Tiana’s Cafe: Rota’s breakfast destination

From left, Tiana’s Cafe staff Myrna Balinguit, Allan Perez, Jocelyn Encina, and Susan E. Elaugos. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Tiana’s Cafe makes guests at Valentino Hotel on Rota right at home with their delectable breakfast menu and friendly staff.

Off-island guests of the hotel and locals alike frequent the Rota landmark for its famous early riser menu. It consists of American breakfast like pancakes, french toast, and all sorts of omelets like ham and cheese, bacon, portuguese, spam, and vegetable.

For those pining for a more hearty meal to start the day, Tiana’s also has Filipino breakfast with tapsilog, tosilog, and longsilog among the surefire hits.

Tiana’s Cafe’s bestseller rice soba omelet, which is yakisoba noodles with fried rice topped with tonkatsu sauce and mayonnaise. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Another customer favorite is Tiana’s honey bread with honey and caramel syrup with whip cream on top.

But Tiana’s bestseller is its rice soba omelet, which is yakisoba noodles with fried rice topped with tonkatsu sauce and mayonnaise.

Staff Susan E. Elaugos said Tiana’s is also slowly gaining a foothold on Rota’s lunch crowd with dishes like curry, its assortment of sandwiches, chicken adobo, pork and chicken cutlets, pancit, yakisoba, Japanese ramen, spaghetti, pork ginger set, hamburger set, and fried fish or shrimp.

Tiana’s Cafe comfortably seats more than 50 customers—32 at its inside cafe and 20 at its el fresco dining.(CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Their drinks are also nothing to scoff at as Tiana’s serves various flavors of hot and iced coffee and smoothies.

Tiana’s will forever be grateful to operate inside the Valentino Hotel as more often than not their guests also became dine-in customers of the coffee shop.

“Eventually they become our regular customers whenever they vacation in the beautiful island of Rota,” said Elaugos.

Tiana’s actually opened in 2006 under the auspices of the hotel’s former owners Diego and Antonia Songao. In fact, it is named after their granddaughter, Tiana.

It originally served only types of Danish and coffee until Mrs. Songao was persuaded by guests to open a full-fledged coffee shop.

As Tiana’s expanded so did their menu as aside from Danish they added different kinds of bread like chicken and apple turnovers and cream cheese and blueberry cream cheese bread expertly prepared by their baker, who used to work at a cruise ship.

The coffee shop indeed became Rota’s go-to place for tasty bread offerings not only for locals, but also for off-island guests with some of them actually bringing Tiana’s Danish back home to Guam and the U.S. mainland.

In 2018, Tiana’s, along with Valentino Hotel, was acquired by TanHoldings Corp. and kick-started major renovations for both businesses.

Tiana’s comfortably seats more than 50 customers—32 at its inside cafe and 20 at its el fresco dining. It is open everyday from 6am to 2pm with the last call at 1:30pm. For more information or for reservations, call Valentino Hotel at (670) 532-8466/67.