Delicious Chinese food in China Town
Its 1pm and I find myself under the blistering heat of the sun in the heart of Binondo, the Binondo Rotonda (located in front of the
As the first order, Spinach Birds Nest Soup, comes in, my stomach can hardly contain its joy of knowing that there was food. The waiter placed the soup into a smaller bowl, I wanted to say “hwag mo nang ilagay sa maliit na bowl hihigupin ko nalang galling diyan”. My lips touch the piping-hot green soup and I felt a sense of happiness that a little boy would feel eating his first ice cream. I could see that the slimy Spinach Birds Nest Soup was made out of the typical birds nest soup but they added minced carrots, processed spinach leaves, button mushrooms and egg. The flavor was not strong and it gave me a bigger appetite.
Next on the menu was the Crystal Prawns with Broccoli. This dish was very interesting because of the distinctive crunchiness broccoli together with the succulent prawns. The fresh prawns turned out to still have its natural sweetness combined with Chinese spices to make it a good combination of salty and sweet. I noticed the combination of carrots, leaks (which gave it a little kick) and straw mushrooms.
The next entrée that came was the flavorful Peking Duck (pronounced peeking duck). There were three parts of the duck, the white meat, the dark meat and the skin. I could hardly tell the difference of the white from the dark meat because they were both darkly colored. There are three ways of eating the duck. The first is the skin chopped into squares, about 1 inch by 1 inch, and then it is wrapped in rice flour wrapper (lumpia wrapper) with a leak and Hoi Sin sauce inside. The second way is when the meat is served chopped and sautéed in a special sauce and served on a bed of tofu with shrimp flavored cracklings. The third way is soup flavored with the bony parts of the duck (i.e. head, neck, etc). This oily delicacy has dark white meat because of the way it is cooked, with hot poaching liquid poured on the duck to slowly cook it. Even if the white meat was dark, the dark meat, as usual, was more flavorful. The meat was very tender. This is probably the oiliest dish ever invented by man.
Next was the Pata Tim. The meat was so soft it would fall of the bone and the skin soaked-up the sweet sauce that it made it like jelly. This dish was very rich. You could see the sweet side of Chinese cooking in this dish. I usually don’t like sweet main courses but for this one I made an exception. I had to eat the Yang Chow Fried Rice together with this dish so that the flavor would not be too overwhelming. The fried rice had minced sweet ham, scrambled eggs, green peas and carrots mixed with it. What was so good about this rice was that the grains were not sticky so you could taste the different flavors of the rice one at a time and not in just one munch. Again another sweet Chinese dish.
As I felt my stomach almost full I see the next dish, the Steamed Groper (lapu-lapu). I magically regain my appetite. The steamed fish was served with a sauce that was very foreign to my taste buds; it was somewhat salty and sweet. There were leaks, ginger and spring onions. The sauce smelled of dark soy sauce, star anis and molasses to make it viscous. Since it was steamed, the meat was very soft and you could notice that the fish was very fresh. The combination of flavors was great.
Lastly the dessert, Taro Sago. It was served cold. It just tasted like taro therefore there was hardly any flavor, which was good because of all the very powerful flavors of the past dishes. It was very starchy. There were small tapioca balls and cubed taro in a cold viscous soup.
I ate these dishes together with a bottle of water and a ripe mango shake to suppress the flavors.
So if you are in the vicinity of Binondo this is a must see because of tits delightful Chinese dishes.
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