I went to a Chinese New Year banquet with BT, Terence & Catherine last nite (Saturday nite) at Shangrila Restaurant in Sunnybank. The banquet was organised by Catherine's cousin Sue, who invited her workmates (a mixture of Caucasians, Oriental Asians & Indians), & brought along her partner Ken. The place is new, & it's actually my first time at the restaurant. Terence said he's been there for yum cha, & he found it rather good. He suggested we have yum cha there one day, & I agreed.
The banquet cost $60 per head. The food was ok; I'd say definitely passable, but not absolutely great & nothing that is really out of this world. One good thing I can say was that the portions were quite decent, certainly enough to go around. In fact, we were full at the end of the dinner. Sue doggy bagged the leftovers. Overall, the night was pretty satisfactory.
The restaurant was big & bright, & the furnishing seem quite posh. It so happened that half of the place was sealed off for the night for a wedding reception dinner. Our half was quite noisy, thanks to patrons from the other tables. The patrons at the tables behind me had their own Chinese NY dinner; there was a speech given by a lady before presents were given out (which made it look like Christmas). There was also a table distantly to my left where the men were boisterously toasting a few glasses; one elderly guy in particular looked like he had a bit too much wine. Overall, the atmosphere sounded like a Hong Kong fish market. Not that I had any issues with that.
Some dishes were definitely nicer than others. I particularly liked:
the sashimi (consumed with wasabe & kikoman/soy sauce);
the soup with various ingredients (including mushroom, dried scallop, quail eggs);
the roast duck (always love duck);
the steamed fish, "7 stars" cod (so tasty with the gravy).
For dessert, we had a fruit platter consisting of watermelon, rockmelon & longan, & a Taiwanese-style ice kacang (though decent, it's not as nice as Malaysian ice kacang, in my biased opinion coz I'm from Malaysia).
As for the other dishes:
the seafood resembling mussels (maybe it was in fact mussels) was not bad;
noodles with lobster was ok if a bit bland - not excessively tasty;
ginger shallot scallop did not tickle my fancy;
sea cucumber & mushroom abalones also did not tickle my fancy;
the chilli salt pepper mud crabs were ok, but a bit underwhelming & not fantastic - couldn't really taste the crab.
The biggest disappointment was that the soup was missing shark fin. It was meant to be included in the soup, & I had been so looking forward to it. Make no mistake, I actually liked soup, but wished they could have also included shark fin.
Anyway, below are some pictures of the dishes I liked. I will put all the pics (the ones below & others I took) up on Multiply when I have the chance.
sashimi - very nice arrangements
the soup
roast duck - just look at that!
steamed fish, "7 star" cod - so tasty, especially in that gravy
The banquet cost $60 per head. The food was ok; I'd say definitely passable, but not absolutely great & nothing that is really out of this world. One good thing I can say was that the portions were quite decent, certainly enough to go around. In fact, we were full at the end of the dinner. Sue doggy bagged the leftovers. Overall, the night was pretty satisfactory.
The restaurant was big & bright, & the furnishing seem quite posh. It so happened that half of the place was sealed off for the night for a wedding reception dinner. Our half was quite noisy, thanks to patrons from the other tables. The patrons at the tables behind me had their own Chinese NY dinner; there was a speech given by a lady before presents were given out (which made it look like Christmas). There was also a table distantly to my left where the men were boisterously toasting a few glasses; one elderly guy in particular looked like he had a bit too much wine. Overall, the atmosphere sounded like a Hong Kong fish market. Not that I had any issues with that.
Some dishes were definitely nicer than others. I particularly liked:
the sashimi (consumed with wasabe & kikoman/soy sauce);
the soup with various ingredients (including mushroom, dried scallop, quail eggs);
the roast duck (always love duck);
the steamed fish, "7 stars" cod (so tasty with the gravy).
For dessert, we had a fruit platter consisting of watermelon, rockmelon & longan, & a Taiwanese-style ice kacang (though decent, it's not as nice as Malaysian ice kacang, in my biased opinion coz I'm from Malaysia).
As for the other dishes:
the seafood resembling mussels (maybe it was in fact mussels) was not bad;
noodles with lobster was ok if a bit bland - not excessively tasty;
ginger shallot scallop did not tickle my fancy;
sea cucumber & mushroom abalones also did not tickle my fancy;
the chilli salt pepper mud crabs were ok, but a bit underwhelming & not fantastic - couldn't really taste the crab.
The biggest disappointment was that the soup was missing shark fin. It was meant to be included in the soup, & I had been so looking forward to it. Make no mistake, I actually liked soup, but wished they could have also included shark fin.
Anyway, below are some pictures of the dishes I liked. I will put all the pics (the ones below & others I took) up on Multiply when I have the chance.
sashimi - very nice arrangements
the soup
roast duck - just look at that!
steamed fish, "7 star" cod - so tasty, especially in that gravy
No comments:
Post a Comment