When friends come visiting and ask, “What’s new?” what they really mean is, “Where’s new?”

The great megacity of Manila being what it is, what they want to know is where’s a new place to eat? I volunteer a short list, not only because this space is brief but also because I don’t want to be embarrassed.

Mabuhay Palace is the latest, newest, grandest Chinese restaurant in all of Metro Manila, bar none, and it’s right in the center of the Manila Hotel. A striking combination of traditional Chinese styles – in red and gold accented with jade screens and other treasured objects of antiquity – with touches of functional Western design, it presents the cuisines of Szechuan and Hongkong on a silver platter. Opened last December, it is unabashedly the jewel in the crown of The Manila. To quote Mayor Fred Lim, what a beautiful place for the beautiful people!

In Makati, a French-Filipino couple has been cooking and serving French food in their charming La Cabane on Pasay Road for the last three years (but I’ve just discovered it, so it’s new to me). Proof that the food is authentic French? French people eat there. Proof that the taste agrees with Filipinos? Because Evelina Perdrix is 100 percent Pinay, and she’s the chef patron. (Translation: Don’t mess with her and her recipes.) A place as casual as this can only produce enchanting salads, each with its own lighthearted dressing.

Horoscope fans will be entertained by the Shangri-la Makati’s astrological lunches at its Red restaurant. What a refreshing twist, to know that one can eat according to one’s planetary configurations and aspirations and come out feeling on top of the cosmos. Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Sagittarius, and Capricorn, the rest of the year is yours to feast on.

What’s very, very new at the Shang is its ballroom, a renovation that cost R50 million and resulted in a fairy-tale-like setting, producing constellations of starlight amid sparks of crystal. The incredible light-ness of being is partly an effect of mirrors and glass.