The tongue piercing… and the summer.

Good Morning!

Okay, wow. it’s been awhile… again. I’ve spent a bit of time playing around with the template settings hoping that if this blog looks prettier than I will invest more time in posting.

So what’s been happening with me lately… oh yes! The short lived tongue piercing.

Eating Out: C & R Cafe Restaurant

Every time Andy and I decide to eat out, I have moment of excitement where I plough through toptable or tastecard in the hope that we will pick somewhere romantic, original, you know, something exciting! Or at least, outside of chinatown. For the man seems pretty content to eat Chinese/Malaysian food for the rest of his life. I’m beginning to dread the question “Where shall we eat tonight?” as it makes me wince when I know the first words that are going to come out of his mouth are “Rasa Sayang?”

Don’t get me wrong, Rasa Sayang is a good Malaysian restaurant but I’ve been there a hundred times, and I’ll probably write it up at some point. But you get my point, it’s time to branch out a little! Be adventurous! So the other night, we went a bit wild and Andy chose some place completely different. That’s right, C & R Cafe Restaurant!

Another Malaysian eaterie…

Check the lovely film of oil on that saucy bad boy! And yes, it was pretty tasty once you stirred it up a bit. The curry sauce had good punch and the roti sucked it up boootifully. They were awesome roti, unlike Busaba’s version (I’m still sure someone messed up bad on that one).

For starters we also had the chicken satay. The meat was a little on the dry side but that peanut sauce, MAN, it must have been homemade as it was thick with peanuts which hadn’t been fully crushed up. NOM. I am a sucker for peanut sauce.

Kang Kung Belacan. I love saying it. Water spinach in shrimp paste and C & R’s version of this dish is plentiful and shrimpy…ful. This dish contained a lot of garlic (I like) and a lot of chopped up fried shrimp. This dish stuck out for me as it’s quite easy for kang kung to become an unmemorable side dish with a flat nondescript sauce. No way would you forget this one!

This was the dish we had come for. Hainanese chicken rice. The poached chicken was incredibly soft with just the right amount of soy splashed on top to compliment the light flavours of the dish. The rice was aromatic and a strong hint of ginger which I found quite pleasant. Again, a classic simple dish which had been executed well.

Char kway teow – or to the chinese/english: seafood hor fun. I wish it had been the proper malaysian version with the really wide gloopy rice noodles but I don’t think it would sell very well in West. So judging it for what it is it was good enough. And there was a lot of it!

C & R sits in an alley where the borders of soho and chinatown meet, so it’s nice to know that we’re slowly moving out of just eating around Garrick Street. It’s more of a cafe/canteen than a restaurant I would say, but the food was 1st class. I went there thinking it was another back alley eaterie which would serve me mediocre food but I was pleasantly surprised by all the nice touches which had been applied to these simple, staple dishes.

For two people with tea and tapwater the meal came to under £30. And we had to take half of it home as the main portions were huge!

 

 

The Quintessential Chinese Wedding Banquet – Phoenix Palace style

The chinese wedding banquet is an important event for all chinese parents who’ve children have grown up and decided to dedicate their lives to being with someone else. It is a great celebration of love, family and fortune woven with traditions thousands of years old. This year, I’ve been to three such banquets and although I’m extremely happy for the my newly wedded friends, and am truly honoured that we were invited, I’m bloody glad they are over and that there won’t be anymore this year.

Like I said, chinese weddings are seeped with traditions; the tea ceremony, the door games, the red pockets… but the majority of these mini events which make up the wedding involve ‘fortune’ or as I see it = receiving money. You see, the tea ceremony is not only paying respects to your elders, it’s also a time where they give you money or gold. The door games, through all the fun of torturing the groom and his groomsmen, eventually ends with the bridesmaids not letting the groom in until he bribes them with money.  I was extremely annoyed by how cheeky the girls were at one wedding who simply demanded £200 off the men (yes, Andy was one of the groomsmen), unwilling to budge. It’s meant to be a game, banter, fun! *shakes fist* I just don’t see why everything has to be about the money. As a 20th century chinese girl born in the UK, I guess I just don’t care about the importance of ‘face’. I’m sure this will annoy any chinese people reading this and I’m probably coming across as awfully ungrateful and never get invited to another banquet again,  but really I do enjoy the whole experience of it all! I just wish there was less importance placed on the $!

Anyways, mini rant over. What I really wanted to talk about in this post is the food. Because the food makes the long (beautiful, emotional, amazing) day, worth it. You get to the restaurant, give your red pocket (as a general rule £50 if you don’t know them that well, up to £200 depending on how much you really love them – I see it as a cover of the costs of the banquet). And then the 12 course meal begins!

This beauty is very much like crispy aromatic duck, except the duck is replaced by juicy, crispy suckling pig and the pancakes by pillowy ‘char sui bao’ style bread. You spread plum sauce on the pancake, stick in a spring onion chilli stick, a piece of barbecued pig and BANG – Aromatic Crispy Pig Pancakes. It’s like an upgrade from duck pancakes and seeing as I love duck pancakes this was probably one of my favourite dishes of the night. The majority of chinese banquets I’ve been to the suckling pig is just on a big dish with no accessories, so I enjoyed Phoenix Palace’s interpretation.

Next up were ‘Crispy crab claw with mashed prawns‘ and ‘Sautéed conpoy with blackmoss and whole garlic‘. So unhealthy, but I love them deep-fried crab claws from the days when my mum used to make them home. I say make, but what I mean is deep-frying some frozen ones. I’m sure the ones at Phoenix Palace are lot more fresh. Conpoy is a form of dried scallop and has a much stronger flavour and firmer texture than fresh scallops, not my fave but the black moss made this unique dish enjoyable.  Black moss is also known as ‘faat choi’, which has the double meaning of ‘hair vegetable’ and the Cantonese pronouncement of ‘striking rich’ (Gung hei faat choy – Wishing you wealth and posterity). Since it’s harvest is tightly controlled due to over farming, it’s price has gone up and is also symbolic at weddings because they’ve been able to afford it. It’s a unique taste that I can’t describe, as it is almost a bit like eating tasty noodle hair. Also, whole mushy garlic – divine.

The less I say about shark’s fin soup the better. I’m not entirely sure on the laws on it here and I’m conflicted with the whole animal conservation thing. But it tasted really good! >.< Lobster though, this is dish that I look forward to the most. Lobster baked with ginger and scallions. I am in love with whoever invented this dish. It’s the messiest thing to eat ever, but when  it arrives you really don’t care about it getting on your dress, in your eye, in someone elses’ eye… as the lobster is so soft and delicious! Picked. Clean.

Next up was ‘Braised fish maw with abalone‘ on supreme oyster sauce and ‘Canton crispy chicken‘. Both great dishes and fish maw is the buoyancy bladder of a large fish. I know – what!? But it is a surprisingly tasty delicacy with a wonderfully smooth texture, and if you believe the chinese old wives’ tales, makes your skin smoother too. Crispy chicken, great. Not much to say about it except it would have been the only dish that our shellfish allergic friend would have been able to eat were it not for the prawn crackers laid on top. How cruel life can be.

Also on the menu were e-fu noodles, fujien fried rice and steamed seabass. E-fu noodes aka Longevity noodles is a dish selected for its symbolism as well as it’s taste. Fujien rice is also meant to be symbolic of a bright and wealthy life.

By this point, we’re fit to burst and we have the final dish of sweetened red bean soup with Lotus seed and  some chinese petite fours which I didn’t eat as I was far too full. I’m sure the jelly looking stuff has a taste of coconut and the texture of turkish delight, and the bright orange nuggets are a lot like a biscotti.

So there you are, one version of a UK chinese wedding banquet. A coming together of friends and family to wish a  very happy life for two beings on this earth and to eat, drink and be merry. And really is there anything more you’d want to see your friends doing?

Phoenix Palace Chinese Restaurant
5 Glentworth Street, London NW1 5PG

Tel: 020 7486 3515
Fax: 020 7486 3401