A new CIBO Trinoma branch joins Ayala Malls’ latest push to remake its dining floor around North EDSA’s growing transit hub, testing whether legacy Italian dining still pulls foot traffic here.
Brand Feature
Quezon City’s biggest mall is in the middle of rebuilding itself around a train station. Trinoma’s dining floor has quietly turned over in the past year, with new tenants replacing older ones, most of them positioned for people transferring between train lines rather than parking a car. CIBO Trinoma is the latest name added to that lineup, and its arrival says less about one restaurant and more about who Trinoma is now trying to feed.
Trinoma’s Transit Linked Dining Refresh
Trinoma turned 19 this year, and Ayala Malls used the anniversary to confirm what regular visitors had already noticed. The mall’s Mindanao Lobby has been reworked with an expanded café and restaurant lineup, including H Proper Coffee Roasters, Little Flour, Pizza Sisters, and Burnt Bean, with more names such as Key Coffee and Chili’s set to follow.
The bigger project behind this refresh is The Exchange at Trinoma, a new retail and office wing opening this September. It will give the mall direct access to MRT-3, MRT-7, and LRT-1, along with UV Express and bus terminals, making Trinoma the only mall in Quezon City with that level of transit integration. A mall built around commuter flow needs a different kind of dining mix than one built around weekend shoppers, and that is the backdrop CIBO Trinoma is opening into.
CIBO Trinoma Joins the Lineup
CIBO Trinoma occupies a spot on Level 1, in the mall’s Garden Restaurants wing. The brand carries the tagline “Real. Modern. Italian.,” a positioning it has held since Chef Margarita Forés opened the first CIBO at Glorietta in 1997. She built it on a specific refusal: no overcooked pasta, no sweetened bolognese, nothing adjusted for American palates.
Forés passed away last year, and the brand now sits under her son Amado Forés and AF Hospitality, which also runs a mano, Steak & Frice, and Ramen Ron. All CIBO locations remain company owned, with no franchising, which keeps quality control centralized as the brand adds branches like this one.
That continuity matters for how CIBO Trinoma reads in a mall full of newer, unproven names. It is not a first time concept testing the market. It is an established operator extending a nearly three decade old format into a location built for a different kind of customer than the one CIBO started with.
The Menu at CIBO Trinoma
The opening spread at CIBO Trinoma leans into the dishes the brand has built its reputation on rather than anything created specifically for the branch. Expect the spinach dip, piccolo penne al telefono, solo tagliata di manzo made with sliced beef, truffle mushroom linguine, and truffle honey ricotta dip, alongside the brand’s pizza program.
Pricing sits in the mid tier casual bracket, above fast casual Italian but below fine dining, the same band CIBO has occupied across its other branches. For Trinoma shoppers used to food court options or standalone casual chains, CIBO Trinoma offers a sit down Italian option without a fine dining price tag attached.
A Pizza Program With Global Rankings Behind It
The clearest proof point for CIBO Trinoma is not the branch itself but the kitchen behind it. CIBO placed 31st on the 50 Top Pizza World Artisan Pizza Chains list for 2025, up from 44th the year before, a double digit jump in one cycle. It is currently the only Filipino pizzeria on that global list.
That ranking is not a marketing claim dressed up as fact. It comes from an independent international panel that judges craft and consistency across pizza chains worldwide, and CIBO’s movement up the list reflects work done under master pizzaiolo Stefano Canosci, who has spent recent years refining the brand’s dough fermentation and oven technique.
For a branch opening inside a mall reshaping itself around commuters and transfer passengers, that credential does real work. It gives Quezon City diners a reason to choose CIBO Trinoma over a newer, unranked name sitting a few doors down.
CIBO Trinoma is not introducing a new concept to the market. It is placing a nearly three decade old, globally ranked pizza program inside a mall that is actively rebuilding its dining floor around transit riders rather than car owners. Whether that combination holds up depends on foot traffic the mall has not fully proven yet, but the brand walking into that uncertainty is not a new one.
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