Aqua Terra

While chatting about aqua terra’s evolution during the years since my last visit, Ken guided my dining companion, Celia, and I through our dinner selection. Although the menu may curve towards an Asian flair, with a bit of scrutiny you will find a delightful fusion of other world specialties.

We began with a pot sticker of pulled duck, blue cheese, and green onions, served with an unagi sauce; this was a perfect selection and set the tone for this adventure. For our second “small plate,” as called on the menu, the surf and turf roll brought a delicious blend of tender shrimp, steak, and avocado as delicately wrapped with sushi rice and served with that tantalizing unagi sauce.

For a refreshing course, we choose a trendy dish: the wedge salad, featuring a crisp, fresh wedge of baby iceberg lettuce, accompanied by fresh grape tomatoes, smokey bacon, red onions, and wonderful blue cheese, all laced in a Cabernet buttermilk dressing. This was scrumptious.

Moving to our main entrees, we enjoyed the salmon, which looked very appetizing in its menu description, and was actually better on the plate. It was perfectly seared, cooked through, succulent, and served over a bed of wilted spinach and shitake mushrooms, then delicately drizzled with a lemon cream sauce. Oh, it was a delectable mouthful with every bite. Fish was definitely on our minds that evening as Ken described a very interesting whole fried rockfish. The fish was marinated prior to cooking with a subtle essence of herbs, and then deep fried. The fish stays extremely moist and the meat was absolutely delicious. It was nicely accompanied on a bed of light stir fry and steamed rice. And the serving was extremely copious.

After entrees, we were very satisfied, but you know about my sweet tooth so we went ahead and shared a well-known dessert: That Banana Thing, which is a banana lumpia (aqua terra style), wrapped in a very thin wonton type skin, deep fried, and served over vanilla ice cream with chocolate and caramel sauces and walnuts. What a treat!

Banana lumpia, or Turon, is a traditional Philippine dessert, made of thinly sliced bananas (preferably ripe plantains), a slice of jackfruit, dusted with brown sugar, rolled in a papery wrapper and fried. Brown sugar is further added while frying for additional sweetness.

On the wine side, Celia enjoyed a wonderful Angove’s Red Belly Black Shiraz with great body with a voluptuous aroma. And looking at the menu, I found it to be very elegant, straight forward, and with good selection.

Though, overall, we did have an Eastern flair to our dinner selection, aqua terra offers an elegant and sensational variety of other very tempting selections such as Paella, steaks, seafood, and more. If you are a Martini lover you will also enjoy a fantastic list of exotic and classic concoctions. But quite honestly, this great evening would have not been complete without the friendliness and care of Ken and Di. And at the conclusion of our meal, Celia whispered in my ear, “That’s one of my favorite now.” Enjoy!