Chow Times Cantonese banquet at Red Star

Red Star Seafood @ 8298 Granville

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For the last few months, the Vancouver food blog Chow Times has been organizing a series of feasts on the theme of the "eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine". They'll be having a total of eight get-togethers, each focused on one particular type of traditional Chinese cuisine. Before I discovered their blog recently, they had already covered two: Hunan and Shanghai.

Kweepo and I were lucky enough to attend the third in the series, which was a lavish 10-course Cantonese banquet at Red Star restaurant on South Granville. The Cantonese love having large feasts with big groups of people, but I'd never experienced anything like that before because I don't have any family here.

Their invitation to the event is an instructive introduction to the history and culture of Cantonese cuisine. It gave me a new appreciation of Cantonese cuisine's long history and variety, and a new perspective on how to better enjoy it.

Cantonese cuisine has been my least favorite of all Chinese cuisines for a long time, because my main exposure to Cantonese cuisine has been in the form of dim sum. After encountering exactly the same dim sum dishes at one Cantonese restaurant after another, I concluded that they lacked imagination.

In fact, to truly experience Cantonese cuisine, you have to either go to Guangdong, where I'm sure the dim sum has more variety, or try the more expensive dishes at a banquet. I almost never go to Cantonese restaurants for anything other than dim sum because their regular menus are so expensive and I don't know enough people to hold a banquet.

I decided to go to this banquet despite the steep price tag (about $60) because I thought it was a good opportunity to be exposed to a variety of the region's pricier, fancier, more characteristic dishes - to finally experience Cantonese food on its own terms, the way it's supposed to be experienced. The organizers of this feast clearly had this intent in organizing the meal, and considerable thought, footwork and research went into the preparation of this event, for which I tip my hat in their direction.

This is going to sound weird, but I don't like not liking something. In some cases, I feel like failure to appreciate a certain type of cooking is a shortcoming on my part. I feel like maybe I haven't tried enough, or maybe I haven't tasted the right dishes or been to the right restaurant. It's like an itch I want to scratch. I thought this meal might help finally show me what it was I'd been missing all this time.

To get right to the point, this meal was a great experience. The company was pleasant, and the atmosphere of conviviality was great, and it was great getting to taste such a variety of high-end dishes in one sitting.

Did it change my opinion of Cantonese food? Yes and no. Some of the dishes were good and some were less good. This meal gave me a better sense of what Cantonese do well, namely: fresh seafood, prepared in austere and simple dishes with very subtle sauces. I love fish, but other than that I have never been a big seafood fan. Sea cucumber, shrimp, squid - these things leave me nonplussed.

This meal did not change the sheltered, small-minded reservations of a westerner used to 'safe' foods. And unfortunately it's precisely in the strange and exotic that Cantonese seems to shine its brightest, or at least take its particular character. That doesn't mean there isn't a lot to appreciate in Cantonese food for me. It's just that I have to be more selective.

Let's get right to the dishes. Most of these were like nothing I've ever had, so in that sense alone it was a great experience.

~ Dish 1/10: ROAST SUCKLING PIG ~

This thing was the star of the meal. The restaurant roasted an entire suckling pig for this dinner. This was one of the main things that convinced me I wanted to come. There were two tables at the meal, each with 13 people. Each table got half of the pig. This wound up being slightly insufficient to feel like you got a good taste of the thing, which is a shame because it was by far the best dish of the meal.

This was like no other pork I've ever had. It's a special dish for a special occasion. This restaurant is known for its roasted meats, and this is undoubtedly the crown of all of those. The skin is crispy, the meat underneath succulent and tender. It's actually eaten in much the same way as Peking Duck - you wrap a piece of meat, a piece of green onion and some sauce in a little tortilla and eat it like a midget Sino fajita.

The only problem is they ran out of tortilla and green onion, which was disappointing considering the price of the dish. We were instructed to sprinkle a little bit of sugar onto the pork, and indeed this was a good suggestion. The sweetness was a surprisingly good match with the roasted pork.

~ Dish 2/10: STEAMED SCALLOPS WITH FUZZY MELON ~

This felt a lot more typically Cantonese to me than the previous dish in the sense of it having seafood and having a very subtle, neutral flavor - as opposed to the rich flavor of the fajita. The melon was very soft and added more texture and bulk than flavor to the scallop in the middle. I asked the waiter what the sauce was, and he said it was just a 'white sauce'. The random piece of broccoli thrown in for some reason, though? Could have done without it.

~ Dish 3/10: CANTONESE STYLE SPECIALTY SOUP WITH CHICKEN, WHELK AND JINHUA HAM ~

The way they prepared this soup is to boil chicken and ham pieces in the water and serve the whole thing as is, with the pieces of meat in the soup. They then took the meat out, cut it up, and you took some pieces and put it in the broth. The broth tasted basically like chicken soup you'd have anywhere, and the meat was very dry because it had been boiled and all the flavor had gone into the soup. Again very Cantonese in the sense of being very basic, without many added spices or sauces or anything. But not that great. One small bowl was more than enough of this.

~ Dish 4/10: HONG KONG STYLE SPICY CRABS ~

The crab was pretty good, though I'm not a huge fan of crab. They were deep fried and coated with a spicy sauce. The sauce wasn't too spicy.

~ Dish 5/10: STEAMED FISH ~

This was apparently cod with cilantro and strips of what appear to be leek. It was good, but one fish was not enough for 13 people, and we each got the bite-sized portion seen above, which wasn't enough to really appreciate the dish.

~ Dish 6/10: SEA CUCUMBER WITH BRAISED MUSHROOM ~

One of the more obviously exotic dishes on the menu, I was really excited about trying this to push my boundaries. Sea cucumber is normally something I would never have thought to eat. I hate the idea of gooey, squishy things as a general principle - all the more so when it comes to eating them. Fish I readily ingest, but mollusks, crustaceans and invertebrates I detest. The mere thought of eating a sentient undersea intestine is not something that strikes me as necessary.

But in the spirit of adventure, I gave it a shot. The specimen upon which we dined was a monster that even brought out cut up into fist-sized chunks went around the table and then some. The Cantonese 'sauce' was a tasteless paste that served mostly for lubrication it seems. We were hence on our own when it came to the mortal combat, left face to face with whatever gustatory challenge the monster might launch our way.

I was surprised to find that it was all bark and no bite - it didn't have that much taste. Not even salty or seafoody. Very subtle. Only the squishy texture reminded me of what I was purported to be eating. It's not something I would recommend or ever want to try again, but it was worth trying once.

I wound up eating a lot more of the bok choy bedding than the sea cucumber. The garnish of shiitake were typically very spare in their preparation and not particularly to my liking.

~ Dish 7/10: BARBECUE DUCK ~

The restaurant's forte is in roasting and the roasted duck did not disappoint. Somehow they managed to finagle the animal such that the pieces of duck had a lot of meat without excessive fat, and a rich smoky flavor. I often find myself leaving the fat in duck dishes because it grosses me out, but this time the proportion was just right. The Chinese are good at duck.

~ Dish 8/10: SIU GAO DUMPLING WITH NOODLES IN SUPREME SOUP ~

A simple noodle and dumpling dish was a nice change of pace from the heavy-hitters that came before. The dumplings were good and the thin wheat noodles were tender and easy to chew, unlike the inedible hard noodles I was served at Congee and Noodle House on Broadway. The dish came much ballyhooed by our boisterous maitre d', who pronounced it one of the restaurant's specialties. It was good, but I didn't quite see what was particularly special about it.

~ Dish 9/10: RED STAR'S SPECIALTY RICE IN LOTUS LEAF ~

The presentation of this dish was nice - it came in a bowl constructed of lotus leaves and molded into the shape of one of those old Chinese magistrates hats that you see in the historical dramas. With a flourish, the waiter pulled the top of the dish off, revealing the steaming rice contained therein. I don't remember the particulars of the rice's preparation or taste, but it primarily served as a palate cleanser and change of pace from the previous dishes.

~ Dish 10/10: BAKED TAPIOCA PUDDING WITH LOTUS SEED PASTE ~

I loved the dessert. I've never had tapioca like this. It was baked into a sort of tapioca pie, so that you get a bit of crunchy crust with each bite. The tapioca itself was really creamy and rich and unlike any other tapioca I've had before, almost like they put custard in there or something. It was a good way to end an interesting and eventful meal.

And it was a LONG meal. We arrived at the restaurant at 6:30 p.m, and by the time dessert came out, it was almost 10 p.m.

PHEW. That was a feast. Although we didn't leave stuffed, amazingly. I was a little disappointed that the beers weren't a little more affordable. $5.99 for a Tsing Tao seems very pricey. Other than that, it was an exciting experience and I look forward to the rest of the meals in the series.