TacoCat's TrEats #23: CNYummy reunion dinner! 😋

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Hey Steemit!

Now that I'm back in Singapore again, hopefully I'll be able to keep up a more regular post schedule. 🤞

Anyway, Chinese New Year just ended a few days ago and I actually had my reunion dinner on the eve of CNY (4th Feb), with my family and relatives. However, I have already written about that particular restaurant in a previous post. I had a second reunion dinner with just my family on the 9th of Feb and this time we ate at Tunglok Signatures!

TungLok Signatures Changi City Point _cv.jpg
Source: OneThreeOneFour

So for CNY dinners it's customary to lo hei or lao yu sheng before the actual dinner. Also called Prosperity Toss, yu sheng is a Cantonese-style raw fish salad. It usually consists of strips of raw fish (sometimes salmon), mixed with shredded vegetables and a variety of sauces and condiments, among other ingredients.

The restaurant also served bak kwa as appetisers. Bak kwa, or rou gan is a type of jerky, typically pork but there are chicken and beef versions as well.

So to make the salad is actually pretty simple; just throwing ingredients together on a plate, but during CNY the server has to say some New Year greetings as well, and there are specific phrases for each ingredient that is added. For example, when the fish is added, we'd say 年年有余 (nian nian you yu), which means "abundance through the year". When lime/pomelo is added, we'd say 大吉大利, meaning “good luck and smooth sailing”, and so on.

The last step to yu sheng is the tossing! This is the fun part where everyone gets up and tosses the ingredients in the air with chopsticks while saying various "auspicious wishes" out loud. It is believed that the height of the toss reflects the height of the diners' growth in fortunes, thus diners are expected to toss enthusiastically. It often becomes quite a messy affair but it's all in good fun and tradition.

I'm not that fond of salads in general, so I only eat a little bit of yu sheng. It didn't taste too bad, the quality of this yu sheng was better than the one I had a D'Cuisines.

For the actual dinner we ordered ala carte.
First was a soup with lotus roots and pork. It was quite thick but still pretty tasty.

Next, we had broccoli and egg with crab meat! Broccoli is my favourite vegetable so I really liked this dish.

Then we had deep fried prawns with wasabi mayo. I don't really like wasabi as it was kinda strong but the prawn was pretty good.

We also had roast pork belly, or 燒肉 (shao rou), which is one of my mum's favourite dishes to order at Tunglok. It was so crispy and yummy! 😋

Since we had roast duck during our first reunion dinner, we decided to have roast chicken this time! The skin was a little crispy and it was delicious!

The last dish was my personal favourite; ee-fu noodle, or 伊府面! I love the texture of the noodles, the mushrooms and the truffley sauce they use. It's always my go-to carb dish at Tunglok.