8GTCC Cantonese Cuisine Discovery in Red Star Seafood Restaurant, Vancouver

The third dinner in the Eight Great Tradition of Chinese Cuisine (8GTCC) dinners was the Cantonese cuisine. It was supposed to be the easiest of all dinners but as it turned out, it quickly became the hardest to organize.

All thanks to the hard work and perseverance from LotusRapper and Joe, they managed to pull off the most fun, educational and enjoyable dinner so far.

One of the problems with organizing a Cantonese dinner is simply bewildering choices. It would have been easier like the Hunan or the Jiangsu cuisine where there are just a handful of restaurants we could plan with. Not with Cantonese. There are dozens of very good Cantonese restaurants in Metro Vancouver. The initial shortlist of restaurants that LotusRapper and Joe came up with was SEVEN restaurants … ranging from homestyle restaurants to the more extravagant ones.

It took them a whole two months with countless visits to restaurants before we finally decided on what we want to do. We decided that it is only right that we host a more lavish one … in line with the reputation of the Cantonese cuisine as the most extravagant of the eight Chinese cuisine.

It is Cantonese cuisine that is well known for excesses like the shark fin soup, bird nest soup, abalone, king crabs, scallops and geoducks. They are the master of cooking the Alaskan King Crab and dishes that costs into the hundreds of dollars. We knew that if the cost of the dinner is too high, it would mean a lower response than the 70 people who attended the Jiangsu cuisine. After long considerations, we decided to pull the trigger and commit ourselves to the plan.

In all 26 people attended the dinner at the Red Star Seafood restaurant on Granville. It was a 10-course dinner which costs $62 per person (including tips and taxes).

The restaurant pull all stops to make sure we had a good time. We were given an entire private dining room to ourselves which was great because we could interact in ways not possible if we were in the general dining hall. Moreover, the restaurant assigned their manager and top waiter FULL-TIME to our party. That made a lot of difference. Each dish serving was accompanied by witty and educational quips.

Time flew. We did not realize that it took us just slightly over 3 hours to complete the 10 courses! The pace of the dinner was excellent. One dish is brought out one at a time with a proper introduction and follow-on discussions too.

Dish #1 was the Roast Suckling Pig. We asked the restaurant to bring the entire pig to show us before they take it back to the kitchen to chop it up. It was quite a sight and of course, this drew out a lot of cameras.

Red Star roast the pig in house on the day of the dinner. Each pig costs $280.

The suckling pig is served to be eaten two ways. The first way is with the crispy skin wrapped with scallions in pancakes. The thing is they have only enough scallions and pancakes where everyone has only two mouthful.

The sauce above is made in house and is meant for the suckling pig. It is a mix of hoison sauce, garlic and red fermented bean curd.

The suckling pig was meant to feed 20 people but since we had 26 people, everyone had a little lesser than what we intended.

Dish #2 is called the Fuzzy Melon Stuffed with Fresh Scallop with a Light Sauce. Each piece of this costs $6.50 and so we only get one each.

Someone was commenting that it will be more tasty if dried scallop is used. But then, of course, it would be more expensive.

Question: Why is dried scallop tastier, more desirable and expensive? Is it because it has concentrated flavour and shrinkage when dried?

Anyway, the scallop flavour balance well with the tender fuzzy melon. Like most Cantonese cooking, the emphasis is on … More after the jump. Click to read the rest of 8GTCC Cantonese Cuisine Discovery in Red Star Seafood Restaurant, Vancouver (1,401 words)

© ben for Chow Times, 2010. |
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Post tags: Cantonese, Community Kitchen, Restaurant Review, Vancouver