Dinner at Lorenzo’s Way

Thanks to the Sy family for treating me to Sunday dinner at the LJC group’s newest restaurant located at Greenbelt 5. This restaurant is a tribute to Larry Cruz, the founder of the LJC group who passed away last year.Since we were all fans of Abe and Fely J we wanted to try what Lorenzo’s Way had to offer. And we were not disappointed. The restaurant lived up to what you’d expect from the LJC group. The food was good, everything was spiced perfectly. We kept commenting on how every dish tasted mellow. There wasn’t any- too hot, too salty, too sour. Everything was just right. And we have to commend the staff. Service was excellent!

We ordered 3 appetizers. Thankfully they were all small in size. Squid tactics is an LJC favorite from the old Ang Hang restaurant and is available in most of their new restaurants. The squid was so tender and coated with a very light batter and served with a sweet chili sauce.

squid tactics P225

Binacalao uses local dried salted fish slow cooked with tomatoes, chickpeas, potatoes and olives. It came with bread but I ate it with the Paella. It was a perfect match. This would make a good pasta sauce too.

binacalao P225

This is a yummy dip. It was served with toasted strips of french bread. There wasn’t enough bread though. We asked for some but they forgot to bring it. But that was ok because by then the main course dishes started to arrive.

Lorenzo's Way- cheesy spinach & banana blossom dip

baked cheezy spinach & banana blossom dip P225

The costillas de tenera guisada or braised beef short ribs is slow cooked in red wine to give it a rich tasting gravy. This would go great with plain white rice.

costillas de ternera guisada P595

We were shocked when we saw this picture of the bangus (milkfish). We didn’t know there were huge chunks of butter on it. Because by the time we ate the bangus all the butter had melted. The bangus just tasted like plain fried bangus. It was nice and crisp though. But I didn’t taste the butter. I think they should change the fried glass noodles to sauteed ones instead. It was very oily and didn’t suit the dish at all. This dish is a mish mash of 3 ingredients that didn’t blend well. The kangkong lacked shrimp paste. This is the only dish I wouldn’t order again.

bangus belly with kang kong blachan P350

Now this is a paella! It has plenty of rice in a big pan with the right amount of meat and seafood. Unlike the other paella I had recently. There was plenty of socarrat (burnt rice) on the bottom of the pan. I scraped it so hard the pan almost flew out of my hands. Good thing there was an attentive waiter standing beside me ready to catch it. This paella served 3 adults and 2 young boys well. You must order this!

paella valenciana P495

We were worried that the paella wouldn’t be enough so we ordered this bamboo rice, a specialty of Abe restaurant. This is fried rice with bamboo shoots, wood ear, shrimp, chicken and mushroom and served on split bamboo. It reminded me of Chinese kiampung. It was good too. But I was already stuffed from the paella. Zander loved it and he usually is picky about the kind of rice he eats. Zander is 4 years old. Zak loved everything from beginning to end. He’s a gourmand in the making.