Some Feast at Summer Palace

In my family, occasions are marked with either a Chinese lauriat or a hotel buffet lunch/dinner (There's always a favored hotel at any given time, but what's annoying is it's about someone's privilege card in said hotel, rather than the food.) So it wasn't a suprprise that for our New Year's dinner last night, the family decided on a lauriat at Summer Palace in EDSA Shangri-La. (I love Summer Palace; every meal I've had there had been a real pleasure. But as yet, no lauriat except in wedding receptions.) The advance notice, though, was that this one would be different, largely because of the price tag.



Given said build up, I was quite underwhelmed when I read the menu. There wasn't an item there that was new to me. And many of the courses I've come to expect were missing: fried pigeon, crabs and the perennial starter, the cold cuts.

But then came the food.


Baked Lobster with ginger and spring onion

When my aunt saw that we were each being served individual baby lobsters, she started grumbling. The Chinese, or at least those in my family, have a tendency to be impressed with quantity, so she really wanted to be impressed with a huge single lobster than what was being served. But she was soon appeased by the maitre d', who brought the big lobster she tested during the day. It was tough, dry and not very tasty. My own little lobster was wonderful. It was cooked by the chef with an obvious love for the sea creature, letting the meat shine with just the right amount of help from the ginger, spring onions and light sauce. And the doneness was exactly right, so the meat could be pried out with very little effort.


Steamed fresh scallop stuffed in winter melon in garlic sauce

This dish is a staple in lauriats, but in the cheaper type, the scallop used is the dried variety, which hardly tastes like real scallops in its saltiness and, if undercooked, can be tough to chew. The present scallop wass fresh and ample-sized so that served by itself on the dish, didn't look diminished, but took on the beauty of a well-plated simple French dish. The flavors were familiar and yet so heightened, it felt like eating a new dish altogether.


Braised superior shark's fin

If you're a member of PETA, please don't despise me; I was brought up in a shark's fin-loving culture. In my family, it is prized above almost everything else, but I'd be the first to admit that until now, I'm still not sure if it actually prized for its taste or its perceived value. (I think the same way about caviar, which just tastes salty to me, really. Or truffles, which when comes as a supposed hint in oil, well, I don't know what it does to a dish.)

I've tried many a supposedly superior shark's fin soup, but this was the only one that deserved the superlative. When I saw the morsels in the soup, I was shocked by the sheer size of them. I'm really more used to sporadic strands of fin that you have to look hard to find among the other ingredients. In this soup, there was nothing but fin. All the other ingredients in this soup were so well incorporated into the broth that was so incredibly thick, incredibly deep and rich.


Pan-fried codfish in light soy sauce

I thought this was a really artistic dish. When the meat is good and fresh, there's hardly much one has to do with it, and this codfish commands that respect with its fatty flavors. Just a light batter whose crunchiness contrasted with the flaky tenderness of the fish. Oh and the parsley here could have been decorative but eaten with each bite of fish, gave a real bite.


Braised abalone with sea cucumber and seasonal vegetables

Veterans of lauriats would tell you that abalone is rarely served this way. They are more commonly served sliced thinly and interpersed among mushrooms and sea cucumber. Which is why when the waiter brought in this course in a huge platter, where the abalone and sea cucumber looked like rocks served on a bed of greens--I was entirely shocked. They were huge!

This one tasted more or less like the ones served elsewhere, but the sheer amount of it made it feel worth all the fuss.


Sauteed Beef with walnuts in taro basket

The superlatives end here. I really would rather have had pigeon at this point, even if I was already quite stuffed. Taro or gabi--along with kamote--is something I don't eat, I really don't know why.

Fried bihon, "Singapore style" and seafood fried rice wrapped in lotus leaves

There's some good sense in serving two carb dishes in a row just when you're about full. You get to savor all the preceding courses leisurely, and if you're still hungry, these will certainly make you feel bloated. But however good they are, you kind of do not care anymore. For me, at least the noodles were not the usual birthday noodles, and I liked the smoky curry flavor; as for the rice wrapped nicely in lotus leaves, I still think Yangzhou fried rice is better.



Steamed egg custard bun and Fried water chestnut pastry


I think Chinese dessert is a bit of an oxymoron. The simplicity of Chinese cooking methods carried over to their dessert preparation makes for uninteresting outcome. The "steamed egg custard bun" is chocolate-swirled siopao bun whose filling is a runny yellow substance that barely tastes like egg custard, and while I'm not sure what a water chestnut is and couldn't taste its essential flavor, at least the fried wrapper had a satisfying crunch.

So was the meal worth the money? You bet.

You can eat simply-cooked live seafood in the ubiquitous dampas or every other Chinese restaurant around. You can still eat the so-called prized items above in moderate portions in the same Chinese places, but they will invariably be cooked and served without care.

Of course there are still things that could've been better in this meal, especially the desserts, but it has reminded me that for all the good things to come together, you have to pay the price.