SERYNA

On a rainy Friday evening, my first weekend back, I met good friend (and my wedding dress designer), K, for dinner with her husband C.  I asked her to pick the restaurant and she had narrowed down the choices to two places:  Masseto, a fine dining restaurant which I had heard about, and Seryna, a popular restaurant in the burgeoning area of specialty Japanese restaurants in Makati called "Little Tokyo".  We finally opted for Seryna as it was a more casual place and better for catching up on each other's news without all the fuss of fancy food.

We arrived in Makati Cinema Square where Seryna is located right by the archway labeled Little Tokyo.  There were already several people waiting for tables gathered right outside the entrance and the place was packed, as it usually is.  We settled into our reserved table at the front and watched the hustle and bustle of a busy restaurant where most of the diners were Japanese (a good sign).

I left the ordering up to them and was surprised first at the quantity of food that was set on the table and later at the fact that we did a pretty good job of polishing off most of it.  There was a super fresh sashimi platter with at least four types of fish and squid, an excellent salmon skin roll plus never-before-tasted-dishes like monkfish roe made into a foie-gras like pate and the thinly-sliced octopus over a rice vinegar cucumber salad made sinus-clearingly spicy with a dab of wasabi.  We also shared a spinach, bacon and hard-boiled egg salad, some vegetable tempura and a delicious sukiyaki cooked table side and served with the traditional raw egg.  Slowly but surely, we ate our way through all the food aided by the green tea and ended our meal with some hot sake.  It was great to discover that Manila finally had some quaint and authentic Japanese restaurants bundled up together in one area and especially good to be able to share a delicious meal with friends  I hardly see.  (Next on my list if and when I get back home is the oft-mentioned cult noodle place Ukokkei Ramen Ron.)

____________________________

Seryna

Little Tokyo

2277 Chino Roces Avenue

Makati, Manila

Telephone: +63 2 894 3855

*Open daily for lunch from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.,  Up to 1:30 p.m. only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays

*Open daily for dinner from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m.

*Reservations essential.  Arrive on time or they give your table away to the many waiting outside.