Chinese Bites: Western Lake

Yay, another Chinese Bites dinner! This would be my second official Chinese Meal with the gang and I was excited to try this place. I'd heard good things about Western Lake from friends but never been myself. With us today were Rick, Romina, Alvin, Sherman, Melody and Raymond of Chinese Bites. Joining us a little later was Kevin. Off to a traditional start of roasted peanuts and sour veggies. These things are supposed to whet your appetite and usually does the trick. I found the veggies rather mild, but I love super sour things, they are probably just fine. I rarely eat the peanuts, since it might lead to my ridicule at how "left-handed" people hold chopsticks.  

 

This Melon Soup is one of my favourites. The melon is hollowed out, then the cubed flesh are combined with mushrooms, crab meat and slowly steamed/stewed for hours. 

 

There is definitely a sweetness from the crab, which was abundant. Although the long cooking process does comprise the texture of the crab meat just a touch. The melon chunks are piping hot, with a little bit of a bite still left to them.  The Egg and Seafood dish is pure comfort food, I love soft texture of the shrimp and scallop, the creaminess of the egg, and mixed together, it's just amazing. I guess it's similar to a runny egg white omelette, but that makes it sound so plain! I'm not sure about the decorations...quite fruit-centric, eh?  Next up - Fried Dungeness Crab topped with a ton of fried garlic and onions. This dish had great flavour, lots of meaty crab. And if you're a fan of the shell, there were lots of "meat" in there for you as well. I normally prefer lobster to crab, purely for the meat-shell ratio, but the fried garlic really made my mouth water, and if it smelled that good, surely it must taste even better! Next up? Sauteed/Stir-Fried Beef with Fried Milk Balls. Although called Fried Milk Balls, the inside is more like a milk custard than actual milk, so it does have a slightly sweet taste to it, and marries well with savoury dishes such as this one here.  Ah, another fruit adorned dish, this time Deep Fried Prawns in a cream sauce. This dish was a bit too rich for me, there was just too much sauce. I don't like it when the crunch from deep-frying something is lost with the addition of sauce. I ended up scraping off as much sauce as I could before trying these.  Now this version of Deep Fried Prawns were more to my liking! A slightly tangy sauce lightly coating deep fried prawns. I enjoyed this and could easily have eaten more than my fair share!  It's Make Your Own Pork Belly Sandwich time!   These steamed buns arrived piping hot, and all you do it split it half, I prefer to do it "top vs bottom", but some people just tear in into "left vs right". There isn't really a method to the madness.  And here is the Fatty Filling...a Braised Pork Belly complete with the fatty skin. Take a chunk of this and place it between the Steamed Bun. It's like a Asian Slider...be sure to scoop up some extra sauce for the bun to soak up. If you are a fan of Braised Pork Belly, be sure to check out my post of Ken's Chinese Kitchen for their version.    Our final protein was their Fried Chicken. You can see how lean the chicken is, and how crispy the skin turned out. The bright colour was really nice too, and showcased their signature marinade. We also had a Fried Rice after that, but food coma had set in and I totally forgot to take a picture.

 

Dessert consisted of two choices...one is a Chinese Water Chestnut Pudding and the other is a Red Bean Jello. These probably aren't the best or most accurate descriptions, but it's the best I've got so far. The Water Chestnut Pudding had a bit of wolfberries in it, which served to give the pudding more texture. And I am not really a fan of Red Bean, so I didn't give that a try.
Overall, the menu was heavy on seafood, which I loved, so this place was a win for me.

Take Note:

• This place gets really busy for dim sum
• Fried Chicken was better than most with a very crispy skin
• Winter Melon Soup was the highlight, might have to order ahead of time

**Western Lake hosted Chinese Bites for this tasting but my opinions are my own.**



More reviews available here for Signature Dishes Tour Dinners.