lunch at Makan Makan Asian Food Village

One of the nice things of going round and round at the Manila Ocean Park is that it leaves people famished. On Jose Rizal's 151st birth anniversary (a holiday in Laguna), I went there with Ate Bing and Ate Mary. After roaming the first few attractions, we opted to take a seat at Makan Makan and eat lunch there.

Makan Makan (the restaurant) was named after makan (the Malaysian verb which means "to eat"). Sounded promising. The next line of the name was a bit more intriguing. "Asian food village" denotes that food from different parts of Asia is represented there. All right, a one-stop shop for someone who wants to eat different cuisines!

Makan Makan is found on the floor above the entrance to the Oceanarium. It is strategically located for hungry Ocean Park tourists like the three of us; we came across it just as we exited the Trails to Antarctica exhibit and as my stomach signaled the lunch hour.

Inside the restaurant, I thought I was looking at a simpler and a smaller-scale version of the buffet restaurants in Aria and Monte Carlo. The lunch offerings at the time we dropped by were not buffet meals; we were ordering off the ala carte menu. Upon closer inspection, though, the central area of the restaurant appeared more like wagons and food stalls than the long tables and counters typical of buffets. The common denominator among these three restaurants, though, was that customers could see what's cooking because the kitchen is surrounded by glass panes.

True to the restaurant's theme, we ordered food from four different countries: China, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand. My only concern, as always, was the possibility that my seafood allergens would sneak into the food that we were ordering. The waiter assured me that the food we got mostly had chicken... or egg. On with the food!

I've tried bird's nest soup in other restaurants before. The other items were chosen by Ate Bing and Ate Mary; it looked like they've liked the other dishes in their travels so they got them for us. I chose the oyster omelet because I got curious about how it tasted.

nasi goreng

oyster omelet

pandan chicken

I liked the food that we ordered. The flavors were probably adjusted to suit the Filipino palette. One more thing, since I was up to the challenge to trying different food when on food trips, I decided to drink something I haven't tried before: lemon barley water. It's basically pearled barley boiled in water and then served with lemon wedges and sugar. That's an interesting, and healthier, variant to the normal lemonade.