Sky Dragon Seafood Restaurant

We had dinner & mooncake dice game at Sky Dragon Seafood Restaurant last week.  Before I entered the restaurant, I was warned by my mom’s friends that the place isn’t that nice & the food isn’t good as well.  I kept that in mind but I still wanted to see for myself before I came to any conclusion.

When I entered, the ambiance wasn’t really that great, very simple, but it just shows that this place has a family hangout theme to it.  Mainly for big families with a budget while still wanting to have a good time.  The ground floor is mainly for dining while the second floor has private rooms.  Each room has a karaoke system inside where guests can sing their heart out.

While we waited for our orders, my mom & her friends sang their favorite songs. I didn’t like the sounds & obviously, the karaoke was not of high quality but hey, it was for free!  It’s added service, so there really is no room for complaints.

My mom’s friend ordered all the food for us.  I felt a bit embarassed as everyone waited for me to take pictures of the food before they started eating hehehe!  Anyhow, it only took me like 10 seconds to take each picture, so I think they didn’t mind (well, I assumed hahaha!).

Here are the dishes that we tried at Sky Dragon:

• Spinach Seafood Soup (Php 468)

Contrary to popular belief, I actually love everything vegetable!  This Spinach soup did really taste yummy and I enjoyed it very much.  I was hoping that I could get a 2nd serving but considering we were like more than 10 in the group, the big bowl that we ordered was just enough.  I love the fact that it was almost a mix of egg drop soup, with the touch of spinach incorporated into the soup.  It was light, and I honestly could have eaten so much of this soup.  It wasn’t seasoned so much, which made the taste of the spinach really stand out just perfectly, but the bitterness of spinach which sometimes gives a lot of spinach dishes a downgrade in my opinion, the bitterness was not there.  They really must have experimented with this dish just to make it perfect.  What an innovative soup creation!

• Broccoli with Scallop (Php 600)

I’m not really sure as to how they made this dish.  It seems pretty simple enough, with the broccoli cooked just right and not overcooked.  The thick broth (sauce) was probably your basic sauce consisting of garlic, onion, soy sauce, salt and pepper, but the added scallops really made this dish stand out too.  I just kept wondering if the scallops really was there, I wasn’t sure.  Because the thin strips almost looked a bit like misua noodles.  I keep thinking that maybe they just had the scallops shredded to give the sauce more of the scallop flavor.  And if this is the case, then this dish is yet another great innovative way to serve scallops along with the brocolli.

• Fried Chicken Taoso (Php 468)

This dish was a favorite of my mom’s.  A very unique dish indeed.  Taoso is usually put on steamed fish, but didn’t realize that it actually works with fried chicken too!  I enjoyed this dish mainly because of the taoso.  If you don’t know what taoso is, it’s basically bits of crispy tofu.  It’s a great way to really add an extra layer of flavor and crispiness to an ordinary roasted chicken.  Don’t get me wrong, I think they also did a great job in roasting the chicken since it was definitely moist and wonderfully seasoned.  The taoso however, was definitely the ingredient that made this dish truly special.  And anyone who knows me, knows that I love tofu.  And this is almost my dream combination in terms of food ingredients since I also love chicken skin.  Now, who can go wrong with this great combination of crispy taoso and delicious roasted chicken!

• King Fish Soy Sauce (Php 580)

We got 2 of these for the price of Php 580.  Nothing special but decent.  I do like the fact that it had almost a steamed character to it, but with really more flavor because of the delicious soy sauce incorporated into the dish.  A very light dish that won’t leave your stomach too heavy.  But again, I don’t think this is really one of their all star dishes to try out.

• Kingdao Spareribs (Php 648)

Kingdao spareribs is actually a staple in many Chinese restaurants.  Although it’s not as popular as your sweet and sour dishes, or even the noodle dishes, etc., it still is one of those dishes that you should try once in a while.  The sauce is what makes it so good.  It is a bit sweet, because in some recipes they will use honey, but in this case, I think they just used sugar.  It has a tomato based type of sauce too, almost like a ketchup flavor, and of course there’s a little soy sauce included as well.  I’m not sure the exact recipe used in this dish, but I can tell you that the taste is really delicious.

Kingdao, I think really does blend well to the Filipino tastebud since it’s almost like the sauce used in a lot of Filipino barbecues hahaha :p  That’s why I think I really like it too!  The only difference is that this dish really has that tomato base, whereas in The Filipino version of this sauce, banana ketchup would probably be used instead.  The only thing that kinda stopped me from eating more was that there was just too many bones!  I guess I was lazy to cut each piece & get the bones out.  It was delish though, I loved how they cooked it.  Perfectly seasoned.

• Kuachay Rice Kiampong (Php 492)

Oh how I love rice like this.  Only Chinese restaurant cook rice this way & I’m just glad the rice served to us was kiampong!  Successful dish in our table, we were able to finish it all.

• Assorted Cold Cuts (Php 328)

Their asado & lechon kawali combination was hideous!  I hated it sooo much, I got one of each, took a bite then just left them in my plate.  The asado was too dry, too hard while the lechon kawali was just made of fat meat, period.  I’ve tried lechon kawali in so many places that I know exactly what it should be.  The crispiness of lechon kawali should almost be like chicharon, that’s why its always been a favorite of mine, but sadly this was not the case here.

• Misua Guisado

I’ve always loved fried misua and glad that while we celebrate Moon festival, we have this as part of our meal.  I loved the noodles and I actually took a 2nd serving.  Then I heard 2-3 of my mom’s friends saying that they actually tasted something foul.  Apparently, one of the ingredients was already spoiled.  Good thing, both my mom and I just ate the noodles so we didnt experience it.  If there was indeed some spoiled ingredients, then that’s definitely a disappointment especially for a restaurant.  A dish is only as good as its ingredients, and if one ingredient is spoiled, it really ruins the entire dish, no matter how good the recipe is and how good the dish SHOULD be.

• Mixed Fruits

This was given to us for free because we kept complaining about the misua & asado dishes.  Ironically, we also didn’t like this so it was left in the desk with only 1-2 pieces eaten.  Poor fruits, I wish we had some appetite to eat it but it didn’t look fresh 🙁

There were a lot of times that I felt some pity for the restaurant because the group was complaining the whole time about the dishes.  While it may be true, the servers & manager just accepted all criticisms, tried to compromise by giving us free dishes.  We even got 20% discount!  Now, that’s something commendable, the customers are really their boss.  And because of their really gracious service, I still think that the entire meal was still worth it considering that I got to try out some great new and delicious dishes.

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Sky Dragon Seafood Restaurant
Ongpin Street, Binondo, Manila, Philippines