Western food thrives in a Tagum corner

TUCKED away in this city’s main artery is the little café with good Italian coffee. Photo by Frinston L. Lim, Inquirer Mindanao

TAGUM CITY – Tucked away in this city’s main artery is a little café, where one can munch on freshly baked Western-style cakes and sip good Italian coffee at affordable prices.

Boxlike and well-kept, Yuyu Café and Dessert Shop, which sits along the Davao-Butuan segment of the Pan-Philippine highway, adds to the growing number of coffee joints mushrooming here.

What sets it aside from the others, its owner says, is that people get their taste of Italian-inspired salads, American cakes and even local desserts without the need to go to Davao City.

“We are offering the average Tagum resident a chance to taste American and other Western cakes they only used to see in Davao City cafés. So we always see to it our rates are affordable,” says Emerald Uy, the woman behind Yuyu.

A graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in New York, the 23-year-old Uy considers cooking as her life. Her experiences as well as her formal schooling shaped her passion in setting up an American-inspired coffee shop.

Uy says the idea of venturing into coffee shop business first crossed her mind when she was still completing her baking and pastry diploma at At-Sunrice Globalchef Academy in Singapore two years ago.

She saw an opportunity when the local outlet of a Manila-based coffee shop operated by a relative on the same spot that Yuyu now occupies closed shop.

“I really like its location, so strategic that when the place became vacant, I quickly rented it,” says Uy.

Pouring her savings of about a million pesos, Emerald started Yuyu in July last year. She hired two assistants from a cooking school, a chef and an accountant. Being an upstart, she had to make sure everything was “lean and mean, including the workforce.”

“Though we have a chef, I always get myself involved in the shop’s day-to-day operations, from concepts and formulation of the cakes and juices to the buying of ingredients,” she says.

Quality

TWENTY-THREE-YEAR-OLD Emerald Uy, the lady behind Yuyu. Photo by Frinston L. Lim, Inquirer Mindanao

Emerald considers product quality as the main asset of her shop and she always sees to it that only high-quality ingredients are used and utmost care in the preparation of the cakes and pastries observed. She says the greatest value she has learned at cooking school is striving for excellence.

“Cooking and food preparation is never easy. But when people like what you prepare for them, and they would want more of it, that’s the greatest accomplishment you can get as a cook,” Uy says.

The youngest of the three children of Tagum City Mayor Rey Uy and wife Alma, a registered nurse, Emerald or Adi to her family and friends considers herself the “least exposed” of the Uy brood.

Her elder sister Ciara is occasionally seen with the Uy couple in official functions while her Kuya De Carlo is a politician like their father, being a city councilor.

She says her cooking ability has always been in the blood. Relatives from both sides cook, so as her parents.

“I was really set loose in the kitchen,” she tells the Inquirer in Cebuano, with a chuckle.

During elementary years, she says that she used to observe her mother and their house help prepare meals. She also started learning recipes from a cook book her mother had given her.

Being born to a family of business people, Emerald says it really helped her in learning the street smarts as well as industry techniques.

She shuns putting up advertisements on radio or newspapers, and instead relies on Facebook and “text brigade,” and even the proverbial “word of mouth.” For a budding business entity like hers, Emerald says spending on promotions is not a sound option, with cash too valuable.

Patrons and new customers are assured of tasty cakes and other desserts as ingredients were diligently sought out from as far as Metro Manila.

“We see to it the quality of the cakes is always maintained so the flavor of the cakes you first tasted here would still be the same the next time you drop by again,” Uy says.

Aside from standard American and European cakes such as black forest, coffee caramel, among others, Yuyu also offers “limited edition” of Filipino recipes like buko pandan cakes.

Forte

FRESHLY baked Western-style cakes. Photo by Frinston L. Lim, Inquirer Mindanao

“But my forte really is doing American and Western-style cakes, even before I enrolled in culinary schools abroad,” says the 23-year-old chef.

Uy says she cannot imagine herself doing another job aside from cooking. For her, cooking is her life and Yuyu, her baby.

The square, green-walled coffee shop with its green-painted shelves where cakes and other products are put on display, is a “tiny fun place” where people can relax, says Emerald. Its interior is awash with the color green.

The chairs are also painted green.

She says the place’s name Yuyu, is a play on the surnames of its owners as her partner is her cousin Cathy, daughter of Compostela Valley Gov. Arturo Uy.

“Yuyu also sounds like Yumyum, which easily relates to tasty food,” explains Emerald.

Despite the sprouting of Wifi-ready coffee shops throughout the city, Emerald observes that many Tagum residents were not ready yet to the concept of all-coffee and cakes establishments.

Complete package

“So we decided to innovate. Aside from cakes and coffee, we also serve dining fares like soups, salads and main dishes. We want to project Yuyu as a complete package. A coffee shop and fast-food joint rolled into one,” she says.

A serving of a banana chocolate muffin costs only P38 while a strawberry oat bar is at P40 apiece.

Dishes like beef and mushroom stroganoff is at P75 for serving. Their salads’ prices range from P75 to P140, with garden and chicken cobb salad among the most sought-after by Yuyu patrons.

They also serve fried and barbecued chicken and even lechon kawali, priced up to P150 per helping.

And how does she see Yuyu in the next two years? Emerald says there could be expansion to nearby urban centers, but she would not sell the shop’s name or go into franchising just yet.