It was one of those food assignments that would be most difficult to decline. The invitation to join a birthday party came from my friends with the Xiamen connection and it requires air travel to Manila and overnight stay at the Sofitel Philippine Plaza. To the Chinese couple who have just started a family, the arrival of the first child – a male heir – is a most joyful occasion. When that child celebrates his first birthday, a grand celebration is expected that will conform to age-old Chinese tradition.
Venue for the birthday party was the Hong Kong Emperor Seafood Restaurant (2/F Entertainment Mall, SM Mall of Asia, Ocean Drive, Pasay City, Metro Manila (+ 63 2) 556-9520 to 22). Actually a children's party becomes a double celebration with one set of food for the children & accompanying adult and another set for guest and friends of family. If you are really hungry, pwede pud grab some food from the children's table but not too much since a "traditional lauriat (Lao-Diat in Fookien or Re-Nao in Mandarin)" has been specially prepared for the guests and there were 30 tables with 12 seats.
A typical Chinese Lauriat usually starts with cold cuts consisting of barbecue meats like pork and duck, soy chicken, jelly fish and century egg. But this was not an ordinary celebration; it was, excuse me, something special and the arrival of the first dish – the Pacific Lobster Sashimi, thinly sliced raw lobster meat on top of ice shavings – showed the magnanimity of our Chinese host. (Try to check the price of a live lobster weighing two kilos!)
The rest of the lobster, head, tail and claws were served as a most refreshing soup. And you can really taste the nearly sweet umami broth of a freshly prepared lobster. Next course was the Emperor BBQ Cuts Combination and with it the drinks were served: a bottle of Peter Lehmann Clancy's 2005, Johnnie Walker Blue Label and Cognac Hennessey XO in each table. The Chinese in me began functioning, making rough estimates of the, ahem, cost of this event.
We then had the Braised Sea Scallop in Luffa Rings with Fat Choy, followed by the Shark's Fin Soup and the Steamed Lapulapu. The conpoy or sea scallop was huge (probably came from Japan) (Patinopecten yessoensis) and had a stronger and far richer taste then the smaller scallops which are used to make XO sauce. The Lapulapu was perfectly steamed, according to the standards of Cantonese Chefs. Check the ribs of the fish and break it. If correctly prepared, there has to be some blood in the broken bone.
Main dish was the Stir-fry Dried Abalone with Thorny Sea Cucumber, and each seated guest had one abalone each. Dried abalone as an ingredient is very expensive and takes about four days to prepare. It has been cultivated in Australia but it grows only about an inch every year. Thorny sea cucumber has also become increasingly scarce and demand has sky-rocketed because of the double digit economic growth of China in the last three decades.
Final dishes served were the Deep Fried Mangrove Crabs with Garlic and the Emperor Birthday Noodles (for a long and prosperous life) followed by a dessert, the Carrot-shaped Buchi. And your favorite food columnist took tiny bits of each dish to provide the proper culinary accounting of the event. My problem was that none of my dinner mates were drinking and it is a formidable task to finish the bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label and Cognac Hennessey XO. So compromise na lang, half a bottle of the blue and a third of the XO and I can really call it to be such a wonderful evening.
By the way, how did you, my beloved reader, celebrate your first birthday?