Best kept secret of Tacloban revealed

Wanna know a secret? It’s about the best-kept secret of Tacloban, The Little Green Kitchen’s Village Chefs. It’s small rustic restaurant located in Hacienda Verde, Utap which serves the best Filipino and Asian dishes.

The idea behind setting up The Little Green Kitchen’s Village Chefs, according to its owner Chef Marirose Veloso, “can be summed up in a single phrase ­ cooking for family and friends.”

Most chefs would agree that fresh herbs make even the best chef’s cooking better that is why Marirose wanted to have the restaurant within a greenhouse and garden to make sure that all the herbs and spices they use for their dishes are all freshly picked from their own garden.

“I have always loved cooking,” she shared. “As a child, I would watch and cook with my Mommy and Lola in the kitchen. Like them, I would lovingly spend much time in the kitchen preparing delicious meals for my family and good friends,” she added.

Chef Marirose remembered her dining room would always be filled with endless happy conversations over wonderful meals that she would cook out of love for them, and that is the kind of ambiance she would like other people to feel when they eat at her restaurant.

So for years, she had been cooking for friends and family and she would just love cooking their favorite dishes whenever they visit. Although she took up Nuclear Medicine in the U.S., her passion for cooking took her back to the kitchen. In 1978, fresh from college, she managed a restaurant her father opened for her. “He didn’t want me to work so he opened a resto for me which I managed till I got married in 1980,” she recalled. Good thing she also took numerous short cooking and baking courses while she was studying in the states. She also took additional cooking courses after college and whenever she travels.

In 1989, she started a take-out place in Fatima Village, Tacloban City which became a fully operational restaurant in 1995 called The Greenhouse Kitchen. As for The Little Green Kitchen’s Village Chefs, it was her friend Precy who suggested that she open a new restaurant that would serve all the food that she enjoys having at her home. So when the clubhouse at their subdivision was turned over to her in 2010, she converted it to a restaurant. Then finally, Village Chefs was opened to public on June 28, 2013.

The Little Green Kitchen’s Village Chefs also offers catering services for special occasions. Chef Marirose’s first catering service was for the Alumni of PMA class 53 for 2000 persons in the PMA gym a sit-down dinner in 1980.

Here in Tacloban, she had been catering for all VIP guests of the government since 1988 including former presidents Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino, III, Papal Nuncio, Ambassadors, etc.

“My biggest buffet catering in Tacloban was the Philippine Civil Engineers of Phil held in DPWH for 1500 persons,” she shared. She also catered for National Convention of the Free and Accepted Masons of the Philippines for 900 persons, Palacio de Manila Tent for birthday of then, Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) Secretary, Vic Domingo for 800 persons, Madrid Fusion for 600 people in 2016 and last year Madrid Fusion rehired them for Central, Western and Eastern Visayas for 900 persons.
They have also done a lot of packed meals the biggest 3000 packs.

At 62, Chef Marirose still personally manages the restaurant. She also cooks her favorite dishes for the customers along with three (3) other chefs and two (2) sous-chefs. They also have 18 in-house dedicated staff plus around 20 on-call cooks.

Chef Marirose sure has done a whole lot of cooking for a lot of people, and she doesn’t seem to get tired of cooking for other people. Want to know her secrete through the years?

For bookings and inquiries, contact them via:

0927 294 9797 (Globe)
0920 438 6065 (Smart)