A few weeks ago, we were invited to lunch at Sabreen’s Seafood Market Restaurant along J. Bocobo St. in Malate. It is located just across from Hizon’s. Parking is available in front (free), but is limited. They have a guard who can watch over your car.
Sabreen’s Seafood Market Restaurant is newly-renovated from the previous Seafood Market, and is under new management. The current owner was a regular customer who decided to take over when the previous owner planned to sell.
When I entered Sabreen’s, I couldn’t believe such a nice restaurant existed in the heart of Malate. The decor is very luxurious for a “palutuan” – with velvet chairs and Mediterranean touches, and a COOL AIRCON, a definite must in the Manila heat!
SABREEN’S SEAFOOD MARKET RESTAURANT INTERIORS
There is a very nice waiting area that greets you when you enter:
Once you enter the restaurant, on the right, you’ll see the seafood display section where you can pick out what you would like to have cooked:
Here’s what the restaurant interiors look like:
Some Mediterranean touches inside the restaurant:
You can watch your food being cooked — see through windows to the kitchen:
FOOD “SHOPPING”
After reserving a table, we went “shopping” for our food:
Here’s Stacy of Tsinoyfoodies.com posing with our “grocery cart” 
Live crab giving me the eye:
Ringing up our orders:
The meal was a treat so I don’t know how much our orders came out to. There is generally no cooking charge, except for maybe special orders. You are charged the price of the seafood you buy, the cooking is already included in the seafood price.
THE FOOD
We started with the Clam Ginger Soup. It was light and clean tasting, a perfect start to our seafood fiesta.
We also ordered some Baked Scallops:
For some semblance of healthy eating, we had this Mixed Vegetables with Oyster Sauce, which was actually quite good. It was smoky yet delicately flavored, I didn’t even mind that it was vegetarian and ate a lot of this.
Here’s Grilled Salmon with Lemon Butter Sauce:
One of my favorites is this Fried Squid. I think it was Salt & Pepper Squid. It had a light batter, the squid was cooked just right, it was tender and not tough. It went really well with the accompanying vinegar.
My other favorite dishes were the Fried Shrimp in Chili Sauce and the Crab in Chili Sauce. The sweet meat of the perfectly cooked crab was addictive. I wish I could have eaten more of the shrimp, too, but they were gone in 60 seconds! 
We also ordered the Pineapple Fried Rice, which had A LOT of pineapple chunks 
which was okay with me, but others who didn’t like pineapple so much thought that it was too much pineapple.
Here’s the Steamed Lapu-Lapu. The Lapu-lapu was alive just a few minutes ago and was even jumping around in our cart! I have a thing about overcooked steamed fish and this was not overcooked. Awesome. Fresh, fresh, fresh! Since no one seemed interested in them, I ate the fish cheeks and fish meat at the back of the fish head, the yummiest parts, IMHO. If you know how to eat steamed fish, you know what I’m talking about!
It’s just not so pretty because they made a slit on the fish to make it cook more evenly and avoid overcooking.
SUMMARY
During the course of our meal, we saw a lot of foreigners patronizing the restaurant, so I think it is a good place to take relatives or foreign guests for a seafood meal if you don’t want to venture too far, especially if they are staying in the Malate / Manila area. It is also a very nice place for a family meal, and it’s big enough to accommodate the entire clan. Sabreen’s is also much cleaner than going seafood shopping at Dampa. You can wear your nice clothes / shoes and not worry about getting palengke gunk on them.
The renovations were done very well – the place looks like a palace! The food is fresh, especially if you go for the live fish, crabs or lobsters! The experience of choosing your food at a restaurant before it is cooked is usually a unique experience for most people, and it’s something that your guests will remember for a long time. Also, I’m all praises for the cooks who turned out such delicious, mouthwatering dishes so quickly! I was happy with all the food we had. Even the simple vegetable dishes were perfectly done.
Sabreen’s Seafood Market Restaurant
1190 J. Bocobo St., Malate, Manila
For reservations: +632 521 4351 or +632 524 5761
Hours: Mon-Sun, 11:30 AM – 10:30 PM
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seafoodmarketandrestaurant/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seafoodmarketresto/
