East Ocean Seafood restaurant東海海鮮酒家, Tai Koo Shing, HK

*amendment: I now know what the Chinese meaning of "Drinking full, eating drunk "飲飽食醉". My body has an interesting "authentic chicken soup" detector. If I take some chicken soup or some Chinese herb soup, I would feel very sleepy. Last night, I was half awake and half sleepy in writing this post. I slept 10 hours straight. Usually I sleep only 6-7 hours. This morning I found out I missed some word and also some grammatical mistakes. Check the below in red that I amended. :)

At the financial crisis hit HK in the fall of 1997, property prices dropped. At the peak time, the so-called "shark's fins on rice" is very common and restaurants like East Ocean, Sun Tung Lok, Unicorn...etc. got on very good business but after the crisis the golden days turned into a very hard time. I remember East Ocean got quite innovative. All the top chefs and senior managements came to the reality and to go with the boat by cutting their salary. Besides, the master chef introduced a stunning price set menu for 12 persons at HK$2,380 net incl. drinks....etc. We all know East Ocean's cheapest set menu for 12 was at least HK$5-6,000 back then. I remember the master chef told the media "we use some lower quality of food but maintain our original way of cooking in order to keep our customers' flow.".

So without a second thought, I brought my family to such a bargain dinner for my father's birthday or CNY...etc. My nieces' favourite East Ocean giant "birthday dinner" bun 壽包 is still in my memory. They could take 2 even after a big full meal.

I often gave the others an impression that I am much into buffet. In fact, I'm not so. Why I suggest buffet is that if we have only 2-3 friends, buffet is the easy thing to handle. However, if we have over 5-6 people, I often suggest "why not get the Tak Hing's 666 menu...etc.?". So tonight out of the blue, I suggested my friend try East Ocean for the dinner set, by clarifying that a proper buffet dinner (say Hyatt Regency) is at HK$438. If we have 6, that means it's over HK$2,500. It's not that worth and we can use this money to eat something more nutrious.

1. We went in at 6pm and it's getting full after 7pm. 2. Though we are four, my friend got tempted on this list of dinner courses like wedding dinner. Since they expected to have buffet in the first place, I let them be a bit insane. Yet, if we divide $1,198 by 4, each one pays HK$300 and it's a net price already. Still it's cheaper than taking a buffet.

3. Suckling pig and baked spare ribs. I know why only 6 big pieces of suckling pig was served. It's not like those ordinary suckling pig. It's a very nice selected suckling pig which has a very nice pork flavour. The skin is like wafer, crispy and then melty in your mouth and most of all it's not fat but with juicy meat. The roasted spare ribs are unexpectedly good. They use fresh ribs. Quite many other restaurants use frozen ribs. 4. Stir fried honey beans, water chestnut and prawns. The portion is really good enough for 6 persons. This one is very nice stir fried. The chef made a very thin "crystal" sauce 玻璃獻 to seal it. This is the real authentic stir fried of prawns.

5. Dried scallop, mosses on veggie. Very good oyster gravy and not too salty nor too oyster flavour to overwhelm the dried scallop sweet taste. 6. Yellow mushroom on veggie. This one is nice as the yellow mushroom is silky smooth. I like they use quite a lot of veggie; so it's a very balanced diet.

7. OK, when we pay at this price, we shouldn't expect some expensive shark's fins. However, I do find out a lot of fins and fin skirt. Most of all, the soup base is excellent. Just treat it as nice soup. 8. Steamed garoupa. Well, as you can see the fins standing up straight and the meat got so cracked up, that means this fish is very fresh. Super good! Kind of miss my father. He can eat the fish head and then left only a few bones on the plate.

9. Don't think the abalone is very tiny. Just they use some very big and thick mushrooms which put this 48 head abalone look a bit small. The chef braised it very nice. It's very tender and the oyster sauce is again not too heavy. The amazing part is the big thick mushroom. So good. 10. Deep fried chicken. Even I was 99% full, I still took 3 pieces of it. No need to dip any salt or sauce.

11. Dried braised e-fu noodle. I originally planned to stop and save room for the giant bun at last. However, the tempting aroma of this noodle made me get a bowl of it. :) Very nice e-fu noodle. Not salty at all and you can taste the original nice e-fu noodle flavour. 12. baby ginger cake. Surprise over surprise. This one is so good to clear up all the flavour in your taste buds. It's very ginger but not that hot.

13. Ok, the renowned East Ocean giant birthday bun (it's about 4 times bigger than the normal one). 14. A whole salty duck egg yolk is in it and see how the golden oil leaked out. I told the waitress "I am now 110% full, but I still take a whole of it.".

15. I guess this is the final surprise to me. The chef put some 眉豆 (beans in white with a thin black line like eye browse in the middle and in direct Chinese translation it's "eye-browse beans") in it and that brought up the nice aroma of red beans. Most of all, it's not that sweet and the original red beans came out so nice. My friend already booked a table for 12 for their family gathering in mid-autumn festival.

In conclusion, the four of us couldn't finish all the food. We packed the chicken, noodle and buns and 4 big boxes with us to go. :)