Gloria Maris SUPER, Greenhills

Sometime this year, Gloria Maris in Greenhills opened with a brand new branch, and it is HUGE! It's as big as an SM department store, I kid you not. To be honest, it's not my favorite Chinese restaurant so I don't know how it fills up every weekend. But it happens to be my Chinese friend's favorite, so I guess they are definitely doing something right!

This is the normal dining area. Yes folks, there are 3 kinds of dining areas in this Gloria Maris branch. The hot pot dining, the lauriat dining and the function rooms.

The grand lobby with interesting hanging baubles that greet you from above.

We ate at one of the function rooms. Here's our first course! Good old crab and corn soup. It was cold already when we got there though, and when my Lola had it heated up, the waiter didn't know what to do with the bowl. He had to give it to his supervisor.

The first part of the 2-way Peking duck. I love it this way, with the pancakes and Hoisin sauce. So yum yum, was happy.

Sweet and sour pork! Who doesn't eat sweet and sour pork? This was perfect, crunchy with a good amount of sauce. The bird that seemed to be made of carrots was a conversation piece; turns out it was made out of ceramic!

 Hot prawn salad. This is my sister's favorite. I don't like shrimps but I heard nothing but good feedback from this dish.

The second way of the Peking duck: fried! YUMMY YUMMY I DIED! In my family we never have it this way, the second way is usually roasted or minced and scooped into lettuce. I was so impressed! Best way EVER to have duck! Hehe

Of course, no Chinese lauriat is complete without Yang Chow Fried Rice. Even more important than noodles, if you ask me!

Decided to make this the last photo because I never eat it, but it is always there. Who eats this fish anyway?! Haha.

Another yummy lunch done! 'Til the next post!

Sunday dinners out!

Every Sunday, we usually have dinner with the family on my Mom's side but unfortunately my Lola hasn't been feeling well enough to plan and host the dinners, so my Lolo decided to take us out instead.

Last week's dinner was at Peking Garden, and even though I wasn't too excited for that we had such a good dinner! I really enjoyed it and tried something new for the first time, it's something called Xiao Long Bao. Unfortunately I didn't bring a camera with me, but here's a picture c/oPetit Chef :)

They may look like ordinary siomai dumplings but no! They're dumplings with a twist :) Aside from the usual meatball inside it there was soup! It sounded to me like a sketchy idea and at first I didn't want to try it, but my godmother who was sitting beside me just dumped one on my bowl and urged me to try it. It was love at first bite! I catch myself craving for these during the day. After the first dumpling, I just couldn't resist having a second one!

Anyway, for the dinner tonight my mom suggested we eat in this little hole-in-the-wall in Little Tokyo called Seryna. It's a nice and quaint place, I'm sorry I forgot to take a photo of the outside. :( I should work towards becoming a better blogger! I also just borrowed my mom's point-and-shoot: WRONG MOVE. Looking at these photos now, I wish I had brought my DSLR :( The photos are so out-of-focus!

The celing was very interesting, it came up in our conversations more than twice. Since my mom and titas know the owner, they saw it as his idea right away. Apparently when he designs spaces, he loves putting wooden bars wherever he can. It's a very unique look that you can tell took a while to complete.

So first up on our menu was sushi! I honestly don't see sushi as an appetizer because rice is incredibly filling, but everyone else at the table thought otherwise so it was ordered before everything else. :) The first photo is their Chicken Teriyaki Roll, and it was very good! It was like having a bite of chicken and rice. The chicken was crunchy too so it was a nice contrast to the soft rice. :) The second photo is their California Maki. This one was honestly disappointing because it didn't have any crabstick, just huge chunks of mango. :|

For my main course, I had wagyu steak! It was good, but next time I'll just order good old rib-eye. For me the texture of rib-eye is better because there's less fat. The sauces it came with were really good though! One was a sweeter sauce and the other was a soy sauce blend so it was more salty. I mixed both of them together and poured them into my rice bowl. Yum! :D By the way, as usual I forgot to take a photo when I first got it. So it's not really this little. This was when I was about halfway done already. Haha :)

My dinner was capped off by a melon shaved ice. :) In my head, melon is a light orange but it was still good anyway! A little bit too sweet but they gave me condensed milk to pour over it which was very good! Their shaved ice was really nice and fine, which reminded me of my warmer days in Hawaii when we would drive over to Waiola. I'll blog about that soon on another day. :)

So all in all this was a good dinner, everyone enjoyed their orders and as usual, we all had a great time bonding over food. 'Til next week's dinner! :)

Seryna is located right outside Little Tokyo on Chino Roces Avenue, right arcoss Makati Cinema Square. :) Check it out!