04/11/2015 - Birthday Celebration Part 2 (Wedding Food Tasting @ Mandarin Orchard)

The part 2 of my birthday celebration was spend by going for food tasting at our wedding venue :) You may read part 1 of the simple birthday celebration here.

Food tasting were arranged 1 month prior to the wedding day as set by the hotel. And it can only be done from Tue-Thur. So we decide to set the food tasting on my birthday then since we don't have ang fanciful celebration in mind. I'm totally fine with meeting all our family members on my birthday. 

After we were done with collecting Derp's suit for the wedding and also selecting my MIL's gown, we made our way down to Mandarin Orchard.

We were early so we went to do some shopping with my MIL at Orchard area. We were supposed to meet our hotel coordinator to finalized the actual day details but he were so caught up with another client. We waited quite awhile for him to be done. We were glad we came prepared so when he's finally free to meet us, we got all the details sorted out within 15 minutes. 

By then all our family members have also just arrived, hence the food tasting proceed on without much delay.

The signage 

The Menu that we chose for the food tasting..

Prawn Salad, Smoked Duck Breast, Deep Fried Spring Roll, Marinated Jellyfish and Shoestring Prawn Roll. 

My favorite has got to be all the prawn related stuff because I'm a big prawn lover :) If I didn't remember wrongly, we didn't change any of the items from this dish fter much discussion. 

Braised Shark Fin with Three Treasures 

Needles to say, we didn't change this to other available options.

Stir Fried Prawn in Chilli Crab Sauce with Fried Buns

Our favorite dish and also it were our guests favourite too! For those couples who are going to hold their wedding at Mandarin Orchard, this is a must choose dish especially if you are are a chilli crab lovers yourselves :)

Steamed Sea Bass "Hong Kong" Style 

Initially we wanted to change it to Soon Hock, but the top-up per table were too much (it wasn't mention by the chef at that point of time). We stick to using Steamed Garoupa instead. However, it's the Black Garoupa and not the Red Garoupa because changing that to Red Garoupa will incurred extra costs. 

I will recommend couples to take note of their fish item because to serve anything better than sea bass will looks 'nicer' for the guests. The elder generations are usually more particular about it. 

There's a number of hotels who served Soon Hock as part of their menu for the wedding banquet. Do look out for those then because according to both Derp and my parents, Soon Hock taste much better and the fish's meat is very silky and smooth.

Crispy Roasted Chicken with Prawn Crackers

A very normal dish and the chef actually told us they do served roasted chicken with pork floss mixed with egg or something along the line. We think it's something different so we went ahead to change to that instead. This option wasn't given to us when we choose our menu for the food tasting.

Braised Voluta Served with Mushroom and Seasonal Vegetable

The voluta and mushroom were braised till perfection. They were much softer than what we have imagined. We kept this dish in our menu.

Fried Rice with Dried Sausage in Lotus Leaf

Our idea was to make our guests feel full so we reckon rice will be a better choice lol. We kept this dish in our menu too.

Cream of Red Bean Paste with Glutinous Rice Dumpling 

Derp chose this because it's his favourite. In the end, there were actually Yam Paste option and once again it was not written down in the list that they have given us. We only knew about this option after talking to the chef. We changed to serve Yam Paste because it's a popular choice.

So my mum got me a birthday 'cake' from Famous Amos.

Technically speaking,  it's a gigantic cookie and it's not meant for huge consumption because it can gets really sweet if you eat in big portion. But still, my Mum knows I love famous amos cookies since young (but not really now because they get way too expensive) hence she bought this 'cake' foe me. 

Family members singing the birthday song for me. 

The angle of the photo taken by Derp is just so unflattering and it's a #fatarm angle.

Before the night ends, we took a group photo before we parted ways.

All our family members present except my little niece. 

Many decisions made/ things we do throughout the whole wedding planning pretty much involve our family members. 

Hence, I've always believed marriage is a union between two families and not just the couple themselves. And do bear in mind, family members are the ones who will be with you through thick and thin and all the various important milestones in life :) 

That's all for now, I will blog about other aspects of the wedding preparation soon!