Chinese for Monday

A friend is in town after a couple of years' absence and requested Asian food for dinner.  As she was bound to be exhausted from traveling, I figured we should be accommodating and do dinner on the Dark Side.  I seemed to remember that there is a Chinese restaurant at the Hyatt Regency, but have never found occasion to dine there...  So The Great One kindly booked us a table at The Chinese Restaurant (凱悅軒).

I had read about a particular set menu where we could enjoy a discount by using a certain credit card, and was interested in taking that offer.  It was interesting because - as long as the entire table took this set - each person could make his/her own personal choices for appetizer, soup, main course, rice/noodle, and dessert.  Only the veggie dish needs to be shared.  But the others didn't seem to be enthusiastic about this option, so we ended up ordering à la carte.

When the dishes started arriving, I was a little upset at first - because I thought they were being served "out of order" in terms of how a proper Chinese meal should be.  This was because I wasn't responsible for ordering and didn't know what other dishes were coming.  I later realized that all of tonight's dishes had indeed been served in the proper order.

Smoked chicken, jasmine tea (茉莉花茶燻雞) - not bad.  The chicken was tender, and the flavors were well-balanced - the smokiness was detectable without being too overpowering.  I did wish, though, that the soy sauce flavors could have been a wee bit deeper.

Stir-fried leafy amaranth with diced garlic (蒜蓉炒莧菜) - young shoots here so they were tender.

Fried scallop and bean curd ball, oyster sauce (香煎帶子琵琶豆腐) - the picture in the menu came with a caption describing these as "scallop balls", so naturally I reverted to my juvenile self and cracked a joke with the Kat about scallops having balls...  In any case, these were actually pan-fried tofu with diced scallops and water chestnuts inside.  Pretty tasty.

Braised flower crab meat, vermicelli, chicken soup (生拆紅蟹燴銀絲) - I love vermicelli in soup and this was a very "light" dish in terms of flavor, although I did wonder a little if the "chicken soup" was really chicken powder.  Thankfully, though, I didn't get the sense that it was loaded with MSG.

Crispy egg noddle, seafood (海鮮炒麵) - our visitor's request.  As befitting a restaurant in a 5-star hotel, they served the topping on the side so that the deep-fried noodles would stay crispy and not get soggy.

We plated our portions ourselves.  The noodles were very yum.  The seafood was OK.

Pretty decent dinner, although we didn't order anything special so I wasn't able to get a sense of how this place would do when it comes to higher end dishes.  Maybe next time...