Sunshine Lunch Brightens My Day

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I want to share with you one of my “secret happy places in Baguio City” — Sunshine Lunch Panciteria and Restaurant.

The Summer Capital of the Philippines is home to many Chinese restaurants probably because of the availability of fresh ingredients like vegetables or meats from the Baguio City Market (and Sunshine Lunch is located right across, ok), or because these dishes are faster to prepare and serve especially for tourists and residents “on the go.”

After one week of heavy rains and strong winds (typhoon Pepeng, for those who’ll be reading this post in 2011) and my refusal to go panic-buying, preferring instead to live literally “hand-to-mouth” on one canned item per meal bought from the neighborhood sari-sari store so I would not go to town and burn gas or deprive others of much needed supplies, Nico Cawed said to me one Saturday morning, “Did you notice anything?” Silence from me. ” The rains have stopped.”

As soon as the rains stopped the sun shone brightly but dreadful news of the damage started streaming in. So we lived still hand-to-mouth for a few more meals until a few days later we heard that Kennon Road was open, then Naguilian Road, then Marcos Highway — and we knew that the city would bounce back fast — as it actually did — and I could finally go down to Manila to finish some work that I had left behind.

I also knew I could re-engage in my favorite past time — dining out. So before the trip last Friday, I did a quick stop downtown to go to the bank and decided I needed comfort food and Sunshine Lunch was it!

Comfort Food, Take Out & Golden Eggs

Normally we would order a full meal of a meat viand like Sweet & Sour Pork (how can you eat in a Chinese restaurant in the Philippines and not have that?), Chopsuey or a noodle dish like Pancit Canton and Fried Rice, but we were to travel so a light lunch consisting of a plate of Pork Asado and a cup of Fried Rice each. I actually thought long and hard about ordering vegetables but didn’t want to burden the owners with high food costs for vegetables at that time so we skipped that.

The great thing about Sunshine Lunch is that everything you order is consistently good, each viand perfect for two hungry people and priced just right — great value for your money. If you’re eating solo, they also have Rice Toppings available for about Php100-120 each so that’s not so bad. In the many times I have eaten there so far, I’ve always like the taste and portion size of my orders — Sweet & Sour Fish, Pata Tim, Chopsuey. They offer a whole slew of beverages on the menu, including milk, chocolate, coffee, tea and even have soda available in small bottles, canned or in liter bottles, depending on your group size.

Then there’s that fabulous take-out counter that you can peruse while waiting for your meal. While Nico was outside taking photos of Malcom Square and People’s Park, that was oozing with, well, P-E-O-P-L-E basking in the great Baguio weather, I was busy choosing the Chinese snacks that were to accompany me on my trip (but they didn’t even make it out the door and I ended up eating them right along with my meal). And this of course meant peanut bars and chewy candy orange slices.

I don’t go to Sunshine Lunch as often as I want, in fact I don’t even get to go to Session Road as often as I should, but I alway get food from Sunshine Lunch brought home, especially their giant siopao that I believe is the absolute best siopao in City of Pines, so much so that it appears in my Baguio travel site’s Best of Baguio page.

But that was not all we did at Sunshine Lunch. This nice old timer, speaking the perfect English that the natives are known for, was selling some kind of sweepstakes ticket called Golden Egg where, for Php20 you have a six chances per ticket to win anywhere from zero to Php20 to Php200,00 (or was it Php1M). You rub six little rectangles with a coin and see what riches are hidden, with a golden egg icon indicating your win. Nico could not resist and bought Php100 worth and won Php40. We should have just bought more peanut bars.

One final note about Sunshine Lunch — one of the things I love about the place is that despite it being located in one of the most crowded areas in the City of Pines, it provides a quiet, no-frills respite from all the chaos outside with sweet and friendly owners always behind the counter whom you can consult when buying Chinese delicacies like kiamoy or bagoong or squid flakes or orange swits or uncooked noodles. It must also be noted that everything’s really clean inside and I appreciate that.

How to Get There

Sunshine Lunch is located on Perfecto Street at Malcolm Square and although everyone who know what’s what in Baguio city knows where it is, visitors may not find it too easily for the restaurant’s visibility is affected by all the activity going on in the area.

We usually go down Session Road, turn right at Magsaysay and turn right immediately to Perfecto Street that you would not even think is a road because it looks like a parking lane. This area is so busy with a bank, a grocery store and retail shops in the same row as Sunshine Lunch which is why, when there’s no parking available, I normally have food bought from there to be consumed at home instead, especially those giant siopaos (pork or chicken, I love them the same!)

Sunshine Lunch Panciteria and Restaurant has a few tables on the ground floor and roomier dining area upstairs, filled with diners all assured of a really good meal every time.

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