Fourteen ingredients on the menu. Ten come from towns you can drive to.

There is a page in the middle of the menu at Tales & Feelings that most restaurants would never print. It is a list, under a line drawing of a man ploughing behind two carabao, and it says farm to plate journey. Fourteen ingredients, and beside each one, where it came from.

Ten of the fourteen are places you can drive to before lunch.

The list, as printed

Ingredient	Where it comes from
Danggit	Bantayan
Mango	Carcar
Shrimp	Sibonga
Rhode Island Red chicken	Talisay
Fresh bread	Mandaue
Edible micro herbs	Busay
Cauliflower	Toledo
Broccoli	Toledo
Avocado	San Fernando
Fresh mint	Dalaguete
Tuna	General Santos
Sirloin steak	St Helens
Salmon	Norway
Coffee	Brazilian Cerrado

Read it as a map and it becomes a lap of the island. Bantayan off the northern tip for the dried fish. Talisay on the city’s south edge for the chicken. Toledo across on the west coast for the brassicas, because Toledo has the altitude and the water for them. Carcar for mango, Sibonga for shrimp, San Fernando for avocado, Dalaguete for mint, all of them strung down the southeast coast road within two hours of the table. Busay is the ridge above Cebu City, close enough that the micro herbs could plausibly arrive the morning they were cut.

Only four lines leave the country or the region: the steak, the salmon, the coffee, and the tuna from General Santos, which is where every serious tuna in this country comes from anyway.

Why printing it is the whole point

Plenty of restaurants say local. Saying local costs nothing. Printing the municipality next to the ingredient is a different act, because it is checkable, and because it commits the kitchen to a supplier it now has to keep.

It also quietly argues something about Cebu that Cebu does not say about itself often enough. This is an island that people describe as a place you fly through on the way to a beach. The menu treats it as a place that grows things. So does the specialty coffee scene a few streets over, for the same reason.

The room

Second floor of the Diaz Building where F. Ramos meets V. Ranudo, above a copy and print shop, up a stair you would walk past. The sign hanging over the pavement is a white light box with a small logo and an arrow, and the arrow is the only reason anyone finds it.

Inside it is about two dozen seats. Deep blue banquettes, timber tables, tall windows. It is small in the way that means the kitchen can only be running a handful of things properly at once, which is the correct size for a menu that names its farms.

The owners are Julian and Kim Prosevicius. The head chef is Kim’s brother, Elso Almodiel III.

What arrives

The plating is more ambitious than the room prepares you for. Yellowfin tuna sliced thin and laid in a wheel with dots of pale sauce and pickled ginger through it. A risotto built up into a tower with a prawn standing on the top of it. Beef cubes in a line down a long plate with charred spring onion and mustard dots. Bruschetta with cherry tomato and a whole mint leaf on each one. Mussels with saffron rice.

It is Mediterranean and Asian cooking done in a room the size of a large living room, using Cebuano produce, by people whose surname is Lithuanian. That combination is either a mess or the reason to go, and on the evidence of the plates it is the second one.

The prices on the menu we photographed, and why they are only a shape

These came off the printed menu on 4 May 2021. Five years is a long time for a price in this country and none of these will be current. They are here because the shape of a menu tells you what a restaurant is for, and this one is worth seeing.

2021 menu	Then
Full English breakfast	₱279
Full Pinoy breakfast	₱199
Eggs Benedict	₱229
Eggs Royale	₱249
Beef tapa	₱215
Avocado on toast	₱139
Bruschetta	₱169
Korean fried cauliflower	₱139
Vietnamese spring rolls	₱179
Poke bowl, cajun chicken	₱229
Poke bowl, yellowfin tuna	₱279
Poke bowl, sirloin steak	₱549
Salmon panini	₱269
Pulled pork burger	₱299
Caesar salad	₱179
Smoothie bowls	₱199
Cafe latte, cappuccino, flat white	₱125
Fresh juices	₱139 to ₱149

What that shape says: breakfast is the anchor, the bowls carry the middle, and one steak line sits at the top to catch the table that wants to spend. Add-ons were priced separately down to ₱30 for toast, which is the pricing of a kitchen counting its costs rather than rounding them.

Before you go, check the address

This is the one thing to get right and it is genuinely moving. The listed address is the second floor of the Diaz Building at F. Ramos and V. Ranudo, and reviews as recent as March 2026 still put it there. A separate and larger Tales and Feelings has also been reported operating out of the Amber Hotel on Don Julio Lorente Street behind Robinsons Cybergate, and at least one 2026 reviewer was told on the day that a move was happening that month.

Which means: message them before you drive over. The number on the listing is 0995 895 5429 and they answer on Instagram and Facebook as @talesandfeelings. This paragraph was written in August 2026 and it is the paragraph most likely to be wrong first.

Hours. Reported as Tuesday to Sunday, lunch and dinner. Confirm with the same message.

Frequently asked questions

Where is Tales and Feelings in Cebu?

The long-standing address is the second floor of the Diaz Building at the corner of F. Ramos and V. Ranudo Streets, Cebu City. A larger operation is open in Astra in A.S. Fortuna.

What kind of food does Tales and Feelings serve?

International cooking with Mediterranean and Southeast Asian leanings, built on Cebu produce. Breakfast plates, poke bowls, paninis, salads and a short list of larger plates including tuna, steak and risotto.

Who owns Tales and Feelings?

Julian and Kim Prosevicius. The head chef is Kim’s brother, Elso Almodiel III.

Which Cebu towns supply the kitchen?

The printed sourcing page names Bantayan for danggit, Carcar for mango, Sibonga for shrimp, Talisay for chicken, Mandaue for bread, Busay for micro herbs, Toledo for cauliflower and broccoli, San Fernando for avocado and Dalaguete for mint.

Is Tales and Feelings expensive?

Mid range. On the 2021 printed menu most plates sat between ₱139 and ₱299, with one sirloin poke bowl at ₱549 as the ceiling. Those figures are five years old and are quoted here as a shape, not a current price.

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Photographed at Tales & Feelings, F. Ramos Street, Cebu City, in May and October 2021 and again in October 2025. Menu prices are from the printed menu of 4 May 2021 and are historical. Address, ownership and status checked August 2026.