought there was too little shrimp haha!

Aside from that, we also tried their Chicken Fingers as an appetizer. Pretty normal, not bad, but not WOW either. I liked the honey mustard sauce though.

For the main dish, I got lengua, which I thought was decent! The serving size was generous and the lengua was tender AF. The mashed potato was rather dry and can be skipped. The vegetables was just OK (although I’m not a veggie person generally).

Overall! I’m glad we got to try Cafe Lidia. I’ll keep this restaurant in mind the next time I go mountain trekking in Rizal (kailan pa kaya iyon?!) 😉

(Also, I heard their pastas and cakes are really good too – so I’ll probably try those next time!)