Aladin Fusion Restaurant
I celebrated Independence Day by going to a dinner with my former colleagues from the Key Accounts Department at Erikagen, Inc. It was actually a farewell party sponsored by Ganch. Congratulations to his new career with another company! 🙂
I was so happy to see them again. They didn’t spare any second from telling me all about the things I missed while I was away. It was like old times. I’m just thrilled to again be in the company of good friends. ^_^
Anyway, we had our dinner at Aladin Fusion Restaurant (Aladin 24 Restaurant & Coffee Shop), which is located along the famous Aguirre Avenue at BF Homes in Parañaque City. Aladin serves a fusion of Korean and Japanese cuisine. It is mainly a Korean restaurant with a 24 hour grocery store.
Trivia: Last January 22, celebrities Derek Ramsay and Cristine Reyes were spotted dining in this restaurant. 🙂
They told me that it was similar to Sambo Kojin and Yakimix, wherein you can prepare your own food and cook it just the way you like it.
So there we are, half an hour after seeing each other, entering a restaurant to dine sumptuously and be merry.
I am not sure what the names of what we ordered are but I’ll do my best to name and describe them. 🙂
The attendant first placed a metal plate on the center of our table.
And then she served each of us these sauces:
The left one in the picture is a combination of sesame oil with salt and pepper. The one on the right is a kind of sweet paste. This is where you dip the meat with the lettuce before you eat them.
Then, we were served with various side dishes.
My favorites were the tofu slices, sweet potatoes, and kimchi. Their kimchi wasn’t that spicy… so I was able to have a taste of it. 🙂
Kimchi is the national dish of Korea. Kimchi is basically fermented cabbage in a variety of spices. The cabbage is coated leaf by leaf in a delicious spicy mix of hot pepper flakes, garlic, chives, onion, pear juice, and more. It is then able to be eaten right away (in which case it is fresh, not fermented) or you can leave it out of the refrigerator for two or three days to start the fermentation process. As it ferments it develops a rich and slightly sour flavor.
Next, we were served with unseasoned pork belly and thin beef strips.
We cooked them on the hot plate together with garlic and slices of green chili.
The proper way to eat this Samgyeopsal dish is to fry the beef / pork strips on the hot plate and then wrap it in a lettuce then dip the roll in the two sauces before taking a bite.
It really tastes sooo good! We ate a lot of these until we were so full! You can also eat the meat with steamed white rice. 🙂 Yummy!
We also ordered Japchae. Japchae is one of the most popular Korean dishes. The translucent noodles used are sweet potato starch noodles which give Japchae its very distinct chewy texture. The vegetables are all lightly cooked so they retain all their flavor. It is a very flavorful dish. 🙂
I really loved everything that we ordered. The meat were fresh and flavorful. The sauce was very good as well and it complemented the meat very well. They need to improve the quality of their chopsticks since they are easily broken. Sometimes, when you separate them, they don’t separate right down in the middle.
The restaurant has a bit of a gloomy ambiance since it was a bit dark inside but the upbeat music they were playing made up for that.
Our total bill was only around PhP 1,000! That’s just like PhP 200 per person. It was definitely value for money. Given a chance, I’d love to visit this again with my boyfriend and my family. 🙂
And to sum up everything in just one picture…
Thank you so much Ganch for the wonderful treat. Til the next one! ^_^
xoxo,
♥ Monique ♥