December was all about food. January finally rolled around where I tried to get back on track with eating right, going to the gym at lunch and basically going easy on the alcohol. Come February, my favourite Uncle was visiting from Hong Kong. This meant 2 things. Eating heaps, and drinking everything in sight. Thank goodness he's only here for 1 week!
One of the things we always do when my uncle visits is to load up on the seafood. He loves Australian seafood, we decided to go to Yummy Seafood Chinese Restaurant in Beverly Hills. This was a restaurant we've been to quite a few times, and is frequented by my parents and their friends. They were doing a special on lobster, which was the main reason for coming. They fished a 2.7kg lobster out of the tank for us, which we requested to be cooked with stock on a bed of e-fu noodles. We also ordered a few other dishes to go with it.
Peking pork ribs
Our lobster
If you have a closer look, those shreds of white stuff, is actually lobster meat. At first it looked like an eggy sauce was poured on top, but no. That was our $160 lobster meat disintergrating into the sauce. We asked the manager to check with the chef why our lobster was cooked like that. He took one look at it, lifted up a few pieces with a fork and watched it break apart and fall back onto the dish. He runs back to the kitchen and then gets another manager to talk to us.
The senior manager comes up to us and apologises, saying that the chef is really busy tonight rar rar rar.....and (I'm paraphrasing since this was going on all in cantonese) "can we just live with the dish". Excuse me??? "Live with the dish"??? If this was any other dish that cost $30, we wouldn't even have complained. We would've eaten what was good and left the rest. THIS dish was going to cost us close to $160.!We weren't going to just "live with it". We asked if he could cook us another lobster, and he exclaims that he's barely making any money on this lobster as it is! Honestly, if you can't afford to do a special without making a profit, then you shouldn't be doing a special at all. Just because you're doing it at a special price, doesn't mean you can serve us turd. When we told him this was not acceptable, because we're paying for a lobster dish, and we're basically not getting any lobster as everything has disintergrated, he starts yelling "WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT THEN!?".
To be fair, we offered to pay for 50% of the dish. I mean, they did use the lobster, just that they massacred it. Upon hearing this, the manager stood there thinking for about 3 seconds and went "Well, if you're only going to pay for 50%, you might as well not pay!". He yanked the dish off the table and almost throws it at another waiter whilst screaming "THROW THIS IN THE BIN!".
Having worked in a restaurant and knowing heaps of people in the restaurant business, we know its stressful when its busy. But what they brought out to us was a joke. It was clearly not restaurant quality. Even the standard housewife can cook something better at home, it was THAT bad. If Gordon Ramsay was there, he would've throw the plate half way across the restaurant. Heck, after the managers performance, I would've thrown it half way across the room if they didn't take the dish from us. Needless to say, we did not enjoy the rest of our meal one bit. Even when the other dishes came out, we had already lost our appetite to eat. We left most of the food untouched, paid and left.
I can tell you, we won't be back for a VERY long time, and neither will our friends and relatives. And considering the way word spreads, neither will our friend's friends.
To make up for this huge disappointment of a meal, we went home and drank 4 bottles of wine! Woohoo! The only bad thing was that we had to get up early the next day to hit the Sydney Fish Markets. I was definitely going to make up for the seafood debarcle that happened last night!
We get to the Fish Markets for brunch. Having left the restaurant without really eating the night before, being hungover and haven't had breakfast, I got straight into action! We grabbed a table and set off in groups of 2 to buy food!
Part of the spread
2 Doz Sydney Pacific Oysters - served with lemon or Tetsuya oyster dressing
Calamari rings
2 x Oyster mornay and 6 x grilled scallops in half shell
1/2kg salmon sashimi
2 whole crabs
2 whole lobsters
I also grabbed 1/2 kg jumbo king prawns, a packet of abalone sashimi, uni (sea urchin), seaweed salad, grilled barramundi with chips and fish cocktails! This was really for 3 people. My mum ate 1/2 of the barramundi and some seaweed only. My dad had a few fish cocktails and 1/2 a lobster. The rest was shared amongst me, my uncle and aunt! We were so full we almost had to be wheeled out of there! We finished almost everything except 1 crap, the seaweed salad an calamari.
My sister, hearing about our dinner the night before, went out and bought another 2 dozen oysters and a kilo of prawns for our BBQ dinner that night. (Not realising we were going to the fish markets, and the day before my mum had bought 1kg of prawns for snacking on at home!).
Later that night, we headed over to my sisters place for a BBQ. (She had asked if we wanted to BBQ at our place or her place, of course her place I said! No washing up for me afterwards! LoL). We decided to split up the food prep as she had already marinated the chicken and bought the sausages and seafood. Me and my uncle got together to do the red meat. I did a lamb chops with garlic, rosemary and red wine. He marinated the world's BEST pork chops I've ever eaten! I really hate pork chops as I find them dry and tasteless. His pork chops were moist, succulent and melts in the mouth! Oh yum!!
Some of the stuff cooking on the BBQ
I ended up manning the BBQ stove most of the time and didn't really get to take much photos. Here's a few.
Pork and chicken sausages and grilled chicken wings
Grilled garlic prawns - done by my uncle
He also did his favourite garlic oysters!
Close up
Hot damn! These oysters were amazing! He simply put them on the grill in the shells, and DOLLOPED on a heaped teaspoon of chinese crushed garlic. (Lee Kum Kee brand) As the oyster cooks, it bubbles on the grill. When we took them off the grill, the oyster was hot, but still smooth and creamy on the inside. Sooooooo good! And, we didn't have to worry about vampires! lol
One of the things we always do when my uncle visits is to load up on the seafood. He loves Australian seafood, we decided to go to Yummy Seafood Chinese Restaurant in Beverly Hills. This was a restaurant we've been to quite a few times, and is frequented by my parents and their friends. They were doing a special on lobster, which was the main reason for coming. They fished a 2.7kg lobster out of the tank for us, which we requested to be cooked with stock on a bed of e-fu noodles. We also ordered a few other dishes to go with it.
Peking pork ribsOur night was going really well. We were enjoying each other's company, snacking on the ribs whilst watching all the other tables receiving their lobsters. Almost every single table had ordered lobster of some sort. Whether it was cooked or done sashimi style. Then our lobster came out and this is what we got:
Our lobsterIf you have a closer look, those shreds of white stuff, is actually lobster meat. At first it looked like an eggy sauce was poured on top, but no. That was our $160 lobster meat disintergrating into the sauce. We asked the manager to check with the chef why our lobster was cooked like that. He took one look at it, lifted up a few pieces with a fork and watched it break apart and fall back onto the dish. He runs back to the kitchen and then gets another manager to talk to us.
The senior manager comes up to us and apologises, saying that the chef is really busy tonight rar rar rar.....and (I'm paraphrasing since this was going on all in cantonese) "can we just live with the dish". Excuse me??? "Live with the dish"??? If this was any other dish that cost $30, we wouldn't even have complained. We would've eaten what was good and left the rest. THIS dish was going to cost us close to $160.!We weren't going to just "live with it". We asked if he could cook us another lobster, and he exclaims that he's barely making any money on this lobster as it is! Honestly, if you can't afford to do a special without making a profit, then you shouldn't be doing a special at all. Just because you're doing it at a special price, doesn't mean you can serve us turd. When we told him this was not acceptable, because we're paying for a lobster dish, and we're basically not getting any lobster as everything has disintergrated, he starts yelling "WELL WHAT DO YOU WANT THEN!?".
To be fair, we offered to pay for 50% of the dish. I mean, they did use the lobster, just that they massacred it. Upon hearing this, the manager stood there thinking for about 3 seconds and went "Well, if you're only going to pay for 50%, you might as well not pay!". He yanked the dish off the table and almost throws it at another waiter whilst screaming "THROW THIS IN THE BIN!".
Having worked in a restaurant and knowing heaps of people in the restaurant business, we know its stressful when its busy. But what they brought out to us was a joke. It was clearly not restaurant quality. Even the standard housewife can cook something better at home, it was THAT bad. If Gordon Ramsay was there, he would've throw the plate half way across the restaurant. Heck, after the managers performance, I would've thrown it half way across the room if they didn't take the dish from us. Needless to say, we did not enjoy the rest of our meal one bit. Even when the other dishes came out, we had already lost our appetite to eat. We left most of the food untouched, paid and left.
I can tell you, we won't be back for a VERY long time, and neither will our friends and relatives. And considering the way word spreads, neither will our friend's friends.
To make up for this huge disappointment of a meal, we went home and drank 4 bottles of wine! Woohoo! The only bad thing was that we had to get up early the next day to hit the Sydney Fish Markets. I was definitely going to make up for the seafood debarcle that happened last night!
We get to the Fish Markets for brunch. Having left the restaurant without really eating the night before, being hungover and haven't had breakfast, I got straight into action! We grabbed a table and set off in groups of 2 to buy food!
Part of the spread
2 Doz Sydney Pacific Oysters - served with lemon or Tetsuya oyster dressing
Calamari rings
2 x Oyster mornay and 6 x grilled scallops in half shell
1/2kg salmon sashimi
2 whole crabs
2 whole lobstersI also grabbed 1/2 kg jumbo king prawns, a packet of abalone sashimi, uni (sea urchin), seaweed salad, grilled barramundi with chips and fish cocktails! This was really for 3 people. My mum ate 1/2 of the barramundi and some seaweed only. My dad had a few fish cocktails and 1/2 a lobster. The rest was shared amongst me, my uncle and aunt! We were so full we almost had to be wheeled out of there! We finished almost everything except 1 crap, the seaweed salad an calamari.
My sister, hearing about our dinner the night before, went out and bought another 2 dozen oysters and a kilo of prawns for our BBQ dinner that night. (Not realising we were going to the fish markets, and the day before my mum had bought 1kg of prawns for snacking on at home!).
Later that night, we headed over to my sisters place for a BBQ. (She had asked if we wanted to BBQ at our place or her place, of course her place I said! No washing up for me afterwards! LoL). We decided to split up the food prep as she had already marinated the chicken and bought the sausages and seafood. Me and my uncle got together to do the red meat. I did a lamb chops with garlic, rosemary and red wine. He marinated the world's BEST pork chops I've ever eaten! I really hate pork chops as I find them dry and tasteless. His pork chops were moist, succulent and melts in the mouth! Oh yum!!
Some of the stuff cooking on the BBQI ended up manning the BBQ stove most of the time and didn't really get to take much photos. Here's a few.
Pork and chicken sausages and grilled chicken wings
Grilled garlic prawns - done by my uncle
He also did his favourite garlic oysters!
Close upHot damn! These oysters were amazing! He simply put them on the grill in the shells, and DOLLOPED on a heaped teaspoon of chinese crushed garlic. (Lee Kum Kee brand) As the oyster cooks, it bubbles on the grill. When we took them off the grill, the oyster was hot, but still smooth and creamy on the inside. Sooooooo good! And, we didn't have to worry about vampires! lol
