It’s been crazy in Vancouver these days. The local team, the Vancouver Canucks, is playing for the championships of the Stanley Cup, the highest award all teams aspire for in the extremely exciting and nerve-wracking game of hockey.

If you think basketball is exciting, watch this sport with a team you’re cheering for. The game is so fast, at times a goal is scored and you don’t even see how it happened. I just watch the fans sometimes to know that when I see them roar and raise their hands, a goal has just been scored. No wonder a lot of fans end up in the hospital from extreme tension.

Roberto Luongo is the goalie and the biggest star of the Canucks team. Every time Luongo makes a save, the whole coliseum shouts “Loooooo!” Whenever I hear this, my mind flies back to Manila, to a fairly new restaurant at Rockwell in Makati.

Lu opened its doors not too long ago and has begun reaping raves. The place really has no particular type of cuisine, but if I were to give it my verdict, I’d say it leans toward Middle Eastern cooking and some comfort food mixed in.

When we went there, we started off with a nice refreshing peach juice. We then ordered a few mixed appetizers that I thought were very interesting. We had Yucatan pulled pork puri, which are tender strips of pork with sour garlic sauce; beef empanadas with pepper sauce, which oozed with herb aroma; and Chicken cuapao served with steamed buns with sweet soy chicken. All of these are worth trying.

I also had the truffled mac and cheese, but felt it needed more work.

Then we shifted to the mostly Moroccan-inspired main dishes. Merguez, as I know it, is a spicy lamb sausage with a lot of paprika. Served on crusty baguette, I would have this with Dijon mustard while walking the streets of St. Michel on the left bank of Paris.

Favorite part

I love merguez. Here, Lu served it with lentils, chickpeas, tender chunks of lamb with some angel hair pasta. My favorite part of lamb is the shank. At Lu, the lamb shank was served in an unusually white-colored sauce made with dill and yogurt. On the side, it had vermicelli and flavored basmati rice. The flavors were great.

I love my shank almost falling of the bone. Another dish I was eyeing was the apricot and prune Moroccan lamb stew. Interesting to see fried Hainanese chicken and turmeric chicken, too. There were many others on the menu, but my tummy could only take so much.

For dessert, we were served lemon glazed yogurt cheesecake that was light, creamy and delightful. Loved it. Something that looked so simple but would attract any kid was the peanut butter-and-jelly tart. With this, I remember the food critic in the movie “Ratatouille,” whose one bite on a dish brought him back to his childhood. That’s what this dish did to me.

I plan to do a MacArthur and try the other interesting-looking dishes. Ask the pretty lady owner to recommend.

No matter what happens in the Stanley Cup finals, I will always remember the other version of Luuuu!

Happy eating!

Lu is at G/F, Joya Bldg., Koya Drive at Rockwell in Makati; tel. 4033991.