Banquet

Vivian's boss in Tokyo had a brief trip to Hong Kong - we held a small reception dinner for him in a famous Cantonese restaurant.

I must say our Japanese friend seemed not all that impressed with the food. As an expert in mind-reading, I could see several problems with a traditional Chinese banquet:

• The food is too salty (even for someone coming from Tokyo) !
• The menu is too long - our friend was probably full by the middle of it.
• The soup is always shark fin in a kind of suspicious viscid liquid.
• Everything, be it deep-fried or steamed, is covered with a layer of shiny oil.
  
• Why are Chinese so obsessive with (abalone and) sea cucumber ? (Once chopped into pieces, it looks perfectly the same as the vomitus in The Alien or The Exorcist !)

No wonder why so few local restaurants won a star in the Michelin Guide. There are thousands of excellent Chinese dishes with all sorts of ingredients - but they're just not the kind of thing that we feel precious and would show to our guests.