Birthday Dinner at Shang Palace

My two friends, Deb and Debbie celebrated their birthday together and treated our group to dinner at Shang Palace at Makati Shangri-la Hotel.

the two Debbies

I must admit that I never liked the food at Shang Palace as much as Summer Palace in Edsa Shangri-la Hotel. But I must admit the food was fantastic! Well some dishes I liked much more than the others. I conveniently and momentarily forgot my diet for one night.

The Peking duck was served two ways. The first way was the traditional way wrapped in a flour wrapper. The filling was mostly skin so I skipped it.

Peking Duck

The clear chicken soup had strong ginger flavor and was tasty.

chicken & bamboo pith soup

The fish was perfectly steamed. That’s a feat since a lot of Chinese restaurants tend to overcook lapu lapu making it hard and gummy. This was flaky and succulent.

steamed lapu lapu

pork belly “tung po” style

The pork was melt-in-your month tender but I felt it lacked flavor and it was too fatty for my taste.

My hands down favorite were the super crunchy, super fresh, super duper uber yummy fried prawns. The mayonnaise dressing was light and barely sweet unlike other restaurants which tend to drown the salad in super sweet mayonnaise mixture. Ssshhhh I ate 5 huge prawns! I loved, loved, loved it!

hot prawn salad

Too bad I didn’t find any white meat since everyone said the chicken was good. It was smart of them to serve the lemon sauce on the side.

boneless chicken with almond flakes & lemon sauce

The rest of the Peking duck was minced into a filling for the lettuce cups. I really liked this second way much better. The duck was very fragrant and in my opinion it didn’t need any hoisin sauce at all. It was very tasty as it was.

minced duck in lettuce cup