I got a rare chance to dine at the Signature Lounge of City of Dreams Manila when I got an invite to sample a special Korean food festival featuring Grand Master Chef Kim Sungkuen. The Signature Lounge is a special dining area for select City of Dreams members only. This food festival ran from April 11-17, 2016.
Chef Kim Sungkuen is one of Korea’s highly regarded chefs and was awarded as a Nationally Recognized Culinary Master in 2008. He is also the mentor of Chef Lee, the resident chef of the Signature Lounge.
Korean cuisine is very popular in the Philippines with many focusing on bbq, Chef Kim’s cuisine is based on dishes served to Korean royalty.
Kyong Bok Palace Summer Dumplings (P350). Multicolored dumplings filled with beef and mushrooms. I found the dumpling wrapper on the thicker side but the filling was good.
White Kimchi (P240). Not your usual red and orange tinged kimchi, this one is pale and sits on top of a cut pear. The flavor is also very different, there’s hardly any spice and is more of a pickle contrasted with the sweet Korean pear.
Jagalchi Seafood Soup (P790). I had a minute little taste of this and it’s spicy so avoid it at all costs if you don’t eat spicy food.
Steamed Five Colored Prawns (P560). Stunning presentation with a wide range of colors.
Gang Won Do Cod Fish Stew (P560). The best dish of our meal and one that we hope they might serve in another dining outlet in City of Dreams Manila. Bursting with umami and flavor that will make you forget all the other dishes.
The Gangnam Braised Beef Short Ribs (P680) and the Pork Belly Garbi (P560) are similar looking dishes but both eschew the usually sweetish flavors we find in other restaurants. Both are slow cooked using traditional ingredients to extract nuanced flavors.
For dessert we had the Omijia Tea (P160), a Chinese Magnolia vine fruit tea. It was light and very refreshing. The more interesting dessert was the Glutinous Rice Donuts (P180), a North Korean dessert similar to carioca but with very minimal sweetness.
I was happy to have tried a different kind of Korean cuisine and it open my tastes buds to more than just bbq.
Signature Lounge
City of Dreams Manila
City of Dreams Manila Aseana Ave. cor. Roxas Blvd.Entertainment City, Paranaque, Philippines
Facebook Page: City of Dreams Manila
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