East Ocean, Chinatown

I think I'm falling out of love. It's taken less than two weeks for the glow of my new camera love to become slightly tarnished. You see, the first few times the camera and I dined together were on sunshiny days, with loads of natural light beaming through the windows and illuminating my photos to perfection. For the first time ever I felt like that perhaps I could actually take a decent photo. 

How quickly that all unravelled when the BFF and I took the camera for a night-time outing to East Ocean. I actually thought most of the photos looked okay when I looked at them on the display screen; it wasn't until I got home and loaded them onto the computer that I saw how truly awful they really were. The vast majority of them were blurry, and I mean really blurry, or dark. Oh how my little heart was breaking. Why is my DSLR betraying me like this? What had I ever done to it, except for by it new lenses, as well  as a lovely new camera bag, and love it like I would box of Adriano Zumbo macarons!

In hindsight I think I had the F Stop set too high at f/1.8 (as I thought that is what you did in dim lighting). I was also too close to the food for most of the photos making everything out of focus and something “not quite right” was happening with the ISO. Looks like it's back to the beginners classes for me. I've fiddled around with most of the photos here, trying to lighten them up in Picassa – so hopefully they look somewhat decent.

Now, enough whingeing about the photos (or my retarded camera - I know I know, "a bad workman blames his tools, blah blah blah" but I'm not falling for that line...this had nothing to do with me and my inabilities) and on to waxing lyrical about the food at the epically huge Chinatown restaurant, East Ocean. 

Not surprisingly we were dining out on another one of my meal deal vouchers – this one was for a Peking Duck Pancake and San Choi Bow banquet for just $38 to 2 people. Best of all the BFF and I each got to eat three entire Peking duck pancakes to ourselves – oh, I was in heaven!

The meals starts with a pot of jasmine tea, which was really welcomed on this horrible wet, windy and rainy night. The deal actually included two glasses of wine (as well as the tea) and the wait staff couldn't believe it when we told them we didn’t want to drink the wine, "but it's free" they kept telling us over and over again.  In hindsight I should've guzzled both glasses and maybe my photos would've turned out better?  Hindsight...isn't it a bitch.

Next, a huge plate of prawn crackers comes towards us – looks like there's more food to this deal than I had expected, excellent!

But who can think about prawn crackers when the fixings of Peking Duck Pancakes come marching towards you? Not me that is for sure.

Probably the funniest thing about the evening was the waiter arriving at our table with six side plates (in addition to the bowl and plate we already had) and proceeding to slowly make the pancakes for us – each pancake receiving its own plate. Our table became very crowded very quickly – which just meant we had to eat faster.

The pancakes were lovely, fatty slivers of crispy skinned duck nestled on a warm pancake accompanied by Spring Onions and Hoisin Sauce.  These really have to be one of the most sinfully delicious foods on the planet.

Next course is a Duck San Choi Bow.  We just get one lettuce cup each, but it is overflowing with filling – so much so that we need to eat most of it before we can roll the lettuce cup up for eating.

Just when we think the meal is over the waiter delivers a small plate of cut fruit, and another plate that has some delicate cakes and pastries on it.

Although I've had fruit to end a meal at a Chinese restaurant before this is the first time I've ever been served cakes.  One cake is a pastry with a red bean filling - delicious, and the other a small biscuit dotted with sesame filling.  Both were lovely and sweet, and I loved how they were "just bite sized"...enough for a sugar hit without feeling too guilty about it. 

Now we weren't starving after our dinner, but I was feeling a tad...greedy, so we marched up to the QVB in the pouring rain and ducked into Nazimi for a quick Agedashi Tofu and some sushi.

East Ocean is at 421 Sussex Street, Haymarket.