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| - A small group of us came here on a Tuesday night and had a marvelous experience with the dishes. Since this restaurant is located in Little Indian community, one would wonder about the concept and the style of the dishes served here. Even though the person who organized this dinner had already given us a brief idea of what dining experience would be like, most of us were still questioning about the type of dishes that were listed on the menu, curious expectation were definitely set on most of our minds.
Even the decor inside made the restaurant seem different why being set in the middle of the Indian and similar stores nearby.
Our group sat at a spacious and cozy booth which gave some of us a good view of the "lack of" street life on Gerrad Street.
And once our server with the character worth taking note of gave us the food and drinks menus, it did take awhile for some of us to decide on our choices. Many of the dishes involved different Asian cooking methods and some of them were familiar items that were given a different style of preparing them.
A lot of the menu items sounded tempting so four people out of the group decided to share the $45 tasting menu while the rest of us order individual plates.
For myself I picked the Dry-Aged Beef Lumpia, Chicken Liver Mousse accompanied by triangles of toasted Challah Bread and pairing of grilled Beef Short Ribs with the Malaysian Style Roti. I had been craving for most of these dishes so I wanted to see what the takes on all these items were.
The filling for the Lumpias were delicately wrapped in wonton wrappers and came with a dip of Banana Ketchup, something that I didn't want to try when I used to live in the Philippines but that day it was a good chance to see what it tasted like and it was also made in-house. The presentation for the Chicken Liver Mousse was interesting because it came in a small mason jar and a thin layer of fat sealing it made it look like a scented candle. The mousse and the Challah bread were also accompanied by a clementine marmalade and a Szechuan chili oil. Combining all four of these items together resulted in an interesting combination of flavors. I do wish that the flavor of the chicken liver had been stronger in the mousse because the flavor of the marmalade overpowered it. But it was fun alternating between slathering the three items onto the Challah bread getting a slightly different taste each time. The short ribs looked similarly prepared in the Korean style of cooking Bulgogi or Galbi but the presentation for the dish was very impressive. Each portion of the short ribs came placed on the mashed kimchi which looked like a spicy sweet potato mash. The visual point of the presentation was a hefty bunch of Butter Lettuce leaves on the side. And the two plates that came out looked like decoration that are fixed on a Picture Hat, that graces the heads of women in picture on those magazines like Royalty and Majesty. And for people who have experience Korean BBQ dining, you simple ate the ribs by wrapping them up in the lettuce leaves with a bit of the accompanying condiments. The entire dish was just heavenly.
Everyone in the group loved what they ate... until it was time for dessert and things took on a funny turn. The group who had the tasting menu also got to try the two desserts that were part of the courses: the Lemon Chiffon cake made with the Calamansi curd and the Coconut Meringue. Someone else also had the Lemon Chiffon cake and it was nice to see some specks of lime peel on the "broken shards" of meringue that garnished the cake pieces. The sorbet was served like a sundae with about four different toppings:caramelized bananas, pineapple chunks, roasted peanuts and chopped dried durian flesh. Most in the group tasted the cakes without much fuss. They either liked it or weren't so sure about the lemony flavors in the cakes and meringue.
But it was the Coconut Sorbet that were got everyone taste buds shooting off on several different scales! While most of the other dishes were consumed alone by each person who ordered them, the Sorbet ended up being passed around the table so everyone could get a taste of it. It seemed that the flavors in the toppings sort of clashed instead of mingling well each other to result in one collective enhancing flavor. But the one thing that almost everyone agreed on was that the anticipated coconut flavor was absent from the sorbet and noone could really detect where the durian had ended up. So it was this dessert that got everyone just deconstructing and analyzing every flavor component in the entire dish. If it hadn't been for the lack of coconut flavor from the sorbet, this dessert would have probably saved itself from becoming an amusing disappointment.
Our Server must have been chuckling inside while he was listening to the several feedbacks about the sorbet alone.
I'd still go back to Lake Inez to share different plates with friends :-)
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