When I got a text from Cecil about their restaurant, I immediately informed HB but it wasn’t until now that we tried this restaurant for several reasons (not much buzz around the town, closed when we went there past lunch hour and hesitation to try out some restaurant owned by a hotel = maybe not value for money).

Ignorant me, asked our server what Astralis meant and he told us that it was a name of this wine (oh so expensive!  Who dare to drink this? They don’t sell by the glass but by the bottle!).  I do hope this taste good as I do remember that price of a wine does not equate to a good tasting wine and of course, this is not applicable to every wine lover.

Astralis also means star.  I guess it is one of those names of a star.  Funny, I thought it meant Heart or something related to love because of the bread plate and the cloth design of the chair.  So much for my thoughts! Pfft!

Complimentary bread (Foccaccia bread with olives, sundried tomato and sea salt bread) served with butter.  The bread and butter was not a match.  The waiter took our suggestion that it is best paired with sauce such as pesto or balsamic vinaigrette with olive oil and surprisingly, our server smilingly served us with these!  Hope they’ll serve these instead of the butter.  Nice service!  Service deluxe as if you were dining at Diamond Hotel.

Baked double-broiled mushroom soup (P220+)

I was excited to try this out.  The phyllo sheets made it more exciting…but it kinda went downhill…the moment I got to taste it.  Buhuhuhu…it lacked the mushroom taste…I would have expected it to be tasty since it was even double broiled…maybe because the actual mushroom used was not of good quality.  After sipping more of the soup, HB said it tasted like monggo (bean) soup minus a hint taste of mushroom.

Sato-san’s Japanese Mentaiko Spaghetti (P460 +) spicy cod roe, nori on cream sauce.

I loved this pasta especially with nori which adds character to the dish (We asked if we could have extra nori because as you can see, it was gone after we took our forks into our mouth the 1st time).  This pasta reminded me of my younger years when I used to love cream-based pasta.  I was not yet mindful of what it would do to my body but now,  I’ve changed my preference to tomato-based pasta.  Although, I still eat the rich-based pasta on an occassional days.  The spiciness  from the cod roe was just right.  I was secretly hoping they could’ve added more!

I wish I was a good and well-practiced cook so I’ll know that this pasta was easy to make!  We’ve been had!  Wondering how I knew?  Check Chubby Hubby’s recipe on this Mentaiko pasta…I like his version of soft-boiled egg to add richness (as if the cream and mayo are not enough!).

Btw, would you know where I can buy good mentaiko?  Japanese stores?  And then I’ll add nori (I love eating nori when I was still a kid!  And it is just now that I realized it has nutritional benefits — high in fibre, vitamins, protein and minerals. It also  provides calcium and iron, strengthens the circulatory system and help lower cholesterol.) and the japanese mayo in my cart!

Chicken stuff with gorgonzola, mozzarella, and stilton (P390+) with mashed potatoes and grilled zucchini.

Trio cheese!  Nice combi.  Enjoyed every bite of the chicken where the cheese was generously spread.  Tasty!  Only complaint was the size of the chicken…Usually for the price, we’d have a quarter of a chicken.  Oh well, no can do so we just cleaned off the plate!

It was also a good decision not to order the dessert (not that I was not tempted by their Le Royale!) because we got 2 bags of dark chocolate chip cookies from Astralis (It was trick or treat day at Rockwell.).  It was yummy!  We finished it off before we can leave some pieces for AD.

If you want to try new stuff, maybe you’d like to indulge yourself a little bit…Astralis is offering wine and raclette buffet on Mondays and Thursdays.  Time to unwind especially these days!

Astralis by Diamond Hotel

R1-144 Lopez Drive

Powerplant Rockwell Center

+632.703.2688

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 4:08 pm and is filed under Outing, Food Trips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.