Seafood for Winter Solstice

Winter Solstice (aka "Tung" in Chinese) marks the end of the harvest season and is celebrated with great joy over the fine harvest received since olden China.
This is one of the most observed festive season in the Chinese(Lunar) calendar besides Chinese New Year; as in fact, this is even more anticipated compared to the New Year in some customs as this brings earnings and income to the family and the whole family will gather to rejoice in the fruit born after their hard work.

Therefore, this festival (besides enjoying their successful harvest) also observes the family reunion part where everyone is home to enjoy the reap of the harvest. And as a symbol of the reunion, the Tong Yuen (glutinous rice balls) will be served with sweet soup for dessert.

For my family, we don't particularly observe this festival though we always welcome any idea of reunion:D
And this year, I didn't get to go back to my hometown for Christmas since my youngest uncle is getting married on Christmas's Eve, I waited for my family to join me up here in Penang.
They made their plans to arrive on the 22nd; to celebrate Winters Solstice as well and also since bro's finished his project presentation:)

They arrived in good time and we had a long chat and catching up in the afternoon.
At night, I brought them to enjoy a simple seafood meal by the sea. The place was located in Teluk Kumbar (one of my frequent seafood hangout:)

Good Friend Seafood is no stranger in my blog and we arrived there early to avoid traffic and also the crowd during the peak dinner hour.

I ordered my favourite Barley drink; with lots of barley!:D


Soya Bean (Bro)


Chinese Tea


The first dish; one that my family always love to order during any seafood meal; whether fried vermicelli or noodles or even glass noodles.
Here, they are famous for their Hokkien Char (Fried vermicelli with yellow noodles in the local Hokkien Style - with soy sauce and served with shrimps, squids, and vegetables)

Mum and Dad and bro were delighted with this and it was not too oily:D

There was an abundance of the seafood and vege served with it too; only for RM8.

Next was one of my favourite; stir fried Tapioca leaves with seafood (RM6)

Simple and plain; but it won my vote for my favourite style of cooking this fresh vege now:) (I used to like the spicy sambal style but I start to like this simple style!)

We ordered their hot sizzling prawns on the pan (teppanyaki) which was served with sweet and sour sauce (RM20)

The prawns served were slightly larger than medium-sized and we enjoyed the sweet and sour sauce which was cooked with sweet green peas and also strips of onion.

The star of the night was this plate of crabs cooked in their signature sweet and sour style (RM22) for 2 crabs.

Everyone was so busy with the crabs while I waited since I don't really like the hard texture...Mummy and DearDear will peel and place them on my plate...really spoilt brat huh:p

The delicious sauce was so tempting that bro ordered this sweet steamed buns (mantou) to dip in the savoury sauce:D


And the Red Snapper Fish steamed ala Siamese style (RM28)

Really fresh and sweet; with a nice accompanying steamed sweet and sour sauce in Thai style soup.


Besides the good food, the view was really promising with the sunset (despite the glaring sun as we were there early).

At the start of nightfall


Total bill was about RM78-80++ (can't remember that well anymore but was definitely less than RM80 or RM100.
I was very happy to see my family once again!:D