Authentic Cantonese

IT TASTES like home, strangely enough.

Many Filipinos have grown up accustomed to the taste of Chinese cuisine, all thanks to the presence of countless Chinese restaurants around the country. Although some would point out that dishes have been tweaked to suit Filipino taste buds, perhaps it can be agreed that the familiarity of it all is satiating and comforting.

It’s easy for one to ease up to it, and the emergence of a new Chinese food place would somehow create a wafting smell that would always draw in curious diners to its den.

That was essentially what has happened with the newly opened Luy’s Classic Tea House.

Without much fanfare, it entered the local scene in November of 2012. Yet in that short amount of time, it has already gathered a bevy of food lovers.

Luy’s Classic Tea House boasts of serving the best of authentic Cantonese cuisine. At present, three chefs from Hong Kong are running its kitchens, ensuring that all dishes that go out of its doors are of impeccable taste and quality.

Its menu shows a generous variety of main courses; to name a few, there’s steamed prawns, radish cake, lemon chicken and sharksfin dumplings. As for the dim sum side, classic favorites such as siomai, hakaw, siao lung pao and chicken feet are also available.

It has choices of live seafood as well, which diners can request how they want it prepared. Some of its fish specialties include fried lapulapu, sautéed bean curd with fish fillet and tausi and steamed garlic fish fillet with eggplant.

Owner and general manager Philip Luy says that they only use the original ingredients for its dishes, some of it are even imported from China, so they can stick to the authenticity of the taste.

That considered, it’s also surprising to note that generally most of its food selection are offered at a relatively low price. They wish to win the hearts of diners through that and at the same time, survive as a business through heavy volume, he said.

Philip has been in the food industry for over 20 years. He used to manage several restaurants in Cebu and in Manila, until recent years when he finally setup ventures of his own. A Filipino of Chinese descent, he started with one he’s most familiar with: dim sum. He opened food kiosk Dimsum Frito and eventually its complementing beverage kiosk Dream Tea Express, which serves milk tea. Luy’s Classic Tea House is his first huge-scale food venture.

Luy’s Classic Tea House is in APM Square along Andres Soriano Ave., North Reclamation Area, Cebu City. It is open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily.