Food and Leisure

Goourmet Diaries: Citi & Mandarin welcome a year of change & prosperity

January 19, 2012 | 12:00am

MANILA, Philippines - Chinese legend has it that the Dragon brings good luck to people — a divine bringer of rain for the crops, its sleeping and waking determining the seasons, and while it is seen as generally benevolent toward people, when it is upset by a mortal, it can bring about flooding.

For the year 2012, according to Hong Kong-based geomancer Joseph Chau, who will lead Manila’s biggest Chinese New Year’s Eve celebration (outside of Binondo) at Mandarin Oriental Manila on Jan. 22, it will be a good year for the country, a year of change and prosperity.

Mandarin Oriental Manila and Citibank are welcoming the Chinese New Year with a bit of prosperity in your pocket as you welcome a year of good fortune with the Citi Dining Privileges offering big discounts in three of the hotel’s outlets: Tin Hau, renowned for being one of the best Chinese restaurants in the country; the stylish Tivoli with its varied menu and wine selection; and Paseo Uno, the all-day restaurant featuring an Asian and international buffet and freshly cooked specialties.

Homemade spinach tofu with shimeiji mushrooms and golden dried scallops

Citibank vice president Alma Gruenberg says, “Mandarin Oriental has always been a partner of Citibank. For Citi Dining Privileges we partner with restaurants that our customers patronize so that the offers are relevant. If you look at our cardholders’ behavior, Mandarin is among the top establishments patronized by our cardholders.”

Paseo Uno and The Tivoli are offering a 30 percent discount when diners use their Citibank credit card for the weekends of Jan. 19 to 22, and 26 to 29. Tin Hau is also offering a 30 percent discount starting from Jan. 19 all the way to Jan. 29 with the exception of Chinese New Year’s Eve on Jan. 22.

Mandarin Oriental has become an icon in the celebrations of Chinese New Year, this year being its 17th countdown — always a colorful party with dragons dances, fireworks, and Joseph Chau leading the Prosperity Walk and rituals to drive away the bad spirits and bring in a year of luck.

Stir-fried soft-shell crab with crispy oatmeal

Mandarin communications director Charisse Chuidian says, “Tivoli is a contemporary, fine dining restaurant with a young French chef, Remi Vercelli, who trained under Paul Bocuse. He does classic cuisine combined with his own innovations. We do business lunches at Tivoli that change every week. It’s a three-course menu starting with the appetizer buffet and for the main course you get to choose from five courses. Usually with a set menu you have fixed appetizer, main and dessert, but at Tivoli you can come every day and still have something different each time. Paseo Uno’s Deluxe Weekend Buffet features a live pasta cooking station, our bestselling duck foie gras station and a shawarma station.”

Paseo Uno’s regular buffet is priced at P1,462+ and its luxury weekend buffet at P1,950, while Tivoli’s business lunch is at P1,818. With Citi Dining Privileges, the 30 discount is a significant one.

Undeniably, Tin Hau is Mandarin’s star restaurant during the Chinese New Year. “Tin Hau is still the best Chinese restaurant,” says Charisse. “It serves authentic Chinese food from different parts of China. Our chef, Hann Furn Chen, was trained in the traditional styles of the different regions of China and infuses them with his own twists, like the fried shrimp dish with mayonnaise and cornflakes for a different texture. He tries to make authentic dishes contemporary at the same time.”

Chef Hann Furn Chen whips up his seventh Chinese New Year menu at Mandarin Oriental’s Tin Hau restaurant. Trained in authentic regional cuisines, he infuses his dishes with contemporary twists.

This is Chen’s seventh Chinese New Year at Mandarin and he says that for diners who celebrate at Tin Hau every year, there is something different with each Chinese New Year, and for those who are doing so for the first time, well, they will be pleasantly and — to use an oft-repeated word in feng shui — abundantly satisfied.

Chen and his team have created six “prosperity set menus” that diners can enjoy until Jan. 29 for groups of two to 10 with prices ranging from P1,688+ to P3,088+ per person. If you’re celebrating with the whole family and choose the most expensive menu it’ll come out to P30,000+ for 10 persons, and Citibank Dining Privileges gives you a 30 percent discount when using your Citi card, which amounts to at least P9,000!

For groups of two to four persons, there is the “Treasures” menu, which has the Chinese New Year appetizer trio (suckling pig, marinated jellyfish with spicy chili sauce, golden fried shrimp mousse and black moss rolls); Old Beijing Nobleman’s soup; braised abalone and sea cucumber with vegetables in oyster sauce; baked lobster with bacon, garlic and mayonnaise; pan-seared US beef with honey pepper sauce; fresh-egg noodles with seafood dumplings and bean sprouts in XO sauce; and for dessert glutinous rice balls with sesame paste in red date syrup, tikoy, and black sesame ice cream.

For groups of five to eight persons, there is the “Fortune” menu, which adds braised sea cucumber and mushrooms in shrimp roe oyster sauce; steamed garoupa; fried shrimps with crispy golden oats; and rice with Chinese sausage and chicken wrapped in lotus leaf.

For groups of eight to 10 persons, there are several menus to choose from: “Happiness,” “Triumph,” “Opulence,” and “Lucky Dragon,” each menu having more dishes than the last.

The Happiness menu at Tin Hau restaurant starts off diners with the Chinese New Year Five-Happiness Combination Platter featuring marinated jellyfish, roasted Beijing duck rolls, crispy anchovy with spicy plum sauce, top shell with peanuts and soy sauce, and fried shrimp mousse. Citi Dining Privileges partners with Tin Hau for a 30 percent discount from Jan. 19 to 29 (with the exception of Jan. 22), and Paseo Uno and The Tivoli, also a 30 percent discount, on the weekends of Jan. 19 to 22, and 26 to 29.

The Happiness menu, for instance, has the CNY platter with five dishes instead of three: jellyfish, roasted Beijing duck rolls, top shell with peanuts in soy sauce, fried shrimp mousse and black moss rolls, and crispy fried anchovies with spicy plum sauce. It also has crispy Hong Kong chicken. The Happiness menu adds scallops and shrimps in XO sauce, and soft-shell crabs with crispy oatmeal. The Opulence menu starts you off with what Tin Hau is also very famous for — Peking duck with Chinese pancakes and the traditional condiments, followed by fried crab claws wrapped with kataifi set on marinated jellyfish, stone fish, and lobster with bacon, garlic and mayonnaise.

The Lucky Dragon menu has both the Peking duck (two ways, first being wrapped in Chinese pancake and second, minced and wok-fried) and the CNY three-treasure platter, plus steamed seabass and baked lobster, apart from the dishes in the preceding menus.

Wok-fried shrimp with mayonnaise and crispy golden oats

With Mandarin’s special room packages, Prosperity Walk and ritual, families can make the most of their Citibank cards with Citi Dining Privileges (30 percent off) at Tin Hau, Paseo Uno and The Tivoli. After all, if this is a year of change and prosperity, we might as well start with a very good meal.

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Citi Dining Privileges partners with Mandarin Oriental Manila’s Tin Hau restaurant for a 30 percent discount from Jan. 19 to 29 (with the exception of Jan. 22), and Paseo Uno and The Tivoli, also for a 30 percent discount, on the weekends of Jan. 19 to 22, and 26 to 29.