happy birthday bro!

For those that don't know, I have a younger bro - his name also starts with J (something about Asian families and naming their children with names that start with the same letter - it seems to run across both my mum and dad's side with maybe that one exception). Anyway, it was my bro's b'day and he decided he wanted to have his b'day dinner at 'Dai Wan Lai' in Eastwood. Mum rounded up the troupes aka. rest of the family and we were there for dinner on a Friday night.

We made a booking for 14/15 and were surprised to be given one of their private function rooms. The function room isn't all that big - just fitting one big table but otherwise nicely furnished. Bro & me.

Being tucked in a function room at the back of the restaurant had its downsides. You could hardly get any service and everytime we needed a waitstaff, someone had to stand outside the door, at the top of the stairs and wave manically at the waitstaff that stood at the front of the restaurant. Very slowly the food starts to arrive...

As you can see, there's a lot of us and the dishes arrive one by one...ever so slowly.
Expensive Jellyfish (almost $20 for the tiniest of plates). It worked out to be about 2 strands per person.A dish slightly more decent in size - Spicy/Singapore Crab. Quite tasty but also a very heaty dish - the crab is completely smothered in fried garlic and spices.Fish - very average. Despite 'Dai Wan Lai' being a seafood restaurant, I actually think their non-seafood dishes are much better.Onion Bread accompanied by an assorted pickled dish. Liked this one but be warned about the pieces of pickled garlic - lethal!One tasty pork knuckle! See that skin - there was so much of it that despite there being 15 of us, we couldn't get through it all. Prawn Skewers that were a lot of fun to eat.
What did I say - the prawn skewers were fun!

There were actually a few other dishes that we had that I didn't take photos of - you'll find those in my previous post on 'Dai Wan Lai'. The meal, overall had been good; the food is a bit different but actually makes it something to look forward to (it's not just your average Chinese restaurant), servings are decent, admittedly service was slow that night (but the thing is, the owner did come in to apologise at the end of the meal and gave us an extra plate of fried dumplings which I thought was really nice of her - and can I add, their fried dumplings are nice!). Well, I do not recommend their function rooms - by the end of the night, it just go too hot and stuffy and we had to leave the door open. And well, it does seem that they're busy on a Friday night so maybe another weeknight would be better if you are intending to go.

Happy B'day Bro! Hope you enjoyed the meal.