Vivian & Yvan Trying to Order, Oriental Garden, Chinatown, Manhattan

A trip to the aquarium? No! These were just a few of the lovely creatures waiting in the tanks at Oriental Garden to become our dinner. Yvan, Jeannette, Sarah, Tien, Michael, Vivian, Yim and I were out celebrating the Chinese New Year yesterday. $198 may seem like a lot of money for dinner but not when you’re getting almost 10 courses of seafood for 8 people. We had:

- Full-bodied, freshly steamed shrimp (gnarly too look at, but very tasty)
- Seafood soup (didn’t care for this one too much – Tien ate mine!)
- Sauteed clams
- Mixed seafood platter (really good scallops & conch on here)
- A whole fish in a brown sauce (very tender and yummy)
- Lobster (delish but hard to eat with chop sticks!)
- Sauteed mussels
- Sauteed oysters (may be the first time I ate an oyster – I didn’t really like it)
- Seafood fried rice (big chunks of scallops, very tasty)
- Lo Mein (I was told it’s tradition to order this for longevity)
- Sauteed Pea Pods (I think that’s what it was – really sweet and tender)
- Oranges for dessert, of course

After adding Tsing Tao and 3 bottles of sake, the bill wasn’t all that reasonable any more, but still the dinner was so delicious and so much fun it was well worth the price.

Note: In a restaurant like this, with a menu where the prices are the only thing not in Chinese, it helps to have someone there who speaks Chinese. After 20 minutes of back & forth with the waiters, Yim finally arrived and within seconds took over the situation and ordered our drinks and food. Thank God for Yim or we’d still be there bickering with the waiter!

More Information:
- Chinese New Year, Take II, by Tien

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