The White House Fusion

About The White House Fusion

Cathy Binag took a 1920s house built by Robert Ker, kept the trees and the verandas, and turned it into Davao's most romantic table when she opened The White House in 2013. Two floors of an old colonial home, a green garden around it, and a kitchen that reads east and west at once — Japanese technique, French plating, Filipino and Dabawenyo produce underneath.

In 2017 it became the first restaurant in Davao and in all of Mindanao to make Philippine Tatler's best-restaurants list, a citation Binag still keeps on the wall. For the wider category, see our best French restaurants guide.

The Kitchen

Binag both owns and cooks, and she plays host with the same attention she gives the plates. The signature is the Sukiyaki on Paper — a hot pot built and cooked tableside over a paper vessel, with shiitake noodles, fresh Bukidnon vegetables and yuba folded in as it tightens. It is the dish that tells you which kitchen you are in: Japanese in bones, theatrical in service, local in its greens.

From there the menu runs duck confit, wagyu, sashimi and tonkatsu, and finishes on a Yamamomo cheesecake and a brioche French toast that regulars order whether or not they have room. The set to book is the eight-plus-course Burgundy Degustacion at P1,090, served in small portions across the evening rather than all at once. For two, it is the clearest read on what the kitchen can do.

The Room

The mansion does the work the kitchen can't. Tables spread across two storeys of the old Ker house and out toward the garden, so spacing is generous and the volume stays low even on a full Saturday. Lighting is warm and lamp-led, the kind that flatters across a small table. Dress is smart-casual; Dabawenyos treat it as a dress-up room without a formal code. Ask for a garden-side seat — the green outside the windows is the whole point of eating here rather than in a mall.