ANOTHER week, another place to try. This time, it’s lunch with buddy Kublai and Haydee to discuss important matters, in this new Chinese restaurant that at first was rumored to be another Ah Fat. It’s not. It’s Ay Hat Chinese Seafood Restaurant, the one along F. Torres Street just beside the entrance driveway of Davao Convention Center.
I arrived early, and so there was just one other table with three Chinese-looking gentlemen in the corner opposite the table I chose.
The place looks neat, posh even.
Haydee said I go ahead and order, and so I got the Spinach seafood soup (to compare it with the green seafood soup I’m familiar with), the Braised Tofu with Mushrooms, and steamed lapu-lapu in soy sauce because they didn’t have pompano. I topped that with an order of Ay Hat fried rice, simply because if I own a restaurant, I wouldn’t baptize anything with my name in it if it wasn’t good. Yes, I’m obviously comparing, except that I can’t order pork because Kublai is a pescatarian (a vegetarian who eats fish) and there’s just the three of us, I don’t expect us to be able to eat a lot.
I told the waitress to get us a fish that is good for three. She returned saying that the smallest lapu-lapu available is P600. She was apologetic, at that. I assured her it’s okay, we’re still going to get it.
The soup doesn’t have MSG. Good. It’s not as green as the green soup. That’s okay. It’s good with just enough seafood chunks. Yeah.
The steamed lapu-lapu was cooked live. That’s pretty good for P600. The soy sauce has MSG. That’s okay since you can’t separate the MSG from the sauce.
The braised tofu was just wonderful. But then, I’m a biased judge. I love tofu. May I add, their tofu is fresh, they should make sure they keep it that way.
The Ay Hat fried rice? Errrmmm… wait…. We were already deep into the discussion by then, I didn’t really get to savor it. Sorry. Ooops!
I look forward to trying some other dish, just to make sure that I wasn’t just being lucky that day. But as in all Chinese restaurants, the only way to try a lot is to bring the whole kit and caboodle.
By the time we finished our lunch, the place was starting to fill up. Mostly businessmen, very few ladies.