A traditional Chinese banquet

There are the banquets to which you are invited to celebrate special occasions like weddings, significant birthdays and anniversaries or there are fundraisers.   Then there are the ones to which you invite yourself just because you feel like having some banquet style food as they are usually quite good and you're hungry (or nostalgic).  But again you'll have to get some friends together to help you pay for a table of banquet food, usually at $500 and up.  Some restaurants, if they are desperate, or if they know they are overpriced, will sometimes offer a "half table" at slightly more than half the price for 5 guests.  The banquet pictured below is regularly priced at $998 but is currently "on sale" for $498.  A great deal at a little over $60 per person tax and tips included - if you can find another nine people to help you pay for it.

A typical Chinese banquet has 12 courses, usually starting with a cold plate.  The top cold plate is the roast suckling pig below.  Here the plate filler is the jelly fish in the middle - it's marinated and really tastes quite good.  Jelly fish is not as squishy as it sounds - it's a combination of crunchy and chewy, quite indescribable, the only way is to try it.  

These are baked stuffed conches with chopped up conch meat, celery, bamboo shoots, etc. in a "Portuguese" sauce (heavy on coconut, like curry except not hot) - not your traditional Chinese dish (anything that's baked can't be!).  

Ah!  the forbidden shark's fin soup - one last time before it's completely extinct.  You can see this soup is served in a shallow soup bowl to show off the considerable amount of shark's fin in the middle - a reason why the original price of this banquet is so high - it is determined by the weight of shark's fin in it.  Shark's fin doesn't really have any taste; it's reliant on its texture and the soup that it's cooked in.  It's costliness guarantees demand as a "prestige" food at banquets.

Another delicacy - dried whole abalone with broccoli.  Dried abalone is very expensive because it takes a really large fresh abalone to dry it to this good size due to shrinkage.  They could cost upwards of $100 a piece.  Texture is chewy.

Chicken fried in hand-poured oil - the chicken is not immersed in oil but is placed just above the hot oil in the wok.  Hot oil is poured over the chicken to make it crispy.  This is superbly done - even the breast meat is very tender and not dry.

The veggie dish is baby pea shoots with whole garlic.

Double lobster baked in Maggi sauce - love this!

Double sea bass perfectly steamed.   The "double" factor is particularly important for wedding banquets with the focus on double everything - double fish, double lobster, double dessert, double happiness!

Double carbs!  Olive and chicken fried rice and noodles al dente - exceptional performance in both categories.

Sweet tapioca soup with taro

Green tea pastry and filled mochi

and Maalox to go...

Restaurant: Casa Victoria, Markham