My cousin got married

and I ate every single animal on earth that night. Well, no...but a lot.

Also, my mother got drunk and heckled the speech-makers and also stood up and started singing for no reason.

*SHAME*

The food was good, better than usual wedding fare. Typical banquet, Canto-wedding style. Nothing to OMG about, wasn't the best quality, but it wasn't bad either. You know what I mean.
The menu. The first item says "Suckling pig platter."

Condiments. Don't think I didn't eat those chilis on their own for no reason. My second uncle, who is a doctor was sitting next to me, cringing.

The suckling pig platter. Served cold, on top of jelly fish.

Fried crab-claw. Very child-friendly. Basically, the crab meat has been diced with fish until it forms a glutinous paste and then it is deep fried and served with a sweetened chili sauce. Meh.
A waste of stomach space, and seafood if you ask me. But this is what everyone seemed to enjoy.

Sauteed scallops with macadamias. This is my dad's plate. By the time they divided it all into plates, mine didn't have much to go on it. That clump is a "bird's nest," read: deep-fried vermicelli. I think this was a great, subtle dish. Well cooked. I didn't add chili oil to everything I ate because I usually reserve that for dishes more to the north. Cantonese flavours are so damn subtle, and they want you to taste EVERYTHING, especially the quality of seafood.
Shark fin soup. The funny thing about this is that usually assholes order this at Flower Drum and end up picking out all of the shark-fin. This was one of the better dishes, made from stock of the crab shells. Great with white pepper and vinegar.
After this, generally, the bridal party go around and cheers everyone.
This also meant making my uncle scull half a bottle of wine at his friend's table.

This is not tea.

A fuckload of lobster.

Mine. With spring onions and ginger. Perfectly cooked. Very generous with their portions. I was already full half way through this and had to pretty much surrender two-thirds of everything else I ate to my parents. They're very much anti-waste.

Oh, and we totally use knives and forks, too. It ain't all just chopsticks.

My favourite dish of the evening. Braised abalone and sea cucumber. Rich, full of flavour and the abalone had the perfect bite to it. Unfortunately they probably threw the sea cucumber in at the same time as the abalone, so it was softer than what I would have liked. Texturally, a well balanced dish.
But, notice already how unethical this meal is?
Also, by this stage, the poor waitress caught on and looked for me to take photos before she would start serving everything.

Steamed Coral Trout with spring onions and ginger. Oh, and token coriander. Usually served with a watered-down, sweetened soy and sizzling oil. You really can't fuck this up.
I also had to keep telling my mum it wasn't a big barramundi. Like, seriously. This big??? Oh, and it was written on the menu.
My share. Lacking in fish, but at this point I didn't care, I usually fish for all the garnish anyways. No pun intended. Probably a little undercooked for this type of fish.
What bird is this?
Faces. Looky, looky. My grandmother was fighting over the crunchy heads with my dad.

It's pigeon.
And it is delicious. In the foreground, a salt and pepper mix.
This is a dish of two rice things baked in one. Very HK cafe. Not my kind of food. Chicken and tomato on one side, and a prawn, pea and cream sauce on the other.
I have no idea why this was there.
E-fu (wheat based) noodles with mushrooms. From what I saw, shittake and enoki. Loved it even though I only had one bite.
And the desserts. Coconut and evil marshmallow. Really, the black side was like, "Oh, I think we will trick them with making half of the marshmallow taste like charcoal."
"BRILLIANT!"
Yeah, I tricked a lot of people into eating that even though I was slightly traumatised with that flavour lingering in my mouth.
And those orange things, a flakey pumpkin cookie pastry encasing lotus-seed paste. Surprisingly not as sweet as they look. But then again, I only had one bite.

And my bro-in-law and my sister being suspicious and enthused about the gifts on the table. It's unisex despite the packaging.
Yeah, soap. Seriously.
Trust doctors to give everyone soap.
"Fuck you, Kylie Kwong. Bao's with chopsticks? Fuck that, I eat prawn crackers with chopsticks...BIATCH!"
My uncle didn't really say that, but that is what I thought when he started doing this.

The joint. Gold Leaf or some shit.

Weddings are so exhausting.

Retrieved

Good friends come through with the goods.

It appears that I left my camera at my friend's place and they returned it to me. I am so lucky that this is actually a friend and not some dirty hipster claiming to be my friend who would steal it or try to swap it for drugs.

I'm just saying...


So, with collaboration with my sister's photos...here is the damn birthday banquet that was actually good. My crazy grandfather who is also a gambling addict must have come through with a good week, because when we finished the meal, he just threw a few hundred dollars on the table and hobbled down the stairs. Oh, he's 95 and on a pension, I sat there, swapping looks with my sister because we've seen him throw two hundred dollars down on a table and loose it in one game, and rejoin us.

He's a strange man.

We ended up going to No 1 Cafe, on Carrington st in Box Hill. They recently bought out a place called No 1 cafe and changed them name in Chinese but kept the English name so they wouldn't have to pay legal fees.
They specialize in seafood and are a true sign of being dodgy Asians...the ones I like to cook for me.

Oh, yeah....

We ordered the six person banquet because my grandfather wanted crab.
Yeah, he's crazy and amazing.

I also learnt during this dinner that he was a butcher in HK. I want to take him meat shopping with me and he's become so much more valuable.

It explains why he always catches pigeons on his window sill, kills them and then cooks them...


The waitress serving the first course. A gingery soup with pigs intestine, bean curd roll and gingko nuts. The broth was made from the pork bones being stewed for hours and it was amazing.

I would say the best dish of the night...if you could call this a dish.


Soup lined up on the lazy Susan.

I am still confused about why it is called that.

Gingko nut. I have never encountered a whole stewed one before, it is incredibly rich and has the texture of egg yolk.
I am addicted.


Next up, the steamed oysters, served two ways. One with garlic and the other with a ginger and spring onion mush.

I loved the garlic one, but I found the ginger and spring onion with oil overpowered the oyster, which was very fucking good. The oil in it was also a little much.
I remember my brother-in-law's mother buying great oysters from Box Hill market...so, woot.

Then, the crab dish. Crab cooked in a ginger sauce and served on top of fresh egg noodles. Always a winner, and it was perfectly cooked.
I deliberately didn't eat that much crab though and fought for more of the crab roe in the head of the crab. It is my favourite part.
My only complaint with this dish is that they put too much corn flour in the sauce and made it too gluggy. Not good when your dish cools down a little and you're facing a starchy road ahead.

My second favourite for the night. This is the mixed mushrooms on bak choi. Abalone mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, enoki mushrooms, straw mushrooms and shittake mushrooms cooked till they kept their bite in a savoury oyster-sauce based gravy. Perfectly textured with the steamed rice.

This is basically a whole deep fried chicken rubbed in five-spice, chopped up for a heart attack.

Because I don't normally eat fried things, I found this really heavy and difficult to get through, if not tasty. My sister ended up finishing off my chicken skin.
It wasn't greasy, and was good, but my insides weren't used to it.
It also seemed a little dry when eaten with the rice.

And finally, a steamed barramundi with spring onion and ginger in soy sauce, which has had hot oil poured over it. One of my favourites, and very easy to make. It can never go wrong, especially when they fish it out of a tank in the front window.

And I took it apart for everyone to eat the flesh. I had given up way before this, but my sister persevered with my father.
I wanted to take a photo of its skeleton, fins and head all attached, but my grandfather grabbed the head before I could take a photo and started eating it.
My father sucked all the flesh off the bones.

Yeah, we're uber-Asian.

No 1 Cafe
1 Carrington St
Box Hill, 3128

(03) 9898 9680