birthday dinner at choi garden

note: sorry there ain't no pics yet but i'm posting this now before i forget what i want to write. =)

my family and i went to choi garden in annapolis, greenhills last night to celebrate my pa's birthday. by far, it was the best restaurant i've eaten in after cyma. notwithstanding my bros' allergies to seafood (my older bro being the more delicate one), all of us enjoyed our time together.

the restaurant occupies the same building where country waffles used to be. of course they had to change the structure to look more chinese than an american country house. the ground floor glowed red in all its glory from the outside, as all the interiors are in my fave colors--red and black.

upon entry, a short hallway reminiscent of a moon gate greets the guests. it's sort of like a tunnel to another dimension if you ask me. aside from the red and black interiors, another cool thing in the restaurant are the tanks of huge, live seafood imaginable: lobsters, crabs, prawns, etc. and along with the nice chinese music playing in the background, the reddish-black atmosphere of the whole restaurant looks something straight out of a gangster movie. trés cool.

judging from the number of people eating there, it seemed like we won't be getting a table for a while but fortunately a table was just vacated so we snapped that one up immediately. make sure you make a reservation first (especially if you're gonna eat at dinnertime) before winging it out or else you'd have to wait for quite some time like we almost did.

the food... it also took us time to get what we wanted. in the menu is basically your typical chinese fare: fried rice, roast fowl, noodle soups, dim sum, congee, sweet and sour pork, hot pot, the works. there are several items NOT on the menu, though, so ask your friendly waiter for the chef's specials. two such items not on the menu are the hot and sour soup and beef with broccoli in oyster sauce, which we ordered.

besides the hot and sour soup and beef with broccoli in oyster sauce, here are the other items we ordered: braised fish fillet with bean curd in pot, fried pork ribs with salt and pepper (that comes with seasoned vinegar), and birthday noodles, which is simply pancit canton with quail eggs.

because we were so intent on choosing the items carefully (like making sure there's neither shrimp nor crab in deference to me bros), we forgot one important thing: order the rice. the waiter had all but already gone to the kitchen with our order when we suddenly remembered we haven't ordered the freakin' rice. funny, eh? anyhow we got five nice, fragrant cups of steamed rice.

everything we've ordered really tasted great. the amount of salt on each dish is just right, the soup as well the sauces of the braised fish fillet and beef with broccoli are just about the right thickness; the fish fillets, bean curd and beef slices tender to the bite and thick enough for that "oomph" when biting into them; and the pork ribs are well cooked. the birthday noodles, however, just had a few veggies and seafood, not that it mattered to me as i like noodles better than veggies anyway. they don't use msg on their dishes, btw.

but what about the price? you may ask. well, all i can say is that my money was all worth it. the pricing starts at around 170PHP-up, small size. for medium and large, you just multiply the price by 2 and 3, respectively. don't be fooled by the small size as it's good for 3-4 people, 5 even. there were 5 of us and though all the dishes we ordered are small, the servings were generous. to say that we were full is an understatement--we're more like stuffed. and the grand total? P1,290 minus senior citizen (46.07) plus 12% vat = P1,243. that's about P250 per person rounded off. now if there is another resto that serves great food with generous servings at an affordable price like this, let me know.

=)