Tagaytay Wedding Food Reviews – Lechon, Pizza, Cake, Cocktail Bar, Crew Meal

Josh & I are foodies and we wanted THE BEST FOOD & DRINKS for our guests. Below I’ve listed out our main cocktail food and drink suppliers, plus the crew meal for my entourage and suppliers as well. Unfortunately I don’t have much photos because my photographer didn’t take photos of the food set-up ☹

Deevo’s Cebu Lechon

Link: https://www.facebook.com/deevoscebulechon

Peso Power (Booked October 2023): Php 16,500 for jumbo lechon (sufficient for 72-80 pax)

DELICIOUS. Zero regrets. This was amazing! My wedding guests kept raving about it, and even asked us for the contact of the lechon supplier (always a good sign).

In terms of communication, easy to work with. They accommodated our last minute additions for extra lechon, and the lechon was delivered on-time.

Pro tip:

• Have at least one carving station per 100-150pax to minimize queuing time.
• Make sure lechon is delivered around max ~1 hour before the serving time, to ensure max crispiness.

Casa Nostra

Link: https://www.facebook.com/cnostraph

Peso Power (Booked December 2023): Starts from Php 30,000 (for 100 pax) non-VAT + Php 7,000 Tagaytay OOTF. However, expect this to increase based on # of pax and the flavors you want

We REALLY wanted Casa Nostra. They were significantly more expensive than other pizza suppliers, but we taste tested them (they’re located at Rockwell) and were blown away by the quality of the pizza and how it stayed fresh and delicious even an hour after cooking.

However, it was such a pain to book them.

• Number 1, they don’t reply on weekends.
• Number 2, they don’t take calls and don’t reply to text messages. In the end, we communicated with them via Instagram then email, but they reply quite slowly.
• Number 3, they wouldn’t allow us to reserve the date until a month before the event (WHY?!?).
• Number 4, even though we had already reserved the date EXACTLY one month before the event (as requested by them), they would not let us pay until two weeks before the event. Why? Honestly the first supplier I have ever encountered to refuse early payment. It also made me a bit worried that I might not have a pizza supplier on the day of the event, since we hadn’t put down a downpayment.

Note also that Casa Nostra has certain requirements from the venue, which thankfully Arocarria was able to accommodate.

For our booking, we requested for 3 ovens and 4 staff to ensure speedy baking and service. Still, a queue did form because their pizza was SUPER popular. People were literally eating one whole pizza for themselves. Zero regrets getting them, but just know, booking them might be a bit of a trial.

Juan Carlo

Our caterer – but reviewing their cocktail food here to give a fuller picture of what was served during the cocktails.

What was served: Money Bag with Pork, Shrimp and Leeks; Wrap ala Portofino

Delicious. We taste tested this thrice with Juan Carlo and these two appetizer dishes were consistently good, so I had zero worries about the quality of these dishes on-the-day. True to form, the guests loved them. I think they loved them too much, because I heard some guests ended up eating ~4 of each, so some guests didn’t end up getting to try. Ohwell! Overall, I would recommend these two dishes from Juan Carlo.

Kavanah Sweets

Link: https://www.facebook.com/kavanahsweets

Peso Power (Booked May 2023): Php 9,500 (3 layer, all-edible, buttercream frosting) + Php 300 transport fee

Kavanah was recommended by our coordinator. I hadn’t taste tested them prior, but decided to just book because I didn’t know any Tagaytay cake suppliers anyway. To choose the flavors of the cake, they sent over cupcakes via my coordinator and I was honestly very underwhelmed. I’m a huge sweets person and I found their cupcakes kinda dry. In the end, I chose vanilla, banana and chocolate as the most palatable flavors.

Leading up to the wedding, it was a bit tricky communicating with them because I was relaying everything through my coordinator (since we booked through them), but I think my coordinator wasn’t relaying my requests properly! Anyway, in the end, we just communicated directly via Viber, which was much simpler.

On-the-day, the wedding cake arrived on-time and looked pretty good – actually quite similar to my cake peg (I was happily surprised because they didn’t seem very confident when we were chatting about it). We had it during the cake cutting and the flavor was the same as the taste test (consistent at least). I opted to have the cake served nalang – requesting our caterer to cut up the cake and serve to guests during the after party

Blaze Blend and Brew

Link: https://www.facebook.com/Blazeblendandbrew

Peso Power (Booked October 2023): Starts from Php 45,000 (4 hours unlimited cocktails), but this will increase depending on the drinks you want

We opted to book a cocktail bar relatively last minute because we were worried we wouldn’t have enough alcohol at the wedding. Again, referred by our coordinator, we didn’t bother taste testing already because we were both quite busy.

Hmmm, honestly hard for me to give a clear review because I wasn’t really able to try their drinks, but there was a couple of snafoo that we realized post-event.

First, my family complained to me that there were ZERO cocktails during the cocktail time. We had clearly communicated that we wanted them to open immediately after the ceremony, so we were surprised to hear this.

Second, my brother-in-law and some friends complained that they wanted to get some cocktails during the reception (but before our entrance) but were told that the cocktail bar was still closed. I have no idea why, because they were supposed to be open from cocktails onwards.

Third, mixed reviews from guests but general consensus was that the drinks were heavily diluted. This was both good and bad. Good because guests who didn’t want to drink hard drinks could happily sip on their cocktails. Bad because most of our guests were actually heavy drinkers.

Fourth, we were supposed to get freebies (a wine bottle + pica-pica fruits and nuts) but I’m not sure we did? Or at least it wasn’t turned over to us (the wine bottle) and my family didn’t see any pica-pica

To sum, we realized it would have been cheaper to just purchase more wine and whiskey, instead of getting a cocktail bar, and our guests would’ve enjoyed it a lot more too.

Pick a Meal by Amie

Link: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064141921341

Peso Power (Booked November 2023): Php 170 per meal (1 main course, 1 vegetable or side dish, 1 dessert, rice, bottled water)

Overall good – they arrived on time, and was very filling. I ordered two kinds (embutido + lumpiang sariwa, fish fillet + mixed vegetables with quail egg) and it was well-received by suppliers, my family, and my entourage. Good value for money.