Balai on A.S. Fortuna is a house, and the best thing in it is not theirs
Balai is a converted house on A.S. Fortuna in Mandaue with a charcoal chicken spit, a speakeasy in the basement, and a menu nobody has published prices for. Read off the table, September 2026.
The first thing I photographed at Balai was a toilet door. Small white plate at eye level, black letters, WRONG DOOR. The door beside it says RIGHT DOOR. Nobody explains it and nobody is around to ask, so you stand there in the hallway of a converted house on A.S. Fortuna doing arithmetic on a joke.
I went for brunch. What I keep thinking about is the chicken, and the chicken is not theirs.
Balai is a house, and that is the entire point
Balai means house, and they built the place around that. It is an old family home set back from A.S. Fortuna inside Floremer Subdivision, run since 2017 by Cafeplus Coffee, an outfit that until then had only worked out of cafes on the University of San Carlos campus in Talamban. They kept the bones. Brick, dark paint, a garden of ferns and trees older than the restaurant, and a courtyard of heavy wooden tables where almost everybody ends up sitting.
Their own page puts it better than I can. Garden gates are open daily.
Balai is in Mandaue, and your map will probably argue
The address is 1 Floremer Subdivision, A.S. Fortuna Street, Banilad, Mandaue City, 6014. The coordinates read off my own frames are 10.3422 N, 123.9173 E. Everybody calls this Cebu and everybody is right, it is one metro. It only matters when a form or a delivery app asks for a city, because A.S. Fortuna runs the boundary and the same block gets tagged Mandaue or Cebu City depending on who filed it.
The other problem is newer. A condominium project opened marketing under the name Balai on the same street this year, and it has buried the restaurant in search. If you are looking for the food, search Balai Brunch by Cafeplus, or point your map at the coordinates above and stop reading listings.
The chicken is Farooj, and Farooj is not Balai
There is a charcoal spit at the back of the property, under a roof, out in the open where you can watch it. Six or seven birds turning over a bed of coals, fat dripping and catching, the whole thing hand cranked into position. That is Farooj.
Farooj is Arabic for little chicken. It is a separate business that has been roasting inside Balai since 2017, which is also why you will find it at Crossroads over in Cebu City. The birds get a spice rub built on cumin, turmeric, coriander and paprika, sit overnight, then go over coals rather than gas. Lemongrass goes in the cavity, and that single move is what makes it read Cebuano instead of imported. It is a Middle Eastern roast wearing lechon manok clothes.
It comes quartered with four sauces in small tins. White garlic, a pale pink one, an orange spicy garlic, and a mustard yellow. Pickled radish and shredded green papaya on the side to cut it.
The skin is the argument. It is not the lacquered crackle of a lechon manok stall, it is thinner and drier and tastes of smoke first, spice second. The breast meat was still wet, which is the part most roast chicken in this city gets wrong.
Balai menu prices, September 2026
I photographed the menu on the table rather than copying a listing, so these are current as of 5 September 2026. Nothing on page one of Google carries a single current price for this place, which is most of the reason this article exists.
| Order | Price |
|---|---|
| Creamy Monggos | ₱249 |
| Balai Omelette | ₱199 |
| Tapa plate | ₱329 |
| Adobo Plate | ₱369 |
| Balai Plate (bacon, spam, sausage, omelette, rice) | ₱379 |
| Grilled Pork Belly | ₱369 |
| Grilled Scallops, 12 pieces | ₱439 |
| Beef Salpicao | ₱399 |
| Balai Express (Bicol Express) | ₱299 |
| Pan-Seared Salmon | ₱479 |
| Halo-Halo, tall | ₱169 |
Brunch favorites
- Sourdough Toast ₱139, with butter and jam, Nutella or peanut butter
- Balai Omelette ₱199, three eggs, cheesy mushroom or bellpepper chorizo
- Bacon Roll ₱239, grilled bacon and soft scrambled eggs in an English roll
- Red Velvet Pancakes ₱399
- Sardines Plate ₱239
- Bacon Plate ₱329
- Tapa ₱329
- Adobo Plate ₱369
- Balai Plate ₱379
Starters
- Dilis ₱199, with local Cebuano vinegar
- Dynamite ₱199
- Kangkong Tempura ₱199
- Street Style Pork Barbecue ₱299, six sticks
- Balai Nachos ₱349
- Crispy Spam and Pork Sisig ₱349
- Kawali Bacon Cut ₱499
Soup, salad, sandwiches, pasta
- Cream of Corn ₱199, Cream of Corn Mushroom ₱199, Tomato Soup ₱199
- Creamy Monggos ₱249
- Garden Salad ₱239, Greek Salad ₱249, Caesar Salad ₱249
- Sandwiches all ₱179, creamy pesto, tuna melt or pesto veggie
- Aglio Olio ₱249, Creamy Pesto ₱249, Three Cheese Lasagna ₱249, Bacon Alfredo ₱299
Specials and dessert
- Balai Express ₱299, their Bicol Express
- Fish and Chips ₱369
- Grilled Pork Belly ₱369
- Beef Salpicao ₱399
- Grilled Scallops ₱439
- Balai Pancakes ₱439
- Pan-Seared Salmon ₱479
- Caramel Flan ₱149, Classic Brownies ₱149, Nutellagato ₱169, Mango Float ₱169
- Moist Chocolate Cake ₱199, Brownie Sticks ₱199
- Halo-Halo ₱169 tall, ₱239 giant
What comes off the charcoal
The grill is the reason to come at night. Grilled Scallops at ₱439 is twelve pieces, cheesed and set back in the half shell, cooked directly on a steel tray over the coals with a lemon half charring in the corner. Twelve for ₱439 works out to about ₱37 a scallop, which for Cebu is fair rather than cheap.
Grilled Pork Belly at ₱369 arrives chopped on banana leaf in a metal pan with tongs and a tin of vinegar loaded with bird chilies. Charcoal grilled, not fried, so it is chewier than lechon kawali and tastes of smoke rather than oil.
Brunch, which is what the sign actually promises
The brunch plates come out on sizzling cast iron with rice, and this is where Balai is most itself. A whole butterflied fried fish with scrambled egg and chili oil. A bowl of something fried and crisp on banana leaf with garlic vinegar. A sizzling plate carrying a fried egg over rice with shredded atchara and its own tin of vinegar.
One note worth saying out loud. Slow service is the single most repeated complaint about this place going back years, and it has not been fixed. On a full weekend the kitchen falls behind and nobody comes to tell you. If you are on a schedule, this is the wrong restaurant. If you have an afternoon, it stops mattering.
The doors nobody explains
Balai is full of small jokes that nobody points out to you. The WRONG DOOR and RIGHT DOOR toilets. A service door painted with the line ENTRY THRU THIS DOOR COMPLIES YOU TO FINISH AN EIGHT HOUR SHIFT, which is either a warning to staff or a warning to you.
Two more signs sit further in, both hand painted, neither of them explained to you either. THE SUITE ROOM on the hedge wall past the brick. THE BASEMENT on a black wall, with a stairwell under it. That second one is the one to follow.
The Basement is a speakeasy now
The basement under Balai has been turned into a speakeasy. It is the same property and it feels like a different building. Beer on tap, a bottle of Evan Williams bottled in bond, Absolut Elyx in the copper bottle, and none of the daylight that makes the courtyard upstairs feel like somebody home.
Not one published guide to Balai mentions alcohol. They all still describe a 2017 coffee shop with pancakes on the menu. You can eat sourdough toast here at seven in the morning and drink bourbon under the same roof at eleven at night. That is a strange thing for one address to do and nobody has bothered to write it down.
What to order at Balai
Order the Farooj chicken and the creamy monggo. That is the meal. ₱249 for the monggo, and the chicken depends on how much of it you want, ordered at the counter near the spit rather than off the Balai menu. Add the grilled scallops at ₱439 if there are more than two of you.
Skip the pasta. Balai does a lot of things and the ones cooked over charcoal are meaningfully better than the ones cooked on a stove.
How to get to Balai on A.S. Fortuna
- Address: 1 Floremer Subdivision, A.S. Fortuna Street, Banilad, Mandaue City, 6014
- Coordinates: 10.3422 N, 123.9173 E
- Phone: 0917 582 5009, and (032) 353 8619 printed on the menu
- Hours: 7am to 11:30pm, every day. Confirmed September 2026. Most listings for Balai carry something older and different, so go with this one
- Parking: a small free lot on the property, roughly seven or eight slots. Street parking on A.S. Fortuna after that
- Getting there: from IT Park take any jeepney heading up A.S. Fortuna toward Consolacion. It is set back off the road, so watch for the gate rather than a storefront
- Farooj at Crossroads: Crossroads Mall, Gov. M. Cuenco Avenue, Cebu City, if you want the chicken without the drive
Balai A.S. Fortuna FAQ
Is Balai in Cebu City or Mandaue?
Mandaue City is the one to type. The coordinates 10.3422 N, 123.9173 E sit on the Mandaue side of the A.S. Fortuna corridor and the restaurant own address line reads Banilad, Mandaue City, 6014. Saying Cebu is not wrong, it is the same metro, but a delivery app will want Mandaue.
Is Farooj the same business as Balai?
No. Farooj is a separate charcoal roast chicken operation that has worked out of Balai since 2017 and also trades at Crossroads in Cebu City. You order the chicken from the Farooj counter, not off the Balai menu.
What time does Balai open?
7am to 11:30pm, every day, confirmed September 2026. Ignore the rest of the internet on this one. Published hours for Balai range from a 9am open to a midnight close, and more than one source still says it shuts on Mondays. It does not. That is a sixteen and a half hour day, which is why the same room works as a brunch place at eight in the morning and a bar at ten at night.
Does Balai have a bar?
Yes. The basement has been converted into a speakeasy, with beer on tap and a spirits list, on the same property as the brunch restaurant. The whole place runs to 11:30pm.
How much is brunch at Balai?
Brunch plates run ₱139 to ₱379. A full plate with rice and egg sits around ₱329 to ₱379, and the specials off the charcoal run ₱369 to ₱479. Prices read off the menu on 5 September 2026.
Nearby on the same street
A.S. Fortuna is quietly one of the best eating streets in metro Cebu and almost nobody has written it up properly. If you are already out here, Hamakaze does the collagen ramen a few minutes down the road, chicken paitan rather than pork, and it is the only place in the city serving that broth. For coffee rather than food, Commonly Uncommon is the other end of the same afternoon.
Suroy Wear · Island Series
Every place worth eating at has a number
Balai sits at 10.3422 N, 123.9173 E. I read that off my own frames, not off a listing. The Cebu Coordinates Tee carries the island the same way, numbers and a silhouette, nothing else. ₱999.
Wear the story
Photographed at Balai, A.S. Fortuna Street, Banilad, Mandaue City. Coordinates read from the frames. Menu prices read off the printed menu on the table and checked September 2026.
