Meet Mateo Fabregas, The Cool Chef Behind Maginhawa's Charming Don-Don Taberu

(SPOT.ph) It’s only been eight months since Don-Don Taberu in QC’s Maginhawa Street opened and already it has that lived in, soulful aura —as if it’s a remnant of this neighborhood’s pre-road-widening landscape, a throwback to its quiet-and-artsy era. The place welcomes you in as soon as you slide the front door open, greeting you with a hug even before a wait staff could say hello. This is very much the warm, welcoming vibe of its chef, Mateo Fabregas, who looks like a cross between a hippie and a rock star. But Mateo is actually a surfer dude who knows his way around the kitchen, and is possessed with the quality of someone whose language of love is cooking for others.

This is not Mateo's maiden venture into F&B; the first was the burger joint Mad Monkeys Burger Lab located in La Union where he now lives with his family. He is a self- taught chef who may or may not have acquired his flair for the culinary arts from his Negrense mother, or from his uncle, the French chef Cyrille Soenen (additional trivia: Mateo is the son of veteran character actor Jaime Fabregas). Either way, Mateo would later go on to refine his kitchen skills for a whole winter season in Japan, when the Crosta folks from Manila opened a restaurant in Niseko, Hokkaido three years ago.

That five-month stint in Japan would provide the inspiration and foundation for Don-Don Taberu, which specializes in donburi. Since its next door neighbor is the Vietnamese noodle joint, Nǎm-Nǎm (whose owners are relatives of Mateo’s wife), it just made sense to offer rice bowls as alternatives.

There’s a cool humility to this Maginhawa space, with its rough-around-the-edges aesthetic, low lighting, and decor of random vintage Japanese magazine cutouts—reminiscent of the tiny joints you stumble upon while exploring the eskinitas of Osaka. And then there’s the food: simple, delicious Japanese fare prepared fast—but with care. No theatrics here. But it’s the kind of place where you can order everything in the menu and won’t be disappointed. Although we recommend starting with the Spicy Tuna Salad (P320), the chef’s favorite. “I’ve been making it for a long time for my partner, and order it everywhere I go,” says Mateo. The Don-Don Taberu version comes with a house chili sauce that’s the chef’s personal recipe.

Both his Gyudon (“A hearty bowl of good beef and egg and lots of spring onions,” Mateo says, almost gushing. “Such a perfect combo, the marriage of all these flavors”) and Oyakodon are very good. But he recommends the Mushroom Donburi (all donburis are at P280) if you’re feeling adventurous. He came up with it in Japan while having drinks with co-workers, mixing together different mushrooms he bought from the market. The dish so impressed their head chef he asked for it to be on R&D the next day—before eventually including it in the menu. That’s when something clicked in Mateo’s head: “Uy, I can make a dish pala.”

Romance was a big reason Mateo got into cooking. “I started to like making food when I started going out with my partner. I promised her—we were just friends then—‘When we get together, I’m gonna cook for you everyday.’ And we did get together.” And so he started cooking, just learning the ropes at home first, getting a few tips here and there from his famous chef uncle. Mateo would go into cooking religiously when he moved to La Union 11 years ago. For friends first and on Wednesdays, or what he calls “family days.” In between cooking, the gang would hit the waves and surf. “That’s when I found out I love cooking for people. I love going to the palengke. I love everything about the work that you put in to feed somebody, or a bunch of people.”

Even while he already ran a burger joint in La Union, getting to work in the kitchen at Niseko would prove to be an experience all its own. “I realized I really liked doing this,” he says of the job. There, he also found a new appreciation for Japanese food. “I like to cook it more than I like to eat it now,” he says with a mischievous laugh. But Don-Don Taberu would take his love for cooking to yet another plane. “Opening this I feel like I’ve grown up a lot more than when I opened the burger place. A lot more thought was put into this, from the floor to the walls the finishing.”

Still, everything about Don-Don Taberu feels almost effortless. Everything is cool and chill here. Something that extends to the vibe of the people, both those being served and those serving. And to think it hasn’t been a totally easy first eights months for the dining scene newbie—which just happened to make SPOT.ph’s list of 50 Great Restaurants of 2026. “So far, so good,” is how Mateo describes the situation. “It’s been crazy the past eight months we’ve been open," he says, fingers crossed and with that playful laugh. "Looking forward to the next eight."