Lee Palace Restaurant

Om nom nom nhom nomm nomm DINNER TIME!
The following post is the huge selection of dishes from a OMG-THIS-IS-CHEAP-AS! banquet PLUS an extra 3 or 4 dishes added on top of this order. This was my dinner last night.

Did I mention dinner was being had, like, about just over 4 hours after that huge ass lunch at Spoon? Did I mention that I am we are a might, unstoppable, insatiable pigs who find nothing better in life than to eat?
Oooooooooh I know life is full of love and happiness and friendship and laughter and joy but life has food and that is hard to beat.
Plus, food is a combination of all those things AND MORE! This is a glutton talking after all.

It's actually great living in a house full of pigs - no offence to my family, I love you to bits - because the next meal is always planned before the present one is even eaten. And then there's something to look forward to all over again when you're sitting there with your tummy bulging out of your unbuttoned pants, cause you can do it all over again in like, 3 hours.

Or maybe to try that method to really gain the most value out of what you pay, where you eat til you're full, go to the bathroom, stick your fingers down your throat and belch out what went in 15 minutes ago. Then you can skip the 3 hours of waiting time and resume eating like, right then and there.
Personally, I think that is disgusting and have never tried that method. I doubt it works.

So this was what we battled to finish:

Steamed crab

So this came out, all dead and silent but still resembling a whole crab shape. Some people find this to be disturbing, when animals are served up in the form they were in before they were horribly slaughtered. Its like a reminder of how peaceful and undisturbed they were before they were murdered to satisfy the people who want to eat them, when they are served looking like the real thing,
except they are dead.

To me actually, I reckon its kinda cute.
Cause I'm a bit sick and twisted like that.

...

I wasn't actually allowed to eat this because I'm still recovering from my surgery and supposedly (if you believe it), seafood contain "toxins" that might aggravate your scars and make them itchy, blah blah blah. But I managed to sneak some in anyway cause I'm greedy and can't stop myself from refraining from foods.

Sorta like how I would rather die than diet. That horrible word even begins with die. Cause you gotta train yourself to die a little inside before you attempt to diet, as you can no longer eat what you want.

So what I did manage to eat was a bit of the meat that could easily be eaten without the need to peel off any hard exterior shell. I AM SO SLACK and it's such a pain in the ass to have to get through layers of shell, skin, bone, shit, insides, hard and sharp points and prickles and possibly end up with bleeding skin, cuts and battle wounds to end up getting to the little bit of flesh inside.

In life, you really do have to work hard to get what you want.

And what I wanted was fresh, juicy and sweet crab meat. And I got that. And only that, because there wasn't the addition of any other flavours or seasonings. Just plain steamed crab, swimming in its own juices so you can really taste what crab tastes like.

Lamb Hotpot - or something like that

Apologies for not knowing the names of most of these dishes as they were included in the SEVENTY FIVE DOLLARS ONLY set banquet comprising of 6 dishes featuring crab as one of those. This was a very warming soup that kept its heat over dinner time thanks to the portable gas stove underneat it. The hotness (temperature wise) of this soup was made even hotter with a little spicy bite to it with the very strong aroma and taste of pepper, but very flavoursome.

Included inside the soup was vegetables, mushroom, tofu skin, and lamb, but very strange looking and distinct tasting lamb. It was long and stringy and very red in appearance, like the colour of raw red meat in general. It got a bit bleh to eat after a few mouthfuls but the soup was good to keep on drinking.

Fried fish

This was epic. Just look at it! You can hardly see the fish underneath, drowned in the abundance of the red and green sea loaded on top. This was a whole fried (deep fried?) fish in sweet soy sauce, and generously or maybe even OVER EXCITEDLY poured over with a heap of cut chilli, garlic pieces, onion, and spring onions and made it oh-so-colourful.

Very flavoursome to eat but don't order if not a fan of all those bits and pieces flung on top cause it's going to a fun time picking away all the little bits you don't want.

Fried rice

Of course this is the token fried rice dish that accompanies most set menus and banquets. I don't know why but I've never really gotten into fried rice as much as I've gotten into and have an undying love for plain steamed rice. I am the rice cooker - metaphorically, as I can't tell the difference between a spoon and a spatula and can't and don't cook as a result - of the family and always have to have rice with my meals.
Take rice away from me and I will be very sad.

This fried rice was pretty good though, with the inclusion of egg, spring onions and sausage-like meat, which I think was salami. My household goes by the mindset that fried rice is usually a combination of all the leftover, unused bits and pieces of ingredients that are wiser to be included in fried rice rather than in the rubbish bin. Cause that's the only time that we end up with a fried rice dish at home, and will never actively order a dish of fried rice when dining out.

Tofu cubes with Chicken mince

 This was yummy, or maybe I'm just biased because I like tofu. I like tofu a lot, but not enough to convert me into a vegetarian so I can eat tofu everyday. Tofu is like the grown up version of jelly, but not as exciting cause it doesn't have the flavours or colours that jelly is loved for. But tofu does has the wibble-wobble quality and fragility of jelly that I love, and is probably the same reason why I love tofu too.

This was drenched in a thick gravy along with pieces of I think, chicken mince? This was good to chew and provided an awesome time in my mouth LOL because of contrasting textures of the dish to chew.

Lamb Hotpot, again?

When this came out, it was a little confusing. The appearance and ingredients suggested that THIS was the lamb hotpot, instead of the one that came out before it and didn't seem like lamb hotpot anyway. But the sauce was THICK, not the usual characteristic of lamb hotpot. This one included chinese cabbage, chinese mushroom, normal lamb with a lot of fat attached, random lamb skin, and a lot of thick chunky bits of bamboo shoots. At least I think they are bamboo shoots. All in a very chinese claypot thing.

A very "winter" dish to have to keep you all warmed up and toasted despite the howling winds and downpour of rain outside the foggy window, cause the steam from this dish really heatens up the atmosphere and fogs up the glass on a cool evening ;)

Chicken soup

Haahaha. I don't think we realised how much soup was in our order. The lazy susan turn table thingo in the middle supported 3 of those portable gas stoves and took up so much space that left little room for everything else. Which meant every time the table was turned someone's teacup or another porcelain utensil or ANYTHING in the way was knocked over and spilled, countless times.
Our teacups were filled up purely for the purpose to get knocked over again.
Human beings never learn.

So anyway. I discovered a while ago that liquids fill up stomach space at the speed of lightning. So if you're trying to starve yourself but so damn hungry that you would eat dirt, I suggest drinking liquids for your meals everyday and substitute each calorie you don't want with water.
Cause water's good for you :)

Took me a while to realise I was getting full on water.
*large gulp* "Why do I feel full :S"
*eat a crap load*
*another gulp* "Why do I feel full again :S"
*eat another larger crap load* "I swear I'm not full."
*another gulp* "Why do i feel fu - OHH its the water!!!"

That was me discovering my stupidity. But besides that, all this soupy-ness was filling us up fast. The chicken stock was very sweet from the boiling of the pieces of chicken meat inside. As a result, the meat was a bit dry and overcooked as all its juices were squeezed out into the soup to bring out the flavour in the soup. Asians tend to make soup and chicken stock by using chicken bone and boiling that for a couple of hours instead of using the cubed chicken stock powder that can be readily brought.

It also had in it, various Chinese herbs and other unknown Chinese "healing" and nutritious substances that I do not know the purpose, nor the names for.
Pardon me for my ignorance.

Chinese cabbage

Annndd this was the boring old vegetable dish. It was pretty average, but I don't blame them because chinese cabbage tends to end up looking like a muck and tastes like mush the longer you cook it. It's great and crisp when its just cooked but some might not like it that way.

The vegetables were swimming in soupy sauce along with the other floaties which I recognised were little curled up balls of dried shrimp. Eat this dish if you want the impression of healthy eating amongst a buffet of unhealthy dishes I guess.

Stewed Chicken

This came out last and would have been so much better if it had came out, well, not last! By this time everyone was quite full and this was quite a heavy, saucy dish to have. And by this time, my mouth was tired, my stomach was saying STOP and my hands didn't want to move and my brain didn't want to help me pick out the bones from the chicken pieces. So I went for the lazy option and had the mushrooms inside this claypot dish.
Good sauce to soak up your rice with. But coming out last and with no rice to soak, this dish was left largely unfinished and was a bit of a waste.

Timing is everything really.

Oh forgot to mention that there was actually a 10th dish that came out first, which was the horrifyingly recognisable RED sauced dish known as the Singaporean style? crab. To complement this was another dish of deep fried crunchy goodness on the outside, fluffy soft bread on the inside buns otherwise known as mantou.
But my noobness in photography and passion in it shows that I am in fact not as passionate in taking photos than I am to eagerly throw away all my senses and to just PIG OUT like I haven't seen or eaten food ever before.

So did I mention ALL THESE DISHES came to a grand total of $155? Talk about value for money lol. Asians know how to bargain, know how to rip you off, but also know how to give you good value for your money. And it shows here.
However I think charging $1.50 per head for Chinese tea in a pot is a bit steep. But I guess it's how they make up for charging cheaply on food.
So good on them.

Quite a drive and had to brave the fierce weather on the way, but it was worth it. I guess that's the reason why we keep coming back to this place.