Dear Steemit Friends:
A few days ago, the Spring Festival officially came to close and was celebrated with the Lantern Festival on the 15th day of the new Lunar Calendar year. In Asia, most people will gather with their family one last time at the end of this festival for a meal together. The restaurant I visited is situated by Feng Qing park and is a brand new Cantonese style seafood restaurant. The actual establishment is very large and is built with a fusion of ancient and modern Chinese architecture. On the ground level, the restaurant has glass 'walls' and on the top, we have the traditional Chinese roofs. As I mentioned before, this restaurant is very large and it's floor area is over 6000 square meters!
The entrance to the restaurant is very wide and spacious.
There is a sense of luxury with these huge beautiful crystal chandeliers.
Because it is a festive period, there are many adverts at the entrance for special deals.
The restaurant also sells some Eight Treasures Rice in some nice packages as gift boxes as well as Xi'an's famous 'Xi Feng' alcohol. Both are fantastic as gifts during the festive period.
On the sides, there are also many health products for sale, all nicely packaged in gift boxes too.
On the left of the hall way is one of the dining lobbies. Almost all of the round tables are fully occupied.
These birdcages are actually private dining areas. However, we chose to sit in the dining lobby to soak up the festive atmosphere.
To order a dish, you take one of the cards from below the billboard and give it to the counter to scan the bar code.
Let's take a look at the delicious food we ordered!
To start off, we have some steamed buns with hot chilli oil dip.
Inside, the steamed buns have pork and vermicelli.
These prawns look beautiful with their very defined stripey patterns but aside from their distinctive look, they also taste different from the more regular prawns. For starters, their shell is tougher than usual, but underneath that tough shell, is very tender meat full of flavour!
Lush green vegetables!
Egg Yolk Tofu Soup, the soup is very thick and dense yet the tofu is extremely soft making for a very refreshing soup!
This restaurant has a peculiar way of preparing steamed fish. They like to cut open the fish from the bottom and spread the sides out like wings. This actually makes the fish's natural aroma come out more. Before tasting it I could almost smell how nice the fish would taste. Of course, after eating it, I was very impressed with the delicate white meat which was tender and full of fresh flavour.
Green Sprouts. These are really refreshing.
This is Taro and Pumpkin Lily soup. The Taro and Pumpkin are diced into small cubes and actually go really well together both in taste and in aesthetics. They taste a little sweet so it's almost like eating a dessert. One taste leads to the next and before you know it, it's all gone!
These are stir fried clams, they're very chewy and also presented very nicely!
Tonights star of the show is this delicious Lobster. The chef has prepared the lobster by dicing up the main body and then cooking it with the thick paste sauce. Although the sauce is quite thick, it's not too overpowering, together with the lobster meat which is very tender, it was absolutely delicious.
Garlic Chives with Cuttlefish. An unusual combination but it works!
These are Sesame glutinous rice balls, during the lantern festival, these rice balls represent unity and togetherness. The stuffing of these Glutinous Rice Balls are usually sweet.
After such a lovely selection of seafood, you must be wondering where all the seafood come from? Well, lets take a walk to the restaurant's seafood market and see!
The seafood market in the restaurant surrounds this big obelisk in the middle of the restaurant.
Diners circle around this obelisk and choose their
There is a sign which says 'Fu Jian Sea Produce', of course this means that the seafood here mostly comes from the Fu Jian province. Once you've selected which seafood, it's labelled and then weighed to see how much to pay.
The market attendants do the weighing for you.
These are lobsters from all over the world.
Stuck on the side of this glass are abalones.
These are the razor clams which we ate earlier.
These are oysters from Europe.
Various kinds of Spiral Snails.
The crabs are humongous
These are called 'Bread Crabs' also known as 'Cancer pagurus'
Last but not least are various kinds of fish. They look very exotic but entirely edible!
And beside the seafood market, we have an open style kitchen.
Here's a sea cucumber soup.
There are various cantonese and Fu Jian special produce for sale as well.
These are the chef's cooking away the dinner for tonight!
These are the condiments and seasonings used for cooking.
And that wraps up today's post on my Lantern Festival dinner. Each of my posts take a lot of time to produce, from taking the pictures, to organising them and describing the experience (in both English and Chinese) I hope you enjoyed it as much as I do writing about it! Until next time!
今天我想带朋友们去尝一尝我的元宵节晚餐, 这家餐厅在西安的丰庆公园旁边, 是新开的一家6000平方米的粤式海鲜餐厅。这个餐厅的建筑运用古今结合的元素，下面是现代的透明玻璃材料，上面是中国古代传统宫廷建筑的屋檐，非常趣。因为过春节和元宵节的关系，门口有很多牌子写着各种优惠和套餐活动。
同时餐厅卖一些八宝饭之类的礼盒，还有西安当地最有特色的白酒——西凤酒，给客人们提供了春节送礼的礼物。大屏幕上放着鲜嫩的红牛肉烹饪视频，吸引了我的目光，并且让我更加饿了。边上是各种养生食品和绿色健康的有机食品礼盒专柜。走廊的左边是热闹的大堂，所有的圆桌几乎被坐满了。这几个象鸟笼的装饰是一个个小包间，不过为了感受元宵节欢快的气氛，我们选择坐在大堂。这家餐厅点菜的方式非常特别，整个菜谱变成一个个小型广告牌贴在墙上。每一个菜边上都有小卡片，上面有条形码，如果客人想点这个菜，就拿走一张卡片，在柜台扫条形码就点上菜了。
下面快来一起尝尝元宵节的晚餐吧。餐前开胃包，辣椒油是酸辣的。这个包子的馅很特别，是猪肉粉丝的。这个有着漂亮红白条纹的虾叫做九节虾，它是很少能在北方的餐厅吃到的。因为它特别的纹路又叫虎斑虾。它的虾壳比普通的虾壳硬，吃起来的味道比一般的虾口感更软，味道更嫩，更有韧性。绿油油的青菜。蛋黄豆腐汤，汤汁非常浓稠，豆腐又软又嫩，吃起来很爽口。这一家清蒸鱼的方式很特别，用刀片切开鱼的肚子，就像这条鱼展开翅膀。还没有尝就闻到味道非常香，吃起来肉质白嫩。青菜苗，吃起来口感又嫩又脆。芋头南瓜百合羹，切成块的芋头南瓜颜色搭配非常漂亮，吃起来像是吃甜品的羹汤，勾引我一口接一口。清炒蛏子，不仅吃起来Q弹，摆盘也很漂亮。今晚的主角是着只龙虾了，厨师将龙虾肉拨开来烹饪，让龙虾肉更入味。吃起来龙虾的肉很鲜美，浓浓酱汁的味道也刚刚好。韭菜炒墨鱼，很特别的搭配。芝麻汤圆，在元宵节人们吃汤圆是象征阖家幸福，团团圆圆。元宵由糯米做成，里面的馅一般以甜的口感为主。吃完了美味的晚餐，你们一定很好奇这么多品种的海鲜是从哪里来的，接下来我就带你们看看餐厅大堂中心的海鲜市场吧，看看你们可以认出几种海鲜出来。今天的元宵节海鲜美食之旅就到这里吧，每天我都花很多时间整理照片和写文章，我精心分享出来长长的文章，希望大家喜欢我的文章和照片，我们下个文章再见吧！