The Lugang Café experience
For Peter and Annie Chua, Lugang Café seems to be a new star in their string of successful ventures such as their venue for alternative medicine and good health Tong Ren Tang in San Juan.
Peter and Annie acquired the franchise for Bellagio Café, a chain of eating houses that features the Taiwanese and Shanghainese styles of recipes. It took a while for me to write about Lugang Café because it became difficult to go on successive visits, having to queue up during the first weeks when only the first floor was opened. Now that the second floor is fully functional it might be easier, but reservations would still be imperative unless one wishes to go later after the preliminary barrage of dinner goers.
Anyway, Lugang Café presents an entirely fresh and new perspective of Chinese dining in the Philippine setting. One can go in small groups and still enjoy lauriat-style eating because the portions are not too large and the prices not too steep. One is also not limited to the stereotypical tea as beverage or choked on a few choices of buchi, almond gulaman, or mango sago for dessert.
On my first visit, I had decided to start with a few dishes to test the mettle of the kitchen. Operations head Lilit de Leon was very helpful in recommending items from the menu. To break convention, two of us decided to order the iced milk tea variations which we found rich and refreshing. We did catch a few laughs at Chef Adrian Lim who ordered a honey lemon iced tea which I had already told him would be your typical iced tea. (He did not really believe me.) Anyway, our appetizer of jellied sliced pig’s feet arrived and was wonderfully textured and chilled and got us off to a good start.
Next came our Kung Pao Chicken with a light sweet sauce glazed hinting of dried capsicums. The chilis are obviously not sourced locally and have delicate flavors and fragrance that make the Kung Pao here one of the better versions I have sampled.
We had the honey roasted char siu pork with vegetable cooked in the clay pot trapping the juices on the rice.
For noodles, a chachang or spicy minced meat with peanut sauce over rice. Noodles were our choice as this was very typically Taiwanese. The noodles had very good bite and the topping of beans, peanuts, and mincemeat coated the white noodles well. The Xiao long bao selections were quite tempting but we decided to try the classic on a first visit to determine the skill level of the kitchen. The soup dumplings proved to be wonderfully tasty with their soft interior and delicate wrapper.
The evening being warm and humid, we did lavish on the desserts. A peanut and bean smoothie jutted out on the glass and melted like creamy, nutty snow on the palate. A mango coconut shaved ice was equally bursting with natural goodness. What took us by surprise and had a real wow factor was the Lugang special, a tower of shaved ice with red and green beans, fresh fruits, and rice dumplings that seemed to give us reason and determination to come back and explore more of the menu.
Our next visits had us sampling some memorable items such as the Aloe and calamansi, cranberry and mango, and the ice fruit tea which would be healthy and very refreshing beverages.
We did try also the Xiao long bao with crab roe now that we know how skilled the kitchen was with its delicate pliable wrapper and the tasty soup interiors it could hold.
The Loba or Taiwanese stewed minced pork, a dish cooked for 72 hours, yielded soft tender morsels of pork that melted in the mouth and was begging to be partnered with steamed rice as its flavors built up on one’s palate.
The fish head steamed gently with pickled red peppers caught everyone’s nose as it arrived on the table, mixed with the black fermented bean it had on the warm, flavorful, fermented chili topping.
Also on the spicy but controlled side was the stir fried beef with chili peppers that turned out to be rich marbled slices of beef with dried chilies softened by the sweetness and textures of preserved lotus nuts.
A dish that I may never grow tired of is the chicken topped with scallions and ginger oil. This cold dish served at the right low temperature had beautifully tight skin and is obviously an imported chicken from Hong Kong. What gives it its refreshing quality is the topping of sliced scallions that lifts the flavors of the chicken and is very refreshing on the palate.
We had the dan dan noodles with peanut sauce and this was a good play of aromas from peanuts to fermented chili, though I would have preferred noodles that might have been less thinner or delicate and with more bite (call me pedestrian but probably I was used to that when I lived for a short time in the mainland…)
One good discovery that Lillit de Leon recommended was the dish of fried beans with salted eggs. The pulverized salted egg was stir fried with the yard bean and resulted in a rich creamy flavor that complemented the simple sweetness of the bean.
Another modern style was the black pepper beef fried rice that was tomato based and gave a black pepper fragrance and warmth to the palate.
Interesting desserts that we sampled were the warm custard with sago that was very much like a crème brulee with little pearly textures of tapioca and the yin yang-like shaved ice combination of peanuts and black sesame that was an experience of icy cold then sheer velvet as it warmed on one’s palate.
The menu choices are rather wide at Lugang and therefore might need a couple more visits to complete this new culinary discovery. I’m sure there are still some dishes I had not ordered or beverages that may prove to be eye or stomach openers. – Article courtesy of Manila Bulletin
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