Tonight we had a big seafood dinner in Lei Yue Mun to send Bruce’s parents off. Their flight for Toronto leaves Friday morning. They’ve been here for about a month, traveling to Singapore, Malaysia and China during the week and spending time with us on some evenings.
Lei Yue Mun is one of our favourite places to eat. It’s a famous old fishing village and it’s oldschool streets are lined with fishing vendors proudly displaying their catch. Fresh, weird looking Geoduck, fish with electric coloured skin, shrimp of all different forms, and other shellfish that I had never even knew existed.
The best part is we live less than a 10 minute walk away.
Dinner was delicious. My favourite was the garlic-crusted steamed lobster. Everything was extremely fresh.
Halfway through the meal, Bruce’s cousin asks us how we feel about durian.
We love durian. Some of the people at the table are divided on their feelings for the spiky, aggressively-scented fruit.
They explain to us that they had ordered the restaurant’s deep-fried durian.
Deep fried durian.
They had our attention, and we were excitedly anticipating it’ arrival.
It looked really good and I wanted to like it. The batter was light, airy and crispy. It would have made a great exterior for bananas, but for durian I felt it had failed.
The hot oil of deep-frying had muted the winning quality of durian- it’s aroma. The fruit’s natural creamy custard-ness contrasted nicely with the crispy batter, but the flavour was dull. And hot durian is a bit weird.
I think for anyone who’s not a huge fan of the “King of Fruits” and is intimidated by it’s pungency, eating it fried is a good introduction.
This is probably the first time I’ve ever not liked something that was deep fried.
It was a great dinner though, and I can’t think of a better way to send his parents off.
The next time they see us I have no doubt that we will have gained some serious weight. But we will have more stories, experiences and ideas in food to share with them.
avec chantilly 