Sabreen’s Seafood Market Restaurant in Ermita revamps to modern style “paluto” restaurant

Friday, April 01, 2016

The seafood market restaurant located in Ermita, Manila is almost 30 years old. Its one of the most popular restaurant of its time that offers fresh catch to be cooked right away according to your preference. If you ask an old folk who used to work or study in Manila, they might give you some stories about their visit to the old seafood restaurant.

Few months ago, this restaurant was supposed to stop operation. The original owners want to let go and call it quits, but one of their avid customer didn’t let it happen, but instead of allowing it to close down and stop operating, the avid customer w named Maher Daas, a Middle Eastern guy, decided to buy the restaurant and reopen it to cater the old customers and also attract new customers in Manila.

Maher’s plan is to turn that old seafood restaurant into a classy type of restaurant with royalty treatment. He re-modeled all the restaurant interiors, added more staff, and modernized everything so that customers may find comfort and satisfaction when it comes to seafood, and also for the staff to enjoy the new ambiance of the restaurant.

The new restaurant under the new management under Mr. Maher is now called Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant. It was named right after her daughter, Sabreen.

Here’s the original signage and front of Sea Food Market Restaurant, now bearing Sabreen’s name

Inside Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant
Left: the dining area
Right: the fresh catch market

Lobster aquarium at the fresh catch market

The style of Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant is a “paluto” style restaurant,.
It means that you will buy the fresh catch sea food at the wet market inside Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant and then pay for the seafood via weight in grams and then you can request what kind of cooking or recipe you want for the fresh catch. But if you are not sure for the tasty recipe, you can ask the staff to recommend what’s the best recipe for your fish, shirmp, oysters or crabs.

You can shop for seafood, veggies and fruits.

For the mud crabs, they can suggest
- sweet and spicy
- grilled
- with chili sauce
- fried salted pepper

For the lapu lapu fish
- sweet and sour
- grilled
- steamd

The good part here is that there are no service charge or cooking charge (the waiter staff mentioned this to me )

You just have to pay for the seafood that are priced by grams.

The middle section of Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant will open the Philippines’ largest and biggest marine aquarium set up and display inside the restaurant. They say that this will open soon

Also, Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant will have a re-launch event scheduled next month.

Here’s the dining set of Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant
It looks so classy and comfy

They are right, they rebuild the restaurant to give more royalty look and treatment for their customers.

Fresh catch at the market.
Lobsters that will be ready to be cooked as you order.

The counter will weigh and compute for the price of the fresh catch
Then afterwards, the fresh catch will be sent to the kitchen area

My watermelon shake
its my beverage of the day, perfect to beat the heat.
I didn’t ordered a soft drinks, because that might sting my taste buds and fail to taste the real flavor of Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant dishes.

Here are the food that we have on the table.

Clams ginger soup

Its one of my fave soup here at Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant
Its best serve with spicy “sili”

The spicy stinging flavor will add more activation to your taste buds, the heat of the soup, the chili and the aroma of the sea will blend into one.

Clams ginger soup

Mixed Vegetables with Oyster Sauce

Calamares

Sautéed Crab with Black Pepper Sauce

Its not my best of the day, but next time I will prefer for a chili or szechuan recipe.

Pineapple Fried Rice

Fried Shrimp with Chili Sauce

Grilled Salmon w/ Lemon Butter

Super win! I like the salmon meat dipped into the lemon butter.

Steamed Lapu Lapu Fish with Soy Sauce

I grew up with my family having a steamed lapu lapu fish on the table. Its hard to skip this… its one of my favorite dish here at Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant

The fish is so meaty, soft, and tasty. The soy sauce lacks a bit of kick, but I think the restaurant wants you to adjust by adding more soy sauce, and just to avoid turning it too salty.

Baked Scallop

I really enjoyed their baked scallop. Its very important for the resto to cook this well and not over baked. They got the right taste of what I really want for my baked scallop.

Its like a celebration when you dine in at Sabreen’s Sea Food Market Restaurant
If you will estimate a budget to dine here and have 7 kinds of dishes on the table. I suggest bring at least PHP 5000 to cover everything.

It’s a bit pricey, but the best part here is that all sea food are fresh and prepared as you want it.

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