shanghai palace @ chatswood

Ever so rarely, my close group of friends go out for Chinese. We seem to always put Chinese at the bottom of our list of places to eat at. The very reason being that most of us come from a Chinese background, eat Chinese at home on a daily basis or already have a Chinese restaurant that we go to with family. But once in a blue moon, one of the boys will suggest a Chinese dinner and well, it actually ends up being a lot of fun. And as much as we all dread ordering the same dishes that we order when we usually eat Chinese, we just go ahead and order them again. After all, we are meant to be eating Chinese.

This was a Friday night dinner with about 10 of us at Shanghai Palace in Chatswood (directly opposite to the Chatswood Chase carpark entrance). Nothing like Peking duck to start off the night!

Steamed fish. (Definitely one of the healthier things to eat at a Chinese restaurant)

My friend A insisted on ordering Prawn toast and we all laughed when we saw this plate come out. To be honest, I'm not sure why I laughed except that I thought it was funny at the time. FYI: There's 3 servings on this plate.

Beef and beans in black pepper sauce.

Deep fried tofu. There was meant to be a filling to this one (or so it said on the menu). In my piece, there was something that looked like prawn but for the most part, it was plain tofu.

Salt & Pepper white bait. When this dish came out, we suddenly all realised that we'd ordered a lot of fried food. I'm usually quite fond of this dish but had to agree, too much fried food for one night.

Shantong Chicken. This dish is one of my favourites and certainly done well here.

It's actually not a bad idea to eat Chinese with friends. You end up being able to taste a whole variety of foods, the chatter seems just that little more animated when you're sitting around a round table and well, it's economical. (well if you order seafood, expect to pay a little more). Shanghai Palace is actually known for its Singapore Crab as well as Crab Congee which I have yet to try. Definitely next time!

Notice any difference in the photos and how they're watermarked? J has decided to contribute the photography to this blog and so you'll be seeing more of him (or his photos anyway in posts moving forward). Hope you like them!