Family Annual Dinner 2014

Year of the Horse is approaching.  Year end family dinner is an important tradition of Chinese.  However due to the busy lives of Hong Kong people, the new year eve family dinner had to compromise with the available dates of the family members.  This year Chinese New Years falls on January 31, but for some reason, we picked the 19th to have our family annual dinner.

As it is an important family gathering, we don't mind to pay a little more to hire a private room and pay the minimum charge.  In fact, we went way beyond the minimum because we want to include as many seafood as possible.  The restaurant has many signature dishes as well as our own favourite picks makes up our own menu.

Almond Juice Pig's Lung Soup 生磨杏汁豬肺湯

with lots of supporting ingredients

Our family is a professional pork dealer and had high demand on the cleaning of pig's lung.  It's not an easy job but the restaurant did make it clean and delicious.  My professional pork dealer brothers gave them a pass.  Personally I think almond juice with pig's lung is quite a new combination and it's really tasty.  As a matter of environmental, we also try to give up shark fin as much as possible.  In fact, many restaurants are removing shark fin from their menu and replace by something delicious and healthy.

BBQ Piglet 即燒乳豬

Another signature dish of the restaurant.  Really crunchy skin and juicy tender meat.  Very well done!

Stir Fried Prawns with Salty Egg Yolk

associated with Garlic Chicken Cubes

金沙蝦球蒜片伴雞球

A relative cheap item on our menu, but delicious, though high cholesterol!

Giant Grouper Dual Style 海龍躉兩味

Stir Fried Meat with Vegetables 碧綠炒球

To control budget, we give up a whole fish.  Meat only with broccoli, healthy and delicious.

Giant Grouper Dual Style 海龍躉兩味

Steamed Head and Bones 果皮蒸頭腩

Although it was head and bones, but there were still lots of meat in it.  Of course we need to deal with bones.  Not sure if Grouper has a difference among sea, river or tank.  The restaurant specified it as a 'sea giant grouper'

Steamed Razor Claims with Garlic and Jelly Noodle

金銀蒜粉絲蒸蟶子王

I had difficulties in looking up an English name for this thing.  I usually call it clam, but there are many species of clams.  Trust Razor Clam is the most appropriate.  Steam with deep fried garlic and fresh garlic, plus jelly noodle, these giant razor clams cost HK$58 each on a la carte menu.  Only this dish would cost over HK$900 as we've ordered 16 of them.

Baked American Barrel Oysters with Ginger and Green Onion

薑葱焗美國桶蠔

This is my favourite pick.  If you ask me to recommend only one dish from this restaurant, I would say barrel oysters.  You may not believe, each of the oysters are half of my palm size.  Imagine oysters usually shrink after cooking and it still maintain that giant size, how amazing!  And when the waitress lifted the lid, the entire room was full of fragrance.  In fact the waitress said it made her hungry too.

Roast Goose 明爐燒鵝皇

This is Chef's recommendation.  As goose is generally larger than chicken, so it was recommended because we had 16 of us.  Well it was nicely roasted.  The goose had lots of meat and not much fat.   We generally have chicken on banquet menu, goose is rarely used.  So we are actually trying something new. Good recommendation.

'Yellow Sand' Pig's Liver with Vegetable in Stock

上湯韮杞浸黃沙膶

This is a Hong Kong old fashion dish.  Nowadays few restaurants serve this dish.  May be people is afraid of the smelly nature of the liver as well as the cholesterol level.  Back to my family again, we are a professional family selling pork, my brothers had high demand in the cooking and preparation of pig's liver.  And due to different quality of the liver, it is specified as 'yellow sand' liver.  We don't know how this name is come up with, but Cantonese believe 'yellow sand' liver is the top quality liver.  Indeed, the liver we had were all 0.5 inches thick, very chewy and al dente.  Wolfberries are believed to be good for eyes and it's usually a good companion with liver and 'kaukai' 韮杞.  This kaukai 韮杞vegetable also caused me difficulties in looking up a proper English name.  Sorry about that.

Mottled Spinefoot Fish Congee 果皮泥鯭粥

Cantonese banquet is usually wrapped up by rice or noodle.  We are trying alternatives as we want to eat as many seafood as possible, because the restaurant we went was highly seafood famous.  In fact I can call this old fashion Hong Kong food as well.  Because it's time and manpower consuming in separating the meat from the bones.  Hence not many restaurants are willing to serve it.  We were quite conservative whether it was really boneless.  That upset the waitress again and she kept emphasis that their shop had never receive any customer complaint of having fish bones in their congee.  After all, we were happy that we didn't find any bones at all.  

This 10-course dinner made us all extremely overloaded, as we booked for 16 and only 14 of us turned up.  Anyway, a super delicious meal although I had to fast for the next 30 hours.  I always demand a reasonable eating environment on top of quality food.  Although we were paying quite a big bill this time, but it really worth it, as we were all happy with the food and the place, as well as the services.

10-course Dinner with Dessert and Fruits for 16 people

HK$5,780

inclusive of food and service charge

Kam Dou Kee Seafood Restaurant 金兜記海鮮菜館

3 Wanchai Road, Hong Kong

Tel:  3907 0878