In celebration of Chinese New Year, auspicious offerings await diners at City of Dreams Manila’s award-winning restaurants Crystal Dragon and Nobu Manila.
To augur the Year of the Water Tiger, the two premium restaurants highlight bountiful feasts of fine Cantonese cuisine and regional Chinese specialties, and new-style Japanese cuisine, respectively, for fully vaccinated diners.
Diners can look forward to Crystal Dragon’s Lunar New Year ala carte menu that is currently offered until Feb. 6. The menu consists of culinary delights that symbolize good fortune, abundance, and happiness highlighting Crystal Dragon’s luxurious and enhanced rendition of the Yu Sheng, a popular Chinese New Year fare.
The restaurant’s Prosperity Abalone salad consists of sliced abalone, colorful julienned papaya, pomelo, carrots, radish, onion leeks, chopped peanuts, and deep-fried flour crisps drizzled with oil and sweet plum sauce.
Customarily tossed by diners with shouts of well-wishes to invoke a prosperous year ahead, the belief is that the higher one tosses the salad, the greater one’s fortune will be.
The Prosperity Abalone Yu Sheng’s ingredients are thoughtfully put together to symbolize abundance of wealth and long life, with the abalone signifying abundance; the oil representing wishes for a smooth sailing year; the chopped peanuts and deep-fried flour crisps symbolizing prosperity, and the sweet plum sauce denoting a sweet and harmonious family relationship.
Also offered in Crystal Dragon’s special Lunar New Year menu are dishes to augur good fortune: braised dried oysters, sea cucumber, duo mushrooms in supreme soy sauce with broccoli; steamed live grouper fish in sour broth with white shimeji mushrooms; crispy roasted duck marinated in truffle sauce; slowly braised spicy pork trotter; steamed taro rice with Chinese liver sausage, lap cheong (Chinese sausage), mushroom and diced chicken; and pan-fried fragrant taro nian gao (tikoy or sticky rice cake) with pandan coconut compote.
Located on the upper ground of Nüwa Manila, Crystal Dragon is open from 12:00 noon to 11:00 p.m.
Nobu Manila Guests can ring in the Year of the Tiger with a roaring fare influenced by the new-style Japanese cuisine globally popularized by the legendary Chef Nobu Matsuhisa.
Nobu Manila’s Chinese New Year ala carte menu, which is offered for the whole month of February, features an indulgent array of Nobu-style assorted sushi cups and maki platter of ama ebi (sweet shrimp), uni (sea urchin), yellowtail, tuna, hokkigai (surf clam), white fish, unagi (freshwater eel), scallop, and salmon.
The menu also offers whole crispy lapu-lapu (grouper) with sweet chili cilantro sauce and assorted vegetables; and Iberico pork yaki udon, a noodle dish with Iberico pork jowl, tofu, shitake mushrooms, bok choy, and baby corn.
Located at Level 1, Nobu Hotel, Nobu Manila restaurant also provides a leisurely al fresco dining experience at the open-air floating cabanas.
The restaurant is open Sunday to Thursday from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., and until 11:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Reservations are encouraged by calling 8800-8080 or e-mailing guestservices@cod-manila.com. For more information, visit www.cityofdreamsmanila.com.