Happy Chinese New Year to you! We recently celebrated Chinese New Year at the East Empress in Glen Waverley.
The East Empress had a selection of banquets, not specifically for Chinese New Year but available all year around. It was as banquets go, quite a good price for what you get. We opted to have the $46.95 per person banquet which was in their mid range. Having said it was a good price per person, just bear in mind East Empress is quite rigid. The price includes coffee and tea per person. Since kiddo was paid up as an adult and she does not drink coffee or tea, we had asked whether she could substitute it for a juice or soft drink or mineral water, etc instead. This request was declined. Humph!
Apart from that, the banquet itself was generously proportioned and delicious. We had plenty of left overs to take home.
First entree of four entrees, we had the 'Stuffed Scallop Shell'. Shell is the operative word. Don't be misled as I was to think that this dish had scallops in it. It didn't. Once I got over that disappointment, it was actually rather nice - it was a medley of fish and onions in a curry sauce.
Entree number two we had the 'Sang Choi Bao'. This was kiddo's pick of the bunch. It was a gigantic serve with lots of chopped up savoury bits like spring onions, water chestnuts, shrimp with the meat.
Entree number three was Peking Duck. We were very excited to see that each person got two pancakes and the pancakes were filled generously with lean duck meat. This was my pick of the bunch.
Entree number four was the stir fried prawns and scallops. This was very well executed too. The veggies were crisp and the seafood was a decent size and not over cooked.
The banquet came with two mains. The first being Cantonese beef with plain rice. The beef was beautifully tender and not too sticky sweet which was a good thing.
Main number two was teriyaki chicken with fried rice. The fried rice was awesome. It had lots of char sui and baby prawns in it. The teriyaki chicken was also very tasty but by then we were too full to appreciate it properly. The waiters proportioned out each dish with the rice for each guest. My only criticism of this method is that the dish eg the chicken and the beef above, gets lumped on top of the rice and it was really difficult to get to the rice without everything falling out of the bowl. It was a like an archeological dig. Perhaps the mains dish should be proportioned out on a separate side plate to the bowl of rice. Or we could even help ourselves with the dishes placed on the lazy Suzanne.
Dessert was a choice of either banana fritters or pineapple fritters with ice cream. It's deep fried, it's sweet, it's ice cream with maple syrup. Of course it was fabulous.
Now if you like to see this banquet in a short video format (I promise you it only goes for a minute or so, you hopefully will not die of boredom), have a lookie-see below. It would also give you a glimpse of the ambience and interior of the East Empress. The cake in the vid does not come with the banquet. The East Empress charge a $10 cake cutting fee - just keep that in mind if you want to ever bring celebratory cakes there.
Cheerio
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