Birthday Lunch at Summer Palace

For my mom’s birthday yesterday we brought her to Summer Palace for a change. I saw Lori’s blog about Summer Palace’s La Mien festival and it looked really interesting.

I haven’t been to Summer Palace in a long time. Every time we wanted to eat Chinese food it’s always at Choi Garden and now Lugang Cafe. It was time to go back to our old favorite.

Summer Palace brought in guest chef Sun Yi Li of Golden Flower Hotel, Xian, China for this event which runs from Nov. 14-25, 2010 and is available during lunch at Summer Palace and at the dinner buffet of Heat.

A limited menu of hand pulled noodle dishes were available at lunch.

la mien menu (click to enlarge)

I was able to catch Chef Sun Yi Li in action creating hand pulled noodles from scratch.

plating of a bowl of beef noodle soup

I was impressed with the fresh ingredients used for the noodles dishes.

My mom selected the noodles with seafood broth cooked dry. It was very, very tasty. The noodles itself were incredibly al dente. The manager, Nancy told me this was actually the Indian style of cooking noodles. I never knew that!

noodles w/ fresh seafood broth P550

My friend May recommended this seafood soup that wasn’t in the menu.

seafood soup P390/bowl

It was a thick flavorful soup filled with exotic ingredients like fish lips, fish maw, sea cucumber, sharks’ fin, bamboo pith, abalone and mushroom.

Nancy insisted we try this black pepper steak. She guaranteed it was good. She was right! A thin slice of ultra tender and well seasoned beef that was perfectly cooked to seal in all the flavors and juices. An order yielded 4 thin slices of steak. A little more black pepper would have made it even better.

black pepper steak P1,020

When we were at Wee Nam Kee last week enjoying their cereal prawns May insisted that the cornflakes prawns of Summer Palace was even better. It wasn’t exactly the same but I really liked this dish. The prawns were shelled then coated with a sweet mayonnaise mixture and dunked in lots and lots of crunchy, sweet cornflakes.

cornflakes prawns P945/8 pcs.

The prawns were huge yet succulent. I really liked the crunch of the cornflakes together with the prawn. If you don’t like sweet food then this isn’t for you.

cornflakes prawns

Another dish May recommended was the softshelled crab with pork floss or mahu. Initially I thought it was a strange combination until I tried it. The hot, crisp, light as air, fried softshelled crab was just wonderful with the salty, sweet chewy strands of pork floss. Whoever thought of putting the two unlikely ingredients is a genius.

softshell crab w/ pork floss

Fried green beans accompanied the softshelled crab.

lots of pork floss

It doesn’t really look that appetizing but trust me, fried softshelled crab topped with pork floss is a good thing.

Summer Palace is the only place in Manila that I order sweet and sour pork. Nancy always guarantees it will be super duper crunchy or she will replace the order herself.

Just look at the picture. The pork was cut into small pieces giving it more crunchy surface. The sauce barely glazed the pork unlike in other places where you have to fish out the pork swimming in sauce.

sweet & sour pork P510

Obviously we ordered too much food for 4 people. But between May’s and Nancy’s recommendations we had to try them all.  Don’t worry we took home all the left-overs.

We were already too full but again Nancy’s will prevailed and we shared a bowl of hot, thick and sweet almond cream with a fish tikoy in it.

hot almond cream P130

My dad’s Club Edsa card entitled us a free birthday cake which I ordered 24 hours in advance.

The chocolate cream was really, really good but unfortunately the cake layers were hard and dry. Oh well, at least it was free so we can’t complain too much.

Thanks to May for hitting a home run with all her recommendations. We all enjoyed lunch and I’m glad to have rediscovered the excellent food at Summer Palace.

Summer Palace
Edsa Shangri-La Manila Hotel
1 Garden Way, Ortigas Centre
Mandaluyong City 1650, Philippines
telephone: +632 633-8888


Hours:
11.30am – 2.30pm
9am – 11am on Sundays
6.30pm – 10pm