Food and Leisure

Yakiniku all you can at Yurakuen

January 5, 2012 | 12:00am

Hai!

If you’re high on Japanese food, a trip to Yurakuen at Diamond Hotel will transport you to culinary heaven.

The night sky glowing like diamonds, we swoop down on Yurakuen, Diamond Hotel’s award-winning Japanese restaurant, for a dinner affair to remember. We’re whisked to the Teppanyaki Room by food attendants garbed in crisp, impeccable kimonos with matching ear-to-ear smiles. Past the glassed-in Teppanyaki Rooms, the Yakiniku Room, and private rooms, across a mini bridge over a pond of flowing water and colored glass marbles is the 70-seater main dining room with three-story-high floor-to-ceiling glass windows showing off a lusciously lush rock garden. Taking center stage is Yurakuen’s iconic glass cherry blossom tree, spreading its leaves over the marble-inlay dining tables.

Yurakuen’s Beef Muyachi is one super meaty treat.

Staying true to the restaurant’s heartwarming aesthetics is Yurakuen’s divine five-star menu lovingly crafted by Japanese master chef Junichi Sekiyama. From the super mouthwatering sushis and sashimis to the makis and temakis to the salads and soups to the seafood, meats, and veggies, and down to the desserts.

Tonight, our personal chef at our teppanyaki table is Bibong de la Rama of Bacolod who adds a dash of calisthenics to his cooking. If there’s a cooking Olympics, Bibong is our best bet.

For only P1,970++ per person, inclusive of free-flowing standard drinks, local beers, and Kirin beer, you can teppanyaki all you want. Eat to your heart’s content unlimited servings of seafood (grouper, blue marlin belly, tuna belly, mackerel, red snapper, Spanish cod, salmon, cuttlefish, tiger shrimp, oysters, scallops) and meats (US beef rib eye, US beef sirloin, beef roll, pork belly, chicken thigh, etc.).

It’s the Year of the Dragon Maki.

Add P500 for each item and you can have unlimited black cod (Japanese gindara), Chilean sea bass, black sea bass, spine lobster. Or for an additional P500 per item, you can have the most thrilling grills till you’re stuffed to your gills: US Black Angus beef tenderloin, US Wagyu beef sirloin center cut, US Wagyu beef striploin, US Wagyu short ribs.

Go ahead and rib it up! But for health’s sake, do add some mean greens to your plate. Order some spinach, asparagus, oyster/shiitake/enoki mushroom, pumpkin, vegetable jelly, hard tofu, or bean sprouts.

Seafood buffs will love the Lobsters Dusokini.

The rice usually comes last, right? But you can always rice to the occasion and have it with your food. There are seafood fried rice, mixed fried rice, kimchi fried rice, and rice omelette. Still not full? Order some noodles — yaki soba or yaki udon.

Things can only get hotter in the Teppanyaki Room as you cap your meal with some flamed desserts over sweet vanilla ice cream.

For only P1,620, you can yakiniku (a hot buzzword, it means grill) all you want. Start off with the assorted appetizers (from fried tofu with tempura sauce to different kinds of sushi), follow this up with egg or wakame soup, and then roll up your sleeves, wipe that silly grin off your face, and get serious as you get ready to grill unlimited servings of the most succulent seafood, the choicest meats, and the freshest vegetables.

Yurakuen’s Nabe Set offers the most succulent seafood and the freshest veggies.

Fret not. The Yakiniku Room is equipped with state-of-the-art vents that provide fresh, clean air for a smoke-free dining experience.

Now, you know why Diamond is a foodie’s best friend.

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Yurakuen Japanese Restaurant is at the ground floor of Diamond Hotel on Roxas Boulevard corner Dr. J. Quintos St., Manila. It is open daily from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. For inquiries and reservations, call 528-3000/305-3000 or e-mail bizcenter@diamondhotel.com; visit www.diamondhotel.com.