Umaga Bakehouse — Restaurant in Jefferson Township

I've been hearing about this place from friends and social media, so decided to give it a try when we were in the area. They sell a decent variety of traditional and modernized Filipino baked goods, snacks and desserts. We went for mostly traditional fare:

-Turon: love me some turon; the go to merienda of my childhood. So disappointed with this one. What is this imposter pretending to be a turon?? Firstly, the description stated jackfruit was one of the ingredients but it was missing in every single turon we got. Secondly, the banana was not fully cooked, and was so tough. Ugh, fail.

-Binatog: this was only ok; really bland and had to add more sugar and salt. Was initially so excited because I haven't had this since I was a kid and was really left wanting so gonna now look up a recipe to DIY.

-Ginataang bilo bilo: the flavor was there and they tried to be creative and make it look more colorful (this dish is typically greige) but ultimately it turned out awful since every single bilo bilo was rock hard 1/8 of the way through. Literally, couldn't even cut it with a knife. And it looks like they used the same tough, halfway cooked bananas in this dish as the turon.

-Siopao: this was pretty good. Filling was generous-ish. Husband and kid were big fans of this.

-Empanada: the crust was on the hard and crunchy side, and it looks like they used the same filling as the siopao. The flavor was good, but I prefer my empanadas on the flaky side.

Will I go back to Umaga again? Probably not. There were too many simple to fix misses/choices that shouldn't have been made especially considering the prices they're...

I was there Saturday ,the place is clean but the bake goods is not something that u crave for coming back, it's too expensive for the quantity vs price ,too little serving like 3 sml pcs of packed bread for $7.99,6 pcs of boxed Ensymada for $30,come on now ,r they serious?I bought a slice of frozen buko pie,i can't taste the buko flavor,it's just some probably canned buko and pie filling that u can only taste the sweet taste but no flavor at all,I was totally disappointed given that I heard that this is a high end filipino bakery??? omg,I won't buy again,some filipino business like this thinks even if they charge too much ,their fellow Filipinos will still buy... but not me ,I just felt ripped off with the taste of their bake goods .I also bought banana turon , omg!!!,it is saturated with oil,as in dipping oil at the bottom of the turon...I also bought ube milk bar,I was asking for a spare sml sheet of wax paper to wrap the ube bar cuz I don't want to loose the coconut flakes on top of it,but the server doesn't quite understand what I'm talking about,i tried explaning but they refuse to wrap it ...i even pointed it to them the ones that their cup cakes are sitting into , it's just a sml pc of wax paper that I'm sure every bakery have,& they just put it in a plain paper bag with no wrapping...bake goods like that needs xtra wrappings to preserve its beauty n taste n ingredients...Mgt,pls...

Umaga Bakehouse is located in a shopping plaza, with other Filipino businesses nearby.

There was a large variety in this store, some items were not typical of what I've seen near me. Merienda/Snacks, desserts, sweet, savory items; by the piece or shareable. If I lived in the area, would be able to sample them little by little but we were just visiting (mid 8/2025). Since I don't know pricing in Chicago, I would say similar to NYC prices.

As far as the food, some we liked, others were just ok. For the pies, we got the buko pie slice first- the coconut slivers were hard and it was dry so skipped getting the whole pie. Instead, we got the whole egg pie which was a winner. Pichi pichi and puto bumbong looked appetizing but they were not soft when eaten right away. Need to be heated up. Halo halo had a lot of beans and a caramelized crumble topping. Was good but not what I prefer in terms of ingredients. Good snack buns like the corned beef bun (multi-pack, $5) and longganisa bun ($4 each). Special ensaymadas were $5.49. Salted egg one had a custardy filling and was pretty good. I got a taste of one of their tres leches but was too sweet for me.

Added points for the ambiance - the warm tones and food displays are inviting; just a few tables inside though but we had to sit and taste some of the goodies already. And for service which was...