In July, the strawberry-glazed doors at Donut Papi closed. “I’m ready to move on from the doughnuts,” co-owner Kenneth Rodrigueza tells Broadsheet. “I’d been doing Donut Papi for almost nine years. I wanted to explore and offer more. We’re finished with Donut Papi now. We’ve graduated.”
So here we are, just two months later, being introduced to House of Papi: a Filipino meryenda – and “the bigger multiverse of Donut Papi” – taking over the Marrickville Road digs. Rodrigueza also co-owns Tita, with sister Karen Rodrigueza-Labuni. Out with the Asian-inspired doughnuts and the glossy pink fit-out, and in with Brat-green walls and a whole new offering.
“Tita is the house of almusal, which translates to ‘breakfast’, and House of Papi is our house of meryenda, which means ‘afternoon tea’,” Rodrigueza says. “Most of our customers travel from western Sydney and all over to come to Marrickville – I kind of want them to come from Tita and go to the House afterwards.”
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SIGN UPFor its opening menu, five loaded toasties are up-front. There’s an ube and pork-floss number and a cheesy adobo-mushroom melt, plus a sambal chicken toastie, a tuna melt with a Filipino twist and a take on the viral mie goreng toastie.
The team’s paying homage to the street food snack found in nearly every 7/11 store in Hawaii: musubi. Why? “It just made sense because Filipinos love spam!”
The Filipino edge is the soy-banana ketchup glazing the slices of canned meat, which top chunky blocks of seasoned rice, tied together with a strip of nori.
The House will also be serving up Tita’s house-baked pandesal – the fluffy little rolls perfected by award-winning food photographer Luisa Brimble, who’s been spending time in the Tita and House kitchens – egg tarts and ube cruffins. Plus, there’s an oozy cheese-stuffed doughnut. The team recommend you get this one to go, then zap it when you get home to get a molten centre.
A few Papi classics (like the strawberry milkshake doughnut and the OG glazed, which is now a pandan-green) remain, but the menu will be fresh and changing frequently. With Tita just down the road – and Lazza and Kariton Sorbetes nearby – Rodrigueza hopes to create a proper Filipino eating circuit in the inner west.
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