Saturday, November 25, 2006 At East Ocean By Jenara Regis-Newman
The restaurant’s name makes one think of seafood as well as of Eastern cooking. At East Ocean, located at the Ginza Compound along the Old Banilad Road, the name stands for Chinese cooking with seafood as its specialty.
Here, one can have one’s pick of the live fish and crabs in aquariums lining the rear wall of the resto, and then have it cooked to one’s desire.
According to Peter Ong, the restaurant’s manager, food here is Hong Kong style and the resto has a Hong Kong chef to ensure that the food served will be true to the place. He says that most regional Chinese cooking feature the same dishes but vary in taste. Some are spicy and some slightly salty. Hong Kong food, he explains, has less salt. And a sampling of Eastern ocean fare proved just that.
The appetizer was a tray of pork asado with seaweeds, and century egg and cold cuts. The soup was chicken asparagus, light and clear, with strips of tender chicken. The fried seafood roll was something not usually served in most other restaurants and it was served really hot. Then there was abalone mushroom on a bed of vegetables, followed by steamed fish fillet in soy sauce, a truly delicious dish and so fittingly “east ocean.” Then there were deep fried chicken and Yang Chow fried rice.
Sesame balls were a fitting finish to a delightfully delicious meal, with the different tastes of the food blending perfectly.
The meal we had was a sample of a set menu, preferred by the locals. There are fancier items in the East Ocean menu like suckling pig in half, baked fresh lobster, shark’s fin and crab roe soup, steamed live lapulapu, steamed crab with garlic and Udong noodles, fried duck meat, chicken and shrimp hot salad, and a whole lot more for a gustatory experience that is mildly savory and gentle to one’s taste buds.
