MANILA -- “Forever yum!” is the tagline of newcomer, Yumchee, a homegrown Chinese fastfood restaurant from the Kenji-tei restaurant group.
Yumchee aims to bring the quality food at affordable prices at its flagship branch in Bonifacio Stopover in Taguig City.
“Yumchee is a play of words. Yum for delicious, chee is a play on Chinese. This is about good Chinese food for the people,” explained Richard Co, one of the owners of Yumchee.
While they have several categories – congee, set meals, dimsum, etc. -- Yumchee has a limited number of items per category. For example, the dimsum menu has only seven items from the surely popular pork shrimp siomai, fried wanton, and their version of the BBQ pork buns, which was like a sweet asado bun.
I particularly liked the Beancurd Shrimp Roll, which came to the table tightly wrapped and glistening, and when bit on had plump and juicy shrimp inside, very filling with a bit of dipping sauce. All dimsum come at a flat rate of P85, so it’s fairly easy to try all seven with a big enough group.
Congee and noodles are quintessentially Chinese, and Yumchee has four kinds of congee, as well as noodle soups. At 159 per bowl, one can get congee with pork meatballs or fish fillet, but why not try their Pork with Century and Salted Egg Congee? The century and salted egg combination gave an interesting umami-flavor to the bowl, I had a moment that I thought I was eating goto.
Or if you’re looking for something healthier, try the Mixed Seafood Congee which had clean flavors of shrimp and squid. Congee orders come with fried breadsticks (airy fried pieces of bread), and eating or dunking these with the congee is really the way to go.
Noodles are also priced at P159 per bowl, with the sure crowd-pleaser Beef Brisket and Wanton. Yumchee has firm noodles and a nice portion of toppings of meat in it.
Surely a hit with the office workers in nearby buildings, the set meals are priced at P199 and includes a main dish and a side. Sides included steamed rice and soup, or even stir-fried noodles and soup.
Eight choices of main dishes are available, including the Sweet and Sour Pork, which had a really nice sweet-sour taste, with the meat’s fried breading still crispy. One of the bestsellers is the Chicken Chop, a fried deboned chicken which had a pleasant fry to it, great crispy breading.
Interesting main dish choices also include citrusy Orange Chicken (same saucing/cooking treatment as sweet and sour but with orange), Chinese Adobo (which tasted like humba with that anise asado flavor), and Black Pepper Beef (beef in pepper gravy sauce with red bell peppers).
For dessert or a snack, Yumchee has shaved ice bowls. And for P78 you have your choice of two toppings from mango, grass jelly, black pearl, strawberry, kiwi, peach and lychee. Table favorites included the grass jelly-lychee or the mango-strawberry combination.
Alternatively, one could also get an order of the fried breadsticks for P58, and choose either a chocolate or caramel dip for P20.
Eat with sips of their specialty drinks. The iced lemon tea would go great with almost everything in the menu, and instead of dessert, why not opt for the iced milk teas?
With the most expensive dish in the menu at P199, Yumchee is gearing towards stamping their own brand of “premium fast food” in the extremely competitive Filipino fast-food industry, starting with Bonifacio Global City.
source: www.abs-cbnnews.com
