Asian Taste Seafood Restaurant Review | Seascape Village
After enjoying a sumptuous seafood feast catered by ASIAN TASTE SEAFOOD RESTAURANT during our Manila Bay Sunset Cruise on board a yacht, my colleagues and I could not get enough of their amazing food. Hence, we visited their actual restaurant at Seascape Village beside Sofitel at the CCP Complex.
Asian Taste has a restaurant building where customers can dine indoors. However, there is also a sprawling outdoor area by the seaside. There is a live band that performs in the evenings and huge tables that can accommodate groups of up to 15 people. The place is well-ventilated and there is a lot of social distancing.
Moving on to the food, we started our meal with the super yummy crispy golden green beans. This is their unique recipe of salted egg coated fried beans. The restaurant calls it their version of French Fries. So good! This is a must try! I simply can’t stop eating them!
Apart from the green beans, other vegetable dishes arrived first. We had some garlic spinach, which is one of the more common dishes you can find when eating at a Chinese-style seafood place. They also serve tofu salt and pepper style. They make their tofu in-house, and you can really taste the difference in the texture. This is somewhere in between the firm and soft tofu you can buy in the supermarket, but the flavor is clean and fresh! We also had a tofu hot pot with mushrooms and fish in oyster sauce.
Now, on to the seafood! The first dish that arrived was squid in its own ink! This dish looked underwhelming at first, but don’t let the appearance fool you! The taste is indescribable! The squid itself is super tender, and the sauce has a smoky grilled flavor. I can imagine that they probably achieved that by flash frying in a smoking hot wok. The squid ink was slightly sweet and so fresh that there was no fishy smell.
Then, the sinigang arrived! This is so creamy! I know the gabi makes sinigang a little bit creamy but for some reason the version here was different and a little more rich compared to the others I’ve tried. They served us a seafood version with chunks of fish (I’m not sure what kind). Most people also like shrimps in their seafood sinigang, but we had our shrimps pressure steamed with a light soy sauce.
Then, we had two versions of sweet and sour Lapu-Lapu (grouper). The first one is the classic version with a red sauce, something that I know we are all familiar with. The second is a favorite of mine, it is a mango based sweet and sour sauce that I really love! I think Philippine mangoes are the best and this dish really highlights that. The mango sauce goes really well with the delicate, flaky flesh and crispy skin of the fried grouper.
We also had a fish version of the popular dish salt and pepper spare ribs. I usually order a pork version but the fish dish they have here was surprisingly good. It was not too spicy so even those who are not able to tolerate red chilies can enjoy this.
Another classic seafood dish that you can find in almost every restaurant in the Philippines is crispy calamares. I thought this was going to be boring but boy, was I mistaken! The fresh squid they used was superb! I have never has such soft and sweet calamares before! There was no rubbery texture and the crispy coating really worked well with the tender squid.
Finally, to round off the seafood dishes, we tried the chili crabs. This is a homage to the famous Singaporean dish, but instead of large crabs, they used local alimango or blue crabs. We were hesitant at first because no one wanted to go through the hassle of picking the meat off the shell. However, we were told that these can be eaten without removing the shell. Alimango are much smaller and have a softer shell that become crispy when fried. Just bite into it and you’re all good!
Like any good Chinese restaurant, the rice came last. We had Yang Chow fried rice and their version also had that distinct smoky wok flavor. Overall, it was another superb meal from Asian Taste Seafood Restaurant! Definitely a place that you must try if you head over to Seascape Village.