Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Eve dinner; what are we to eat?

Mum wanted to cook; she has gone to the market; after all, it was a Sunday....

But, we decided to save her the trouble and suggested to dine out...

So we went to our regular restaurant...from Little Uncle aka Kau Fu Chai (recommended by my uncle...don't know why they call the place by the maternal youngest uncle's name) by the roadside...pretty famous in Maluri and then the main chef ran off to open his own "Tai Chow"(cooking) in a rented corner coffee shop just one street from his ex-boss.

Now he has his own new restaurant in Menjalara...this place is booming with restaurants now...just like PJ:)

His restaurant is MGF...stands for Mei Gai Fook....he even has a branch outlet in Kepong; Mei Gai Hup...I just found out from Mum and Dad. Not sure whether it is good though:p

Anyway, so much for the promotion...I'd better ask for special discount from the lady boss...a very young and petite lady. Her husband was the runaway chef...hahaha; sounds so dramatic...but he's also a young talent and a diligent person who still goes to the kitchen and does the cooking on his own; despite his employed staffs.

Perhaps he's also afraid of more runaways like him to open competitor restaurants as well? *chuckles*

One thing though; he does have quite a number of staff. Mum and dad are familiar with the lady boss and also one lady worker; whom they found out hailed from China; Shanxi...and just went back. A friendly lady; too bad she left already:(

Another new lady came to take our orders today; I kinda wanted the lady boss to take our order actually...oh well...

There are 2 sections in the restaurant; air-conditioned and non-air-conditioned area...

We sat in the air-conditioned area...

While waiting for our food to arrive, PickyEater again puts her camera to work and snaps a couple of pics of the environment in the restaurant.

Here comes our drinks...a young girl.....recently I noticed a couple of young kids here; this is 1 young girl and there are another 2 young boys.

Our food arrived....

Stir-fried Baby Bok Choy (Chinensis Vegetable). Crunchy but tad a little too oily for taste.

Yam Loot or more familiarly known in its Chinese name; Or Put.....which I translated to Yam Loot. I decipher it in such a way as this dish is some sort of a loot/pot which sort of holds different types of ingredients (treasures in a loot).

The sides of this bowl-shape is actually yam; deep-fried to be crunchy and molded to shape like a bowl to hold the stuffs inside.

They put in chunks of chicken meat cut in cubes, little corn, cauliflower, carrot cubes, button mushrooms, capsicums inside the yam bowl.

Then they garnish it with the fried rice noodles around it.....

Hmmmm...my family liked this...but PickyEater is no fan of yam; in fact I hate yam:p

I just helped myself to the cubed and finely sliced vegetables:)

A little large of a portion served.....

Next, the Dried Chilli with Mantis Prawns; (Kung Pow Har Gou in Cantonese).....supposed to be one of my favourite dish but today, it was too deep-fried....too hard...yikes, PickyEater doesn't like it at all....too dried and fried for my taste:(

Too bad....*pouts*

Lastly, one of our regular orders and a must-have for PickyEater who loves fish; is the Red Tilapia fish in "Cheung Jing" sauce...which is basically fermented soy bean sauce (tauchu sauce).

Red Tilapia is not exactly my favourite fish but it is usually one of my picks when I select this cooking style. Its flesh is suitable for the sauce....trust PickyEater when it comes to fish....

However, today was also a major disappointment; a little too oily.

When the bill came, we found that the new lady who took our orders changed the size of the yam loot to Medium when Mum and Dad usually ordered the smallest one. (They have prepared the mold of the yam beforehand).

She gave us the reason that there were no small sizes and thus she changed the order to the medium.

Now, what kind of logic is that?

How can you change your customer's order without asking for their consent?

Furthermore, it's not like there's a lot of people in the restaurant at that time; in fact we are like the only customer besides another family and the restaurant is not as big as the Imperial Palace. Is it that hard to come over and ask us whether we want the medium size Yam Loot since the small size is not available?

Sighhhh...it's not the matter of price or money; but it's just the respect for customers...you can't just change or decide on your customer's behalf without first consulting them! Furthermore, with the increase in size, my family had to practically stuff themselves with the food......some kind of service this is....

Never mind.......*sighs*...hope we can get someone else to take our order next round...when PickyEater is around...

After dinner, we headed over to Jusco for some last minute Christmas shopping; actually PickyEater has stuffs to pick up.....anyway, we have a few hours to kill before getting ready for our Christmas Eve's midnight mass:)

Christmas tree in Jusco....hehe...Christmassy.....really loved this time of the year.....:)