One big combined affair

September is such a hectic month for our family. There's Father's Day, my Mum's birthday, Dad's birthday, my cousin's birthday, my niece's birthday and my birthday amongst a number of other friends birthdays. Me, my dad and my cousin are born within 5 days of each other. Infact, my little cousin is born on the same day as my dad, both in the Gregorian calendar and Lunar Calendar. Apparently that only happens once every 17 years or something.

Since there are so many birthdays so close together, we generally do a combined birthday party thing to celebrate all 3 of our birthdays. So we decided to try a new Chinese Restaurant in Eastwood. I won't name the place because frankly, they don't deserve any advertisement. (You'll find out why later)

Steamed baby abalone and scallop with ginger and shallots

Peking duck in action

Crispy peking duck

Crab and vermicelli hot pot

Everything was going smoothly until now. The crab was alright, except there was about 3times as much noodles as there were crab. And the noodles were way to dry for my liking.

Salt and pepper squid

Salt and pepper soft shell crab

Salt and pepper pork

Yes I know that's a lot of salt and pepper dishes. But since we don't go out to dinner much anymore, when we do, we tend to order dishes the kids love. Which is anything deep fried, and anything salt and pepper. Not that I'm complaining since I LOVE ANYTHING that is salt and peppered. However, these ones were SALT and peppered. As in salt overload. After having a few pieces, I spent the remainder of the night drinking pots and pots of tea nonstop. I kid you not, I had ATLEAST 2 whole pots of tea to myself within 30mins. Infact, I woke up at 2am that night looking for water, and woke up like I had a massive hangover looking for more water. That's how dehydrated I got from the salt.

Remains of our Peking duck

Stir fried green beans with mince and dried shrimp

The minute I saw this dish, I dived straight in. This is something we loved to cook at home. Except this dish was sweet. Not like Thai sweet. I mean SWEET sweet. Like dessert sweet. I had one bite and left the rest of the dish.

Boneless lemon chicken

Another one of the kids favourite dishes from our restaurant days. This definitely did NOT live up to our expectations. They had used so much lemon essence and colouring, the sauce was actually bitter and gluggy.

Steamed barramundi

Complimentry fruit

Complimentry cookies

At this point, we weren't too thrilled about the food. There were some good dishes, and a few that we would definitely not order again. I mean, that's usually the case with all Restaurants. But that really pissed us off was after dinner, we had brought along 2 birthday cakes/tarts. We had to spend 10mins trying to wave a waiter down to get them to bring the cake. And the restaurant wasn't even busy. Less then 4 tables, and we were the biggest table. With 6 waiters, you'd think we'll get some service.

When the waiter rocks up, he brought one cake only. I don't know how he managed that because both cakes were in the same bag. He lights a candle, dumps the cake onto the table and walks off. Another 5mins before we can get any attention to get the 2nd cake, then trying to get our spare candles from them and then trying to get matches. To make things worse, they didn't even bother giving us plates or forks to eat the cake with. We had to go get it ourselves. Lets just say we didn't leave a tip and we won't be going back ever again. The only reason why I'm even blogging about it is because I love the way my photos are turning out with my new flash.

The best thing about the night was the pear and ricotta tart I got as birthday cakes. The pastry was moist and not too crumbly, there were slices of pears that was covered in creamy ricotta, all topped with a crunchy toffee layer, creme brulee style. Not a single person complained about the cake/tart, which is really rare in my family!