Ninong’s Pastries & Cafe

Not one of the best restaurants that I’ve eaten at, it is very small and very unorganized but the food is very delicious. They didn’t have common things that a normal restaurant would have, for example I asked for onions on my eggs and cheese on my eggs and they do not do that. I asked for a regular house syrup they didn’t have anything of that when I asked where are the silverware and your napkins and the water that had an attitude about showing me where it was. They said all the smoothies had fresh fruit inside of it my strawberry banana smoothie tastes like bubblegum and sugar, it was disgusting. I have never had to wait over 20 minutes for my food and I waited almost 30 for pancakes egg whites and sausage, it was not very packed in there at a time that I had went so I really don’t see what the wait was for. I will not be coming back to this restaurant ever again.

Place is very hidden and has good delicacies.
I come from a Hispanic culture, so Filipino food is not so different to ours. Once walking in you seat your self and grab a menu. I went on a Tuesday afternoon so it wasn’t packed at all. Looking thru the menu and not understanding some of the dish the woman working there explained them too me. You get up and order the food and pay up front first.
I order a sizzling skillet and came with an egg. With white rice and a small salad. I was impressed on how good the pork was. Almost tasted like chorizo to me. Only thing I didn’t like was the callos (cartilage)from the pork. It was way to chewie for my taste. Hard to enjoy the pork meat, but I’m assuming pinoys enjoys this.
Place could have more choices. Feels like the menu is very limited. Good place to go if you are on a casual date.

Run, don’t walk here. Absolutely delicious. We had ube pancakes, I had a power bowl with longanisa, my husband had chicken adobo
Taking away one star because they forgot our empenada, but we were full anyway. Lady working there was very sweet.

They have a new menu & a Fillipino Flight Pancake which was only $ 7, with 3 flavored of pancakes: Ube, Mango, and Buko Pandan. Buko Panda was my favorite, but it was perfect! Love the new menu!

Parking is impossible
It’s a small café and gets packed with multi-​racial customers! Five stars for that.
We waited at the entrance to be greeted by this elderly lady on the cash register. Waited till there is an available table for our party, When The lady asked for our order, i looked to my husband to confirm his and the lady shifted to a different customer. :|
While my husband was giving his order she then again cut off the order taking process and gave a menu to customers in the back of the line. When our order was finally completed we were directed to our table.
I was about to sit down when one of the staff in sweat/​track pants asked me to pick our desserts first which came with our combo orders. I turned to asked my kids what they wanted and when I turned back to the staff, she was already helping a different customer.
Our combo orders came with a choice of desserts from their dessert acrylic dessert display sitting on a counter top.
I picked:
Buko pie– do not compare to buko pie from Laguna because you will be disappointed. The slice i got, had one piece of buko and the rest of the pie is egg custard and crust. Taste is OK.
Mamon– moist with a hint of citrus.
Sat at our table with no utensils and ate our deserts first because we were starving.
Utensils, water, water cups and napkins are located on their counter top where all the desserts are. You have a choice of plastic utensils or silverware. We chose plastic utensils because the silverware is not up to health inspection code.
After dessert, our breakfast came!
We ordered from both pancake combo and silog combo menu:
Spam and ube pancake with scrambled eggs
Pancake is ok. Too sweet for a pancake and a little subtle on the «ube» flavor. Scrambled egg was fluffy and cooked right. Spam is Spam!
Tapsilog is priced at around $ 12 with a cup of bland and dried up fried rice with rubbery over easy eggs
Silog is the same, rubbery over easy egg and garlic fried rice is very bland. Corned beef is ok i can’t tell if it was a canned corned beef or from scratch
$ 10 for spam and rice with rubbery egg
Bought a dozen mamon for pasalubong.
We might go back and order just pancakes and coffee. If I crave for a tapsilog, i’m gonna have drive all the way to Panorama and visit the restaurant accross kaiser l. the restaurant’s name begins with a letter G! (i can’t mention it here because this review is requesting improvement on Ninong’s café)

We love love love this place! The pancakes are amazing and don’t forget the tapa and corned beef with garlic rice and egg. Then the buko pie!!! Oh, and don’t forget the barako coffee.
Amy is very sweet and always smiling. You will not regret coming here.

Ninongs is a gem and one of a kind!
The pancakes combos and bistek dishes are delicious! The Bistek with onions was incredibly marinated; it was one of those dishes where every bite is glorious. The coffee was nothing special.
I’d gladly drive from LA just to eat here!

I hella am obsessed with this place.
It took me about an hour to get here (I live in Torrance) but I really wanted ube pancakes. I met up with a few friends. We decided to try the flight pancakes combo and get a topsilog and power bowl to share between the four of us. It was actually the perfect amount of food! I just love all the pastries here, from the ube cookies to the pancakes to the empanadas to the polvoron!
I really recommend this place! The place is very cute and quaint, but the staff are hella kind and really love what they’re doing. There’s a Filipino Food Movement a-​brewing, so I really recommend you check out this place before the lines start coming!

If you’re looking for Filipino American breakfast then Ninong’s Café is the place to be. Note that I said Filipino American and not Filipino because having Ube and Macapono pancakes with tocino is definitely a Filipino American dish, since it’s not a traditional FIlipino breakfast. Don’t panic tho, you can still get great Filipino dishes just with a few twist and there I say it, presented to look better. I’ve only been to Ninong’s once and was impressed by the delicious food. Location is a bit small so it can get hectic. I definitely look forward to coming back!

I’m giving four stars even though I screwed myself from authentically tasting their famous ube pancakes by pouring fish sauce all over them because I thought it was syrup. I think they would have been the best pancakes ever and my friend ordered something off of the lunch menu that he said was pretty tasty. The only reason I’m not giving five stars is because they need more space! This place was packed and kind of chaotic to walk into.
However, the staff were extremely friendly and the prices were so low. Their hazelnut smoothie may be having me drive all the way over there again soon and I usually don’t go for those because of the sugar but it was just too good.

Thank God there was an absurd hour wait at Joe’s Café. If there weren’t a wait, I would have never given this little mom & pop shop a chance. I’m so happy we chose to come here because our brunch was everything my boyfriend and I wanted for breakfast.
I chose to order the infamous ube pancake combo since every other picture on the Unilocal page is of the ube pancakes. Did I enjoy the pancakes? Definitely. Would I come back just for the pancakes? Definitely. What made this experience so over the top good? COCONUT SYRUP + UBE PANCAKES + GOOD PRICES.
I was shocked when I saw how cheap the meals were. It’s pretty rare to see combination brunch meals for less than $ 10. Regardless, the food was really good. I was kind of sad that their other options were only available after 11am. I guess that just means I have to come back to try the other dishes.

Great place to go for a yummy Filipino breakfast with decent prices. You can get a sweet breakfast like ube pancakes or go for longanisa, eggs and garlic rice like I did. It was flavorful and worth the price. If you’re not in the mood for breakfast, there are other dishes available after 11am.
It’s also a bakery so there’s some other goods you can find here throughout the day like ube cookies, coconut macaroons and polvoron. Service is really friendly too– feels like a home away from home when you’re at Ninong’s.

The short of it:
— great Filipino inspired breakfast
— reasonable prices
— good variety of Filipino food on menu
— indoor and outdoor seating
— Favs: ube pancakes, corned beef
The long of it:
My new favorite flavor of pancakes is ube thanks to Ninong’s! Came here for brunch over the weekend and it totally hit the spot. It was hard to decide what to order since everything looked good. Kind of went overboard and ordered a lot of food, but it was worth it! Luckily, for the indecisive like myself, I was able to order a sampler of their pancakes ($ 1 more) with my combo plate of 2 eggs, protein and pancakes. I decided to go with the corned beef as my protein and the sampler pancakes came with an ube, buko pandan, and mango pancake. Out of the three pancake flavors my favorite was ube. The ube flavor is light and not overpowering. The corned beef was delicious and tasted home made like your mom’s cooking. I also had the chance to try the longanisa which was good but not your traditional Filipino longanisa. This one tasted more like those lil smokie sausages, which are still yummy but not what I was expecting. Ordering was really easy here, just go up to the counter when you are ready and they’ll have an ipad that you can order from. The food came out fast and the portions are really big. Looking forward to my next visit already!

Looking to try Filipino breakfast? This place was worth my hour drive in LA traffic! Their breakfast was the bomb! Ninong’s Pankcake Breakfast platters comes with two eggs, a choice of pancakes with infused butter & cream — Ube, Mango or Buko Pandan and you can add Tocino, Longanisa or other types of meat. Just outstanding!
I actually bought a Groupon, but would definitely go back. Thanks Groupon cuz I would have never known about this place!
The owner was very nice and she gave us samples of their cookies to try.
Would definitely go back!

Came here a few days ago and I was very impressed! The north valley is very limited on options to eat at that aren’t chains.
The menu is very simple but very good! We ordered the corn beef hash and it was very good! Made fresh and very hearty. It was served with garlic rice, walnut brownie and macaroon.
I didn’t ordered the pancakes but somebody at the table next to me did and they looked amazing! Can’t wait to go back and try one!

Ok… this place was really good! Came here with my mom after church because we wanted a new breakfast place to try and I had remembered seeing this on Unilocal.
Anyways it was crazy packed when we got in but the owner/​waitress said she could take our order while we waited for a table to finish up. No big deal, as I was still deciding what to get.
I ended up getting the pancake sampler with all three pancake flavors. The ube was amazing and the mango was a good second. My mom couldn’t decide between the longonaisa or the tocino, and the lady at the counter said the tocino was better. So that’s what my mom got. Ironically, as we first walked in the turon pancakes caught her eye on the menu, but she forgot about pancakes when she saw garlic rice on the menu… haha…totally a Filipino thing to say.
My mom and the elderly waitress got so friendly, it was cute and she told my mom that she has to come back for the turon pancakes, so it looks like we will be coming back.
It was slightly more expensive than your fast food breakfast, but the portions were very generous.
We also took some chicken empanadas home as well as lenguas de gato– ube flavores, which were really good.
Overall, small menu and small location, but they are doing something right because there’s a constant turnover of guests.

As a Filipino myself, I should be very happy about this place but it left me a bit unimpressed.
FOOD: Corn beef Silog was the most expensive of the Silog dishes and wasn’t much of a hit. Mom claimed it lacked flavor and once I took a bite, couldn’t help but agree. It was also dry. The Tocino Silog didn’t do much better unfortunately. I love Tocino. But Ninong’s just didn’t do it for me. Somehow the flavor was off & the garlic fried rice didn’t compliment either meats the way I hoped it would. Also order some bacon on the side and that was probably my favorite part of all the meats. HOWEVER, silver lining! The Ube pancakes still delivered! Fluffy, moist & so tasty! I did like it more with the coconut syrup but don’t drown it! Those pancakes definitely saved the day when the other dishes were off par. So, stick to the pancakes! Best kind of comfort food you’d like to wake up to! Perhaps I should try for the lunch options instead.
SERVICE: These guys working at Ninong’s are really sweet. Though the food didn’t do it for me, their efforts left a good impression. The guy working the front gave my mom & I a couple samples (ube cookie butter & ube cookie pieces!). Also, there was a mini mishap with one of the dishes and the guys who cooked it didn’t hesitate to re-​do one of them. When my mom went to get some empanadas to go for my dad, the guy in front surprised her with an extra one! Mishaps happen but they didn’t fight with customers or show attitude the way other restaurants would. So for that, they saved themselves.
ATMOSPHERE: Extremely family oriented. It’s a cozy spot. It’s just the place that reminds you & your fam/​friends to pause on life real quick and fill yourselves with food and talk. It’s a good type of comfort that they provide the moment you walk in.
Though the food was a miss, the restaurant itself still allowed me to enjoy some solid mother-​daughter time.
Come for the pancakes, Unilocalheads!

Tocino!!! This is the winner here and is the best tocino I’ve had next to White Rabbit.
I gave into to the National Pancake madness online this past weekend and grabbed breakfast after my workout lol. I’ve had ube before but not in pancake form so figured I’d try it out. The pancakes were pretty good. The ube flavor didn’t stand out much but the pancakes as a whole were tasty. The pancakes were also soft.
The tocino was simply delicious. The portion was big, the meat was tender and flavorful. I don’t know what marinade they’ve made to marinate their pork but it’s some damn good stuff.
There’s two other pancakes I’ll eventually make my way back for but one things for certain, tocino is most definitely being ordered along with it.
Breakfast 9÷26÷2015

Always a big fan of ube, so knew I had to give this place a try. I got the sampler pancakes which consisted of ube, buko, and mango. I was quite disappointed in these :(I thought the flavors would be stronger, but it was very light. I actually only liked the ube pancake. Moreso, the flavor wasn’t quite there either. I used the mango syrup which was ideal over the coconut syrup (which I couldn’t taste).
I also ordered the earl grey latte milk tea. No flavor to it whatsoever. I think there was an excessive use of milk and light flavoring again on the tea portion. I was disappointed in this because I felt the need to add a lot of Splenda.
Finally, I took a ube coffee cake to go! It was probably the only thing that impressed me, but be aware that eating a bit too much of it at once can be overbearing.

Lured out here with promises of taro pancakes at Ninong’s! I had purchased a Groupon and finally drove out here to have brunch with my sister.
We both went with the Breakfast Combo with taro pancakes, egg, and a choice of meat. We were a little disappointed with the taro pancakes, which did not have a distinctive taro taste to them. However, the whipped butter on top and the pandan sauce we got on the side added oomph to the otherwise plain pancakes. The tocino I had was well flavored and went deliciously with my egg and side of garlic rice.
Although I enjoyed my brunch at Ninong’s, I do not think I’ll be making the hour-​drive out here for it again. But do come for a homestyle Filipino meal!