Kin and Jo's Reception Dinner

Firstly, congratulations to my good friend Kin and his wedding to Jo. I wish them the best in the future. You can read more details and see more photos about their wedding here. Below is Kin and Jo making their grand entrance at the reception dinner waving to everyone like they were celebrities, totally hilarious.



Jo in her red dress that she had changed into later in the night looking stunning in this "Hollywood" pose that I had convinced her to do for this photo.



Me posing for a photo with Kin putting on my silly face.



Now onto the actual food part of the evening. The first good sign of the night was that they were serving nibbles to guests at the start of the night. This meant that guests who had arrived early weren't left to starve waiting for other guests to arrive.

The first dish served was a cold platter entree. The cold platter contained jellyfish, roast port, barbeque pork and two hams that were a mixture of different meats rolled together and then sliced. Everything was cold, hence the name Cold Platter. I like the two slices of mixture ham things the most along with my usual favourite of the jellyfish.


The next dish was a crab claw. It too was good and similar to the Sugar Cane Prawn Balls you get at Yum Cha. The crab claw is mainly a mixture of prawn and fish meat beaten together so that it is fairly firm wrapped around a crab claw. Gone are the days when mud crab claws were used and you could taste the sweet meat of the claw. Nowadays, its all imported crab claws that I have bought from an Asian supermarket for about $15 a kilo. The claw had absolutely no flavour and was just there for decoration.

The soup was next and it was Shark Fin soup. There were some shark fin in the soup but shark fin is bascially flavourless and relies on the soup to make it taste nice. The soup was a bit bland for me.





The lobster was the next dish. A half side of lobster was steamed and then covered with XO sauce. The XO sauce was way too salty and not that good. Parts of the lobster that didn't have the XO sauce were very sweet and tender. A lighter sauce would have worked better and highlighted the lobster instead of masking its flavour.


The best dish of the night for me was the Abalone with Sea Cucumber and Mushrooms. The abalone was sweet and cooked until it was tender, which takes quite a bit of cooking for those of you who have cooked abalone before. Equally tender was the sea cucumber. Most places might cook the abalone until it was tender but then forget, or don't care, and just throw the sea cucumber in so that it is still very hard. The mushroom was also very juicy and full of flavour.

The Steamed Barramundi with Soy Sauce and Spring Onions rounded out the night's meal. Fried rice was served with the barramundi. The fish had nice smooth flesh.






The last food item was the wedding cake. It was a lemon cake with lemon cream filling. The lemon cake and filling was good and already quite sweet. The marzipan frosting was extremely chewy and extremely sweet. I didn't like it so peeled most of it off and just ate the sponge part of the cake.



Overall, it was a good meal and I had a good time. Congratulations again to Kin and Jo.