Our family went to Chef Tony for dinner on Mothers Day. Chef Tony is different than most Chinese restaurants out there because they put an emphasis on their food and quality of service.
They also have 6 VIP rooms for private parties and every single one of them looked gorgeous. In addition to beautiful furniture and decor, each room had it’s own rice cooker and counter space so that the waiters could have a place to put extra dishes, cutlery and tea pots.
Since our dinner party had 24 people, we had 3 of our own waiters…I thought this was a little excessive but I guess that’s what you get when a place decides to focus on quality of service and experience right? Actually that isn’t even the crazy part…the crazy part was how one of the servers was a designated door opener for us when we wanted to leave the room…
Each table had three tea pots; two for tea and one for hot water. Then two of the tea pots were set on tea stands with candles so that it’s contents would stay hot. I thought that this was a genius idea and I have never seen anything like it before. The other thing that I found to be peculiar was how every person got two pairs of chopsticks to use; one for personal use and one for grabbing food off the shared plates.
We started off with an appetizer plate of pork belly, fried silken tofu, tripe and marinated tea eggs. I only ended up trying the tea egg but it was pretty good and I liked how pronounced the tea flavor was. Lil’ bun liked the tofu the best because she liked the contrast between the crispy outside and the silky soft inside of it.
This plate had marinated jelly fish, tofu curd wrapped shiitake mushrooms and carrots, assorted vegetarian meats, and beef slices
The soup was brought to us in a large ceramic pot that was then placed on a portable stove so that it could be served hot (this was also a new experience for me).
The fish soup had wood ear mushrooms, cilantro, egg noodles and pieces of fish of course. As with most thicker soups at Chinese restaurants, it had a roux like thick consistency. I couldn’t find very much fish in mine because of all the egg noodles in it but I liked the addition of fresh crispy cilantro
For an added textural crunch, garlic chips were placed around the plate. I’m a seafood and veggie lover so this ended up being one of my favorite dishes of the night. Plus I knew I needed to fill up on my veggies while I can because I knew that heavy meat dishes were probably to come. I didn’t think this dish had much flavor to it besides a touch of soy. I also found it to be quite oily but that’s to be expected at most Chinese restaurants
As with the mushrooms, there wasn’t much flavor to it and I found the egg white roux was too thick for my liking and drenched the greens.
This soup didn’t have as much substance as one’s I’ve had in the past. As you can see there was barely anything in it and it was quite a clear broth. It was also more liquidy than most shark fin soups
I didn’t try this dish but from what I gather, it wasn’t spicy because there was a good amount of honey mixture added into it for sweetness. They also mentioned that the chicken was cut into smaller pieces than usual. This made it a little difficult to eat since there were so many bones throughout the pieces.
MORE MUSHROOMS! By now our table started to wonder if this restaurant had an obsession with mushrooms or something because almost every dish had a bunch of it on the plate. I didn’t complain though because I loooooovvvveeee them.
This dish had trumpet mushrooms (yay), broccoli, carrots and gai lan. The only complaint about it was that there were alot of green veggie stalks and they weren’t cooked until tender so they were quite fibrous and hard to chew through.
This was my favorite protein dish because well I’m a pescatarian so the variety of food I can eat when it comes to these dinners is limited and because the fish was cooked perfectly flakey. The strange thing about this dish was that it wasn’t served with rice or anything…and we were expected to eat it off our plates which we couldn’t really understand because the sauce just went all over the place.
I don’t know what the marinade was in these short ribs but they were very well received by the table and were gone in no time!
Okay we’re almost at the end now…this is a sauteed hot pot of chicken, pork and various veggies. The chicken was moist on the inside and the pork was cooked nicely tender. As with the short ribs, these disappeared pretty quickly.
Well cooked and the heat from the chili peppers was a bit of an afterthought since I only detected it at the end.
The shrimps and scallops were sauteed in a thick soy based roux. I didn’t have much of it because the shrimp was really “battered” (to keep it from sticking to the pan when being cooked) making them almost doughy in flavor.
My favorite dish of the night. How could something so simple taste so good? It was steamed perfectly and each piece of flesh still had a tender bite to it.
The noodles had shredded pork, green onion, egg, bell peppers and bean spouts in it. I was waay too full by now to have any of it but lil’ bun said that it was pretty food as far as sauteed rice noodles go and wasn’t overly greasy or salty either.
Lil’ bun was very disappointed with this dish. Usually these noodles are sauteed with loads of shiitake mushrooms and shredded pork but there was virtually none in sight in this one!
Unlike most fried rice dishes found in Chinese restaurants, this one is made with egg whites instead of the whole egg. It also had slices of gai lan (Chinese broccoli) and dried scallop speckled throughout.
If you’re not familiar with traditional Chinese 10 course meals, typically you would start off with a plate of appetizers followed by alternating protein and veggie dishes, then to finish the meal you’re served a rice and noodle dish. For our rice dish we ended up getting glutinous fried rice with Chinese sausage, mushrooms, dried shrimp, and a bunch of other things then topped with strings of egg. Brother deer and my cousin polished off this plate of rice…lightening speed.
This is lil’ bun’s favorite Chinese noodle dish of all time and it’s thick rice noodle stirfry with veggies and beef. She didn’t hesitate to have 2 bowls of this…and she would of had no problem having more if it weren’t for dessert.
I thought that it tasted like almond milk with a splash of almond extract because it was quite strong in almond flavou. The dessert soup wasn’t very sweet so they offered a little jar of simple syrup if you feel the need to sweeten it up. I didn’t add any to mine but apparently it tasted a lot better with it.
My family always gets the steamed brown sugar honeycomb cake here because it’s one of the moistest and fluffiest they’ve ever tasted .We usually get both kinds they offer and there’s never any left over! Although they are brown sugar based, they aren’t too sweet and the coconut milk they use in it adds another depth of flavor because it’s so aromatic.
This cake was a definite hit amongst everyone because it was extremely moist and had a coconut undertone to it. It was a little too sweet for my taste but lil’ bun happily took my helping of it.
Since it was mothers day we got to have salted egg custard buns. I’m not big on these so I didn’t have any but these got mother deer’s seal of approval because the buns were fluffy soft and the filling was nice and liquidy.
Summary
Would I come back? Yes but wouldn’t go out of my way to
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