Baker On East: These In-Demand Doughnuts Are in Makati's Friendliest Café

Baker on East
Unit G2 Valero Plaza Condominium, 124 San Agustin Street,
Salcedo Village, Makati City
Instagram: www.instagram.com/bakeroneast
Open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m., Monday to Sunday

(SPOT.ph) Early Wednesday mornings in Makati’s Salcedo Village may conjure images of employees strapped to their desks, yawning through another series of meetings. But in this small café tucked behind Valero Plaza, people are in line waiting for a sweet treat to get them through hump day. If you manage to maneuver your way through the crowd, you’ll find some pastries on display. But the true star of the show doesn't come in until 11 a.m. 

Baker on East's doughnut variants of the week are a mystery to those in line. The unveiling of each week’s flavors is akin to ripping open a blind box toy. When the goods arrive, lined up before the feverish customers are a bunch of doughnut flavors. This particular week it's tangy guava cheesecake, the nutty black sesame cookies and cream, the muted smoky chai, the classic early grey dark chocolate, and the crowd favorite: passionfruit and toasted white chocolate. They sell out by the afternoon.

The guys of BoE try to shrug this popularity off, though they haven’t had leftovers since they set up shop last December 2024. Co-founder, creative lead, and recipe developer Chino Cruz; front-of-house and face of the brand Gio Cruz; and finance, logistics, and operations head Josh Co all believe that hype dies. They send one another news of floundering F&B establishments to keep themselves grounded in reality. But demand was like this even when they were a small business that started on Gay Twitter, of all places.

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Baker on East's café in Salcedo Village, Makati

It all started with giving cakes away

“At that time, I would develop recipes for cakes and pastries and I would post to ask who wants them. All of us at home were on some kind of diet, so I wanted to send them to friends or anyone who was interested in taking them,” says Chino. He only decided to put doughnuts on the menu to appease his younger brother Gio, who wanted to help out with the business.

But the moment he made them available, demand skyrocketed. Although their ube tahini and burnt butter tonka bean revel bars are masterclasses in contrasting flavors and textures, their doughnuts undoubtedly steal the show – a fact that Chino has since come to terms with. “Random strangers suddenly started sliding into my DMs to ask if they could try. At one point, I had alter porn accounts asking me for my address.”

Baker on East is known for pushing the envelope with their flavor profiles: harnessing global influences and references in distinctly Filipino ways. An attempt to find a non-Japanese approach to black sesame led to experimenting with cocoa, hence the black sesame cookies and cream. A visit to a Singaporean ice cream shop that served white chrysanthemum and coconut birthed their best-selling peach mango chrysanthemum. “I draw inspiration from diaspora cooks, who color their American or British baking with their roots,” Chino shares.

While the fillings are winners in their own right, the true star of the show is the dough: a Japanese-style milk bread base with a chewy consistency and a soft, hydrated center. Chino first developed a doughnut recipe during his past life in publishing, iterating it every few years until he reached the perfect symphony of ingredients. “I used to wake up at two or three in the morning to get started. Now, it’s my team who does that. Even with full capacity, the whole process of shaping, proofing, frying, dusting, and filling fresh batches everyday takes hours,” he says.

(That’s when it hits me: maybe BoE gets its name from the rising sun that greets him as he kneads the dough every morning. But alas, Chino just lives near East Avenue.)

Based on vibes

Despite all the thought and technique that goes into each recipe, the founders agree that everything else is based on vibes. Flavors of the week are often decided on a whim: “Although, we do challenge ourselves to fill in at least three [flavor] categories each week: we need to have a bright fruit flavor, something floral, something light and more indulgent, and something spicy and more unique,” Chino shares. “We could, in theory, put out caramel and chocolate all the time but we don’t want flavors that mesh into one another.”

The newly-opened branch? Also a product of vibes. It’s an extension of the owners’ vastly different personalities, and an ode to the things they love. Doused in hues of yellow and orange, the space exudes an aura of warmth, like dropping by a friend’s unit after a long day.

One shelf houses K-pop albums and A24 books, courtesy of pop culture geek Chino. Copies of running books are strewn here and there, since it’s Josh’s favorite way to destress. Sometimes, the owners’ eclectic mix of friends catch up during closing time while city pop blasts in the background.

“I don’t like going to places where people seem too cool to hang out [with you], so as the three of us were building this space, we wanted to be as friendly and warm as we could. We want to give off the impression that we’re your friend even if we’ve never talked and we’ve never met,” Gio tells me. He leans heavily into his “bro” image, fist bumping everyone who enters and labeling them as one of his homies.

Maybe this is the ethos that informs their customer service: One of their baristas beams and waves, saying that she remembers me even if it’s only my second time there, while another entertains a pair of tourists who are taking extra long to choose their order. Gio chases after a group of regulars with a box of pastries upon overhearing that it’s someone’s birthday. “People have bad days here when it’s too crowded or they don’t like the flavors so much, but they’re always happy with the service, so we can always bank on that,” Josh shares.

The Bear? What's that?

I ask if they drew inspiration from that one episode of The Bear, where Cousin Richie learns the importance of personalizing dining experiences. Chino says they’ve never watched the show because it gives too many war flashbacks. The journey from small business to brick-and-mortar store was not easy, after all: a projected May launch got pushed to June, and then again to July. Friends started asking when opening day was, and they eventually stopped answering in fear they might jinx it.

Thankfully, while waiting, Baker on East went on a “world tour”, dropping by cafés and trendy spots owned by friends around the metro for pop-ups. You might have caught their “gay crullers” at Del Union last June, or spotted Gio with Devin Halbal at It’s Vintage. (Kudasai!) When they ran out of stops and still had no physical store, they got their foot in the door at The Grid in Powerplant Mall. “I guess you can say we got lucky that we’re surrounded with good people,” says Josh.

It’s this feeling of community the BoE boys have benefited from, that they want to cultivate through their space. “We want to be the rare place where people from corporate, creatives, and quirky gay men can all come together and chill and coexist,” Gio says. In the future, they hope to be a place for more niche interests: drag shows and drag bingo, as well as K-pop cupsleeve events and Pride Month festivities are all in the pipeline.

So while the doughnuts don’t show up until 11 and are probably out by 1, I suggest you visit Baker on East early and stay a bit longer. There are more pastries to enjoy, corners to take pictures of, and people to watch. If you’re lucky, you might stumble upon a party after hours and leave with a whole new set of homies.

Photographs by JL Javier