Mom's 80-4th Birthday.

We celebrated my mom's 80-4th birthday yesterday (one day early). Minus 4 because even though her passport says she's now 80, her chronological age is, we guess, 76. In those frantic days when families scrambled out of China, documents were left behind and somehow mistakes were made when they registered in their new countries. And so we had a small dinner at Royal China. Mom had wanted it at the new restaurant Shikei, but the lighting is very poor there and deemed unfestive for such an occasion.

We started out with a soup that's now not considered morally correct to eat so forget about the picture. I must profess I do love sharks' fins soup and see no difference between killing fish for their fins and their meat because according to sources, the sharks are killed and then their fins harvested, not the other way around. I also agree that there's a biasness here because sharks are killed for their meat in many western countries.


Crab mornay in shells
Although this tasted good, I didn't taste any crabmeat in it and it was a little too sugar-sweet for me.


Peking duck

I asked that the Peking duck be served with some meat on. Duck skin was crispy and the meat tasty.I always find it such a waste to just eat the skin and then the meat is served all minced up and over-seasoned and over-fried for the lettuce-wrap dish. I would've preferred the traditional pancakes than crepes.

Steamed black cod

I can never get enough of this!

Mitzi spareribs

Sticky, sweet and tasty but a bit too meaty for some of the guests.

Abalone, fish maw, sea cucumber and greens

Disappointing. The abalone was cut so thin and smothered in the too-sweet sauce, the sea cuke was tasteless (because it was plain boiled, not stewed) so it doesn't justify the cost of this dish.

Tiger prawns with sambal floss

This came steamy hot and the prawns were fresh.

Long-life noodles

Again I found the sauce too sugar-sweet and there was a slight ammonia stink in the noodles.

I made an over-dressed fresh cream cake to fit the occasion.

Turned out it was my FIL's 79th birthday according to the Roman calender. The peach baos with lotus paste filling is a traditional dessert for old folks celebrating their birthdays because the peach denotes a long life. Forget about ordering these if your folks celebrate their birthday at Royal China - these baos were dry and chewy.

Somebody's (guess who?) hiding in the picture because he turned red drinking too much champagne.
Overall rating for Royal China's banquet set? Overprized and could've been better...