Aliens Invade Chinatown!

When we were at Ravesi's yesterday we got invited by Ah Fah's godparents to dinner at Chinatown. No holiday would be complete without at least one Chinese meal right? We met at Golden Century to eat some "special Tasmanian crab", I was told. So there we were, feeling the effects of late nights and walking around in scorching temperatures, when the waiter comes round and drops a huge mother of a crab on our table. Geez! It was the size of a bull terrier! It was fascinating at first but after awhile I started to feel bad for it. I'm sure it must've known it was about to be devoured by the twelve hungry people before it. I was relieved when the waiter finally came back and took it away but not before I gave it a comforting stroke on its pincer.

The crab was so big that we had three dishes made out of it. The first dish was stir-fried with scallions, ginger and wine (above, background). The crab meat tasted absolutely amazing! It was so sweet and fresh. And the texture was almost noodle like, flaking off in translucent white strands. The second dish was batterfried with salt and pepper. This was very tasty too but I felt the batter took away from the delicious texture of the meat. The third was noodles stir-fried in crab roe. I didn't have much of this dish because I wanted to save my stomach for the next seven courses! We had assorted roast meats & cold ham, roast chicken, black pepper beef, stir-fried clams, sweet & sour pork and a very small plate of token vegetables. There was meant to be one more dish somewhere but it never arrived much to the relief of our distended stomachs.

The following day we spent the most part of the day in Paddington. The guys made a pit stop at Max Brenner while us girls disappeared in a Karen Millen clearance store. Thank the heavens! Chocolate AND Karen Millen! I was the first to emerge from the drowsy depths of silk and satin. It didn't feel like I had been gone that long but Handsome pointed out that they had finished their second round of drinks and polished off two plates of sinful chocolate pleasures. I didn't manage to fit in any Max Brenner that day but I did have a espresso and milk chocolate frappe in Manly the next day. Damnnnnn, it was so smooth, rich and intense. I'm so glad everyone had their own drinks so I didn't have to share!