Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Wanna Go Chinese? - Try Charlie's Tea House

I love trying out different cuisines. I love Japanese and Vietnamese food as I've discussed in my previous blogs. I also like Chinese so during the Chinese New Year period we tried out a Chinese restaurant in the Sta. Cruz, Manila area. Yeah, I know, this review has been long overdue but I've been kind of busy....busy checking out restaurants to go to haha. Anyway, we went to Charlie's Tea House.

We ordered roasted peking duck, barbecue pork, yang chow fried rice and of course, noodles.

We actually ordered 1/2 peking duck. When it was served I thought it was enough because it was a big serving. Boy was I surprised when another plate of peking duck was served. I forgot that we had our order divided into two plates because we were occupying a long table. We were eight that time. The peking duck was good because it has no after taste (I don't know how to describe that after taste but in Filipino it is 'malansa'.) It was juicy. The meat was tender. I never expected duck meat to be that tender.

The barbecue pork was not really served like your usual barbecue. There's no barbecue stick. The meat was served already sliced into bite-size pieces. It actually looked liked tocino and not barbecue. It also tasted like tocino. It is good if you forget the idea that what you ordered is barbecue. Maybe they should change the name and nobody would mind. It tastes good for tocino, really!

The yang chow fried rice is like your usual yang chow fried rice. However, they use roasted pork/duck meat instead of ham. They are not very generous with the green peas and I am happy for that. I do not like green peas, you know.

I like the noodles because it was not too dry and not too saucy. It also has a lot of toppings. There's squid, shrimps and other stuff. It doesn't have the strong 'mono-sodium glutamate flavor' common in other Chinese restaurants.

They also serve house tea. I think this is an SOP in Chinese restaurants. their tea was okay. Nothing really special.

Service is also good. When we arrived, there was no long table that could accommodate us. There were a lot of people during that time so I thought it's going to take a long time before we could be seated. But the nice thing is they were able to rearrange the tables such that they would be able to maximize the space available. You see, the restaurant is small. They politely talked to the other customers to make a few adjustments. They  handled it rather well because I didn't see the others complaining.

Charlie's Tea House can be found in 937 Ongpin St., Sta. Cruz, Manila. It is within walking distance from the church in Sta. Cruz. If walking long does not annoy you, you can actually walk from Plaza Fair in Carriedo.

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