Tingha Palace

We chose Tingha Palace for a nice family dinner for a few reasons: it has a nice interior design, the food is not too bad and the best thing is that it's nice and quiet. On this day however, it was a little noisier than usual as there was a company was holding an awards ceremony (or something like that) right next to us (they only half fenced it off). Although it was sorta akward, it ended up being quite interesting to see what food they served (and how much of it was wasted!) and to see most of the employees sit there looking extremely bored whilst the presenters droned on and on and on.

Complimentary Snacks

The menu is quite extensive, with a permanent menu, a seafood menu and some other random menu in chinese. I find myself eating peanuts (with chopsticks) simply out of boredom whilst my parents decide on what to order. Not that I actually like peanuts.

I guess I'm lucky I don't have to be the one to do the choosing- I'd probably take an hour or so =]

You' d be forgiven for not knowing what this is- even my parents didn't when they looked back at the picture. And they even ATE it. It's actually (mud) crab. I grabbed a leg because its one of the easiest bits to eat- well the bit above the actual leg anyway, as there is no shell cracking involved. I like to leave most of the shell cracking bit to my dad because I'm too lazy to do it and apparently seeing me attacking a crab with a nutcracker is really scary =]

The crab comes covered with a thick, salty sauce on a bed of yi-mein (e-fu noodles) and a generous amount of scallions to top it all off. Eating crab is extremely messy, especially when it is covered with sauce. Our fingers are covered with sauce and consequently so is the nutcracker and our chopsticks. Luckily crab comes with a bowl of hot tea to wash our hands and a pile of towels to wipe them. The only thing not covered in sauce are the crab shells, which we spend forever sucking until they are almost flavourless. The sauce has a strong crab taste and so we I end up licking all the sauce off my fingers too.......

Stir fried Meat with Wasabi

The combination of wasabi with meat may seem strange at first, especially if you're like me, and have only had wasabi with cold sashimi. It is actually quite good, especially as it isn't actually very hot (as in spicy hot) for some weird reason. The meat is also very tender, which makes you wonder what on earth they've been doing with the meat....

???

Unfortunately I have no idea about the name of the dish or the name of the red things which are the main ingredient in this dish. This stir fry of mushrooms and the 'red things' (which are some sort of seafood which I usually eat raw) would have been okay except that the 'red things' weren't cooked to well and had a really weird texture....

Yeung Chow Fried Rice

The one thing we never order at chinese restaurants is plain rice. Because plain rice is usually charged per head at around $2 (I think??) Since we don't eat a lot of rice anyways, fried rice is slightly better value and ends up costing almost the same.

We order the yeung chow fried rice as it is the cheapest of the fried rices ($12.80). The frieddrice isn't bad - it's got a good amount of bbq pork, prawns, peas and egg througout. Not that we actually notice how good it tastes- for us, rice is only there to accompany the other dishes. We're not big fans of rice.

Stir Fried Seafood with Vegetables (I'm sure its real name is a lot more interesting)

The fact that this dish had seafood in it meant that it was quite pricey but it wasn't really worth it as it didn't taste good. The presentation itself isn't too appealing and the flavours were quite bland.

Orange Flavoured Fried Pork (I'm not any good at naming dishes....)

Citrus and fried pork sounds like an interesting combination which could work quite well. Unfortunately, in this case the flavours didn't quite work out and we didn't end up finishing it. This only thing that saved this dish was the fact that it was friedwell, giving it a good crispy and crunchy texture.

Overall, we ordered quite a lot for the four of us and ended up taking some of it home.

Complimentary Dessert

The great thing about eating at chinese restaurants like these is that they give you complimentary dessert- two slices of orange, a small cookie and a fried donut like thing for every persson. The round ball thing really tastes just like a donut sprinkled with sugar (not quite sure what its called in english). The cookie is buttery and soft (asian style) and the oranges are...oranges.

Complimentary Red Bean dessert

Like most other chinese restaurants, the red bean dessert is too watery for my liking- you can't even SEE the beans in the photo. I much rather have my mum's red bean dessert- but I happily gulp it all down. I like red beans =]

When we leave, the presentation seems like it's only about half way done. The employees are looking as sleepy as ever and I really hope I don't have to go to these things in the future =]

Tingha Palace

Parramatta Leagues
Level 1, 13-15 O'Conell Street
Parramatta NSW 2150