Meat lovers’ paradise

Owner Mary Ann Tinio jokes, "It’s a haven for people on Atkins diet." Well, it’s not entirely a joke; it is true. If you’re a meat lover who digs Japanese and Korean cuisines, then her aptly named new restaurant Moo Moo Paradise is the place where you can give in to your cravings.

Finally, a place that serves 70 percent meat and damned proud of it!

So why did they combine the two cuisines? Her brother and co-owner Rodolfo "Paul" Cuenca Jr. explains there are two reasons behind this. One is that if you look at Korean cuisine, "it’s closely related to the Japanese yakiniku, which is sliced beef grilled over fire. The yakiniku and Korean bulgogi, which is sautéed marinated beef, are pretty much the same. The only difference is that one uses a lot of spice and the other does not. When we did more research, we found out that the cuisines complemented each other. Besides, Japanese and Koreans love each other’s foods." That may well be, but remember that Japan once occupied Korea and, as an impassioned Korean once told me in Seoul, "We can lose a soccer game to anybody but never to Japan!"

Two, and perhaps the more important reason, is that the "Ayala people said they would give us the space only if we put up a Korean restaurant on this strip."

Moo Moo Paradise is located at Glorietta 3 beside Zen, the Japanese restaurant also owned by the siblings. With years of expertise in Japanese cuisine, it was a no-brainer for them to use this in their new venture, this for a much broader market which Paul describes as the "P250 or less per head market." Indeed, for that price, you can get a very filling meal from appetizer to dessert and much more if you take along friends with you because the portions are meant for sharing.

Paul also believes that Korean cuisine is the next big foreign food to go mainstream after Japanese. "When you think Korean, you think it’s either spicy like kimchi or sweet like bulgogi, but it has a whole range of tastes and different cooking methods – it’s just not as known as Japanese."

Barely a month after they opened, they were surprised to find out that the Korean side of the menu was outselling the Japanese. It seems there are a lot of fans waiting to come out of the closet with the right resto!

Korean food for us Filipinos is basically four things: Kimchi, which they can’t live without (just as we can’t live without our toyomansi), bulgogi, chapchae, and bibimbap.

Kimchi we all know to be that spicy pickled cabbage sprinkled with a lot (and I mean a lot!) of red spice. Moo Moo Paradise has a kimchi pokum (P160) which is kimchi with pork. Aside from the traditional beef bulgogi (P180), which can be cooked on your table in a dome pot, they also have pork bulgogi (P170), chicken (P160), and shrimp (P225) with spicy Korean sauce. Chapchae (P140), the very tasty glass noodles, comes with vegetables. And then there’s dolsot bibimbap (P130), rice with assorted ingredients served in stoneware, and unagi or eel bibimbap (190).

The Japanese side, says Paul, is "basically our take on a steak house, but we put a Japanese twist to it. When you say gui or grilled, it really isn’t very different from country to country. The difference is in the marinade" and what you put on it. If you order any of the grilled food, you get to choose three free sauces from its list of 10: Lemon and garlic, honey ginger teriyaki, garlic and peanut, Moo Moo sauce, basil gravy, sweet and spicy, honey wasabi mustard, ginger garlic, BBQ sauce, and yogurt pesto. We tried their grilled T-bone steak (P225) and the sauces that we liked best were the basil gravy and honey wasabi mustard. You have a variety of grilled dishes to choose from, ranging from the different parts of beef (strip loin, fillet mignon, etc.), pork, chicken and seafood, and they come with a side dish. Don’t worry about having to choose from a long list of sauces, the menu has color-coded recommendations for each one.

"Filipinos really love grilled food," says Paul. "At Moo Moo, we use four kinds of charcoal – hickory briquettes, the local bacao (mangrove wood), coconut charcoal, and ipil-ipil. We’re continuously searching for more flavored charcoal we can use. We also use volcanic rock as base and then add the charcoal on top; it can go two years straight without our having to change it. We do it with charcoal and not gas because we want to move away from the ‘manufactured taste.’ We want our grilled foods to be really tasty."

Paul says Moo Moo Paradise uses local meats to keep the prices down. "We wanna make sure that our meats are really tender and that they’re naturally grown, meaning the animals are fed natural foods. People think local meats are tough, but they’re not – we have different ways to tenderize the meats."

The appetizers are a mix of Japanese and Korean choices, starting with the plain kimchi (P45); the really good tofu paradise (P95), which is curry flavored and comes with mushroom and beef sauce; spicy Korean dumplings (P90); gyu tofu (P90), beef and tofu sautéed in miso and chili paste with assorted vegetables; moo tori moo (P100), chicken thighs sautéed in mentaiko mayo; grilled asparagus wrapped in bacon (P80); cheese yako (P80), breaded cheese and fish flakes; and namul (P60).

For non-meat lovers, there’s the salad bar with its five different salads. Salad bars are typically not found in either Japanese or Korean restaurants, but then again Filipino diners like to have everything in one place. The influence of both cuisines comes in the dressings: There’s the Japanese vinaigrette, which is much thicker than the Italian, with 10 ingredients like apple, sesame, miso, etc; egg-yolk pepper dressing; and thousand island. So even if you’re not on Atkins but perhaps on South Beach diet, you can still enjoy yourself.

If you order any of the grilled meats, you get a small bowl and can fill it up once for an additional P40. If you just want salads, you can make several trips to the bar for P165.

Called "fast casual," this is the market that’s the fastest growing, says Paul. Customers want value for their money, they want fast service but above the level of service and environment that fast foods offer. The casual interiors of Moo Moo Paradise, designed by George Yulo, reflects this market. There are hints of humor in the surroundings with red leather partitions between the booths that spell out M-O-O and caricatures of Japanese-looking cows. Only a glass window separates the dining space and the kitchen; the ceiling, thankfully, is part of the design – personally, I’m growing tired of all these open, industrial-type ceilings in restaurants.

Meat lovers can now moo, sit back like, well, contented cows because there’s finally a place they can call paradise!

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Moo Moo Paradise is located at the ground floor of Glorietta 3. Call 815-2556.