Sea King Garden, Lei Yue Mun, Hong Kong

This is the first proper entry of the New Year and for this we are having a late lunch quest at this seafood restaurant. It is located at Lei Yue Mun, a fishing village that has an area of seafood restaurants where their main 'ingredients' are displayed out by their front doors and are pretty much alive and kicking. You then pick the food you you want and it is cooked for you.

Live Lobster 

I was with my in-law family so we ordered a lot of dishes to share between all six of us for this dinner, which are described below.

The first dish that arrived was prawn on vermicelli, shown on the left. The prawns were big and fried well and the vermicelli was fried to give it a crunchy texture. They were all draped with a buttery sauce.

Abalone is shown on the right, which came next. The whole mollusc was steamed and served with  a soy sauce dressing and not too jaw-achingly chewy.

A lobster with noodles dish was served as the third dish. I do like lobster and this was baked well and was meaty. With the melted cheese covering the lobster and noodles there was a kind of had a macaroni cheese feel to it, which was nice.










We also chose Razor clam, shown right. These were stir fried in black bean sauce with peppers and presented back with their shell. They were a little spicy in flavour but I felt they were a bit too chewy.











Oysters were on the menu and this variant were cooked in red wine with onions. They were foil wrapped and baked so did not look that great. Baked and sweet but nothing great and in all honesty I preferred the onions.

We also ate Steamed garoupa, shown on the right. The fish meat was lovely and flaky and covered in the classic hot soy sauce oil dressing and spring onion.

We also ordered a couple of non marine type dishes. First of these dishes was Sweet & Sour pork. This classic for UK Chinese takeaways was good, nice pieces of battered meat, not too sour with peppers and pineapple.

Kale was also ordered, which was stir fried with ginger. These were big pieces of the green vegetable, crunchy and fresh tasting.

The above is not all we ate as I have not photographed everything. We also had a Fish Soup served during the main course. As a dessert we were served a hot pumpkin soup and slices of papaya

The Courtyard

Sea King Garden left us all very full and satisfied after a large seafood feast. The food is very fresh and you get to choose them yourself, which is all part of the experience.

The restaurant has undergone a recent refurbishment and has a modern looking inside with clean furniture. Historically it was based around a courtyard and after it's renovation still holds a similar style as can be seen from the photograph above, where internal dining rooms are built next to the tree in the courtyard.

Waiting staff were friendly and probably too efficient at times and tried clearing our plates before we had actually finished the food.

Scores:

Food: 4/5

Presentation: 4/5

Service: 3/5

Setting: 3/5

Total: 14/20

Cost: Expect this seafood dinner to cost at least $800 a head (including drinks). I will have to be honest here and say that our total bill cost a lot less as we knew the staff.

I ate: All of the above.

I drank: White wine, Heineken Beer, Chinese Tea.

I wore: Lyle & Scott Cardigan.