The neighbourhood
What Manila is
Manila is a neighbourhood of low houses the city decided not to tear down. Instead it filled them: a restaurant in what used to be a living room, a bar where a garage was, a specialty coffee shop on the corner that once sold phone minutes.
The result is a neighbourhood you walk. Within ten blocks there is chef-driven cooking, listening bars, galleries, and people working from a laptop at three in the afternoon. No shopping centre, no avenue to cross: everything is around the corner.
The Cut sits in the middle of it. Pergamino downstairs, Provenza seven minutes on foot, and the corporate Milla de Oro five minutes by car.