One of the many Chinese New Years' traditions is to have a big meal with the family - some make their own dinner, but ours likes to go out and spend it at a noisy restaurant, having a large meal. We're not the only ones, as the restaurant was jam-packed, and likely not following any sort of fire code, as the chairs backed onto one another, with just enough room for people to sit. I've only been here before for dim sum, and while that's ok, it's never been my favourite, but my parents chose this place for the evening.
We'd reserved a table for 7 PM, but still took a while for the wait staff to clear a table and seat us, due to the sheer volume of people in the restaurant. While I generally expect a Chinese restaurant to be noisy during the celebrations, this was a bit nuts, and it was actually a bit hard to get seated due to the number of people. We'd also pre-ordered our meal, which turned out to be a good choice - while many of the dinners were 'set' orders, we actually received our meal fairly quickly in comparison to some tables around us.
My family is notoriously big eaters, so we'd ordered 10 dishes for the 6 of us, including a peking duck, with the duck skin wraps, soup, fried rice, and lettuce wraps, a lightly battered prawn, fish filets on snow peas, sweet and sour pork (hey, we're bananas after all), green beans in black bean sauce, a cold chicken plate, and finally cream sauce lobster and crab on crispy noodles. Yum!
Anyways, I personally thought the duck was a bit scarce compared to other restaurants, yet it made enough wraps for our family, and we ordered extra skins to take care of all of the duck. The soup was decent but nothing special, the lettuce wraps needed something extra to give them a bit more flavour, but the prawns were great - big, and seasoned just right to me. I found the sweet and sour pork also lacking something, but it might have just been me wanting more of it. The green beans were a big portion, especially compared to the other dishes, but it was a nice change of flavours.
We did have to wait a bit between dishes, as the kitchen was pretty busy, and we'd thought the lobster/crab dish was forgotten - but it was just that they were indeed, very busy. It's generally served as one of the first dishes, but for us, it was served last. As I'd already eaten a bowl of fried rice, I was feeling full, but I had to suck it up and try some for the sake of you readers out there. The noodles were crispy where they needed to be, and the sauce was a nice and thick consistency. The crab and lobster were fresh, with the meat coming right off the shell nicely. Well done!
In the end, I'd go back here, though I'd appreciate a much more quiet evening, to see if the quality was better/worse when there are far less customers.
Taste: 7.5 - While I've had better, for the crowd, this was decent
Presentation: 7.0 - Pretty average Chinese food presentation
Ambiance: 4.0 - Noisy, crowded
Service: 6.0 - Got up to get our own napkins, and hot sauce, but they were BUSY
Prices: $10-15 per dish, market price on seafood
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