First of all major apologies to my (very few) loyal readers because somehow or other I've not had the time to update my blog. I've got quite a backlog to clear so let me start with those items that are time critical in nature.
A few days back I had 2 buffet meals over a span of 3 days. I know I mentioned sometime back about how I don't want to be in a buffet anytime in the near future but one was free and the one I'm going to talk about today looked very tempting when it was advertised in the papers.
Tang Palace Chinese Restaurant in Dynasty Hotel is having an all you can eat promotion this month (April... ending soon) whereby for RM32++ per person you get to have a buffet dinner with a choice of 33 dishes. Everything is cooked to order so there's no shuffling and queue cutting at the buffet spread.
Among the choices are salmon, various types of prawns, shark's fin soup, abalone, scallops, suckling pigs and much more. However there is a catch. For certain items you may only order them once. For example once you've ordered their shark's fin soup and finished it, you don't get any second helpings.
We went there for ST's birthday and brought Mr. Hong Hong along. Our (kiasu) aim was to try all 33 dishes. Seemed easy at first but was actually far more difficult than I could have imagined. We ended up trying only 25 varieties :)
Participants for the record breaking event; myself, ST and Mr. Hong Hong (who's not our son btw).The first round was 8 dishes and the portions were really really small. Judging from the size we thought that 33 dishes was a piece of cake. After all we were already a quater way there and the food barely made any impact on our tummies.
Round 1: Something I really like to eat but ST does not; Century Eggs with Jellyfish.
Round 1: Clockwise from top; Salad Prawn with Lettuce, Fried Tiger Prawns with Cheese Sauce, Chilli Slice Abalone with Special Sauce, Fried Fresh Scallop with Minced Garlic and Salmon Sashimi.
Round 1: Braised Shark's Fin Soup with Crab Roe.
Round 1: Steamed Cod Fish with Beancurd Stick.And then there was Round 2 which started off with a plate of suckling pig that came in such a small serving that I couldn't help but laugh out loud. The waitress who served us had to laugh embarrassingly with me :)
Round 2: BBQ Suckling Pig (5 freaking slices worth... lol!).
Round 2: Clockwise starting from center; Deep Fried 5 Spices Roll, Fried Sliced Beef with 'Satay' Sauce (there was no Satay sauce in this dish!), Fried Hong Kong Kai Lan with Minced Garlic, Fried Tiger Prawns with Asam Sauce, Braised Beancurd with Straw Mushroom, Braised Sea Cucumber with Bean Curd and Deep Fried Chicken Meat with Sweet and Sour Sauce.Round 2 was a lot more filling that we thought so we hesitated to get to Round 3. We had to persevere... after all we were already halfway through the goal!
Round 3: BBQ Roast Duck and BBQ 'Char Siew'.
Round 3: Clockwise from top left; Braised Two Variety of Vegetable with Oyster Sauce, Deep Fried Beancurd with Thai Sauce, Braised Fish Maw with Oyster Sauce, Braised Chicken Meat with Black Mushroom and Deep Fried Mini Spring Roll.Actually for Round 3 we also ordered a Braised Sweet Cordn with Beancurd and Crab Meat soup. It never came... we're glad it didn't because we would not have been able to finish it if it did. We rounded up the meal with some desserts.
Chilled Sago with Jelly (way too sweet) and Baked Hong Kong Mini Cookies.
We didn't get to try all 33 dishes but frankly speaking judging from the food quality that night it wasn't worth our time to do so. Most dishes were passable while some were truly lousy. None were outstanding. It was fun to aim to try them all but even with the small servings they all added up and we just couldn't stomach them all.