Restaurant Review – Huiyona – CLOSED

Update: This restaurant is now closed!

I saw this restaurant for the first time when I went to Tidbit Bistro in January this year. The name captured me instantly and I wanted to go back and check it out. I came home, looked up for Huiyona and found out that it was a “relatively” new restaurant at that time – opened some time in June 09. Huiyona , pronounced Hee-YAWNA, is owned by Rachel and Mark Apuyan and Huiyona is Rachel’s birth name. The cuisine is very global with an Asian influence to it. Going into the restaurant felt like going in through a tunnel. But after the entry way is a lounge like place and then the bar and then three rooms for dining, one behind the other with small archways separating them. Each dining area had only 5 tables in each and altogether it felt very warm and cozy – a perfect first date kinda place.

As always I had already gone through the menu before going to the restaurant and I knew what to order. The menu has tapas like small plates and entree sized big plates too. We thought of trying out a whole bunch of things from the small plates section. We started with the Seasonal Soup ($7)- A Puree of roasted kabocha and pumpkin, garnished with goat cheese crumbles, 5 spice and chive oil. It had this wonderfully creamy texture and was on the sweeter side. AJ ordered the Shrimp Toast ($7) – Shrimp, water chestnuts and chives on top of a sourdough bread slice toasted golden brown and the Steamed Pork Buns ($8) – House-made steamed buns, crispy pork belly, hoisin glaze, cilantro. He didn’t particularly like the shrimp toast but the pork buns, even though they looked pretty normal were delicious – the meat ever so tender and there just was something in it that made every mouthful very juicy and bursting with flavors! Sorry about the really unfocused picture of the shrimp toast. I went for the Sweet Corn Pot stickers ($7) – Corn filled dumplings tossed with olive oil, thai basil and balsamic reduction and the Lumpia ($7) – Filipino style egg-roll. Ground pork, shiitake mushrooms, carrots, shallots and served with a citrus sweet chili sauce – minus the pork. There are very few things which even after a month after I ate it I will still remember the taste – it has to be that good! The sweet corn pot stickers were just that. Im not a big fan of balsamic vinegar but the reduction totally did it to me. I think i may give balsamic vinegar another try. The lumpia was just ordinary – nothing great, nothing bad either. To finish it off, we had a Tres Leches Cake. I don’t remember how much it cost as they don’t have a dessert menu and the waitress just told us what all they had for the night. The cake was really good, but only the side of it were nice and moist. As we dug into the cake it had not absorbed the tres leches (the three milk) that well. Probably the “authentic” ones are supposed to be like that but we like ours soaked right all the way through. What AJ said at this point was one of the best complements ever – he said that the Tres Leches I made once was way better than this one. Overall we had a good night at Huiyona. Some of the food was great, some not so much. The ambience was awesome and the service was also above average. Prices were great too. But nothing about the food totally popped out, so I am not very sure about going there again. But we still might – you never know!