The evening dinner reception for my cousin’s wedding was held at Kirin Mandarin Restaurant at the Three West Centre in the heart of Richmond. The entire 350 seat restaurant was booked out for this event.
If you have ever been to a Chinese wedding banquet then you know they are a big deal. I think Chinese wedding banquets ranks near the top of the most expensive list. Dinner cost $548.00 per table of 10 (there was 32 table plus the head wedding table) and I haven’t even added tax, tips and drinks yet. Expensive yes, but you only get married once. At least you hope so!
The twelve course dinner menu was fit for royalty. The service at Kirin was top class. They’ve changed our plate after every course. The menu consisted of the following:
- Kirin Special Platter with Roasted Pig
- Geoduck Sautéed with Prawn and Chicken
- Deep Fried Crab Claw Wrapped with Minced Prawn
- Shark Fin with Crab Meat and Fish Maw Soup
- Live Lobster in Consommé with Light Ginger and Green Onion
- Sliced Abalone Braised with Chinese Mushroom and Selected Vegetable
- Steamed Live Rock Cod
- Crispy Skin Chicken
- Kirin Special Fried Rice
- Stewed E-Fu Noodle with Tender Scallion in Abalone Sauce
- Two Kinds of Dim Sum Dessert
- Chef’s Special Sweetened Soup
Enjoy the pictures. Hope it doesn’t make you too hungry.
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{ 81 comments }
Mmmm…I love banquet food although last time I went, Kirin’s shark fin soup wasn’t particularly impressive.
Shark fin soup is one of those dishes I’ve never tried but always wanted to. It sounds nice and exotic.
I’ve eaten crocodile but that just tasted like chicken!
oh my.. it’s an hour to lunch here
is that mushroom over there? ouuhh….
Dude, I’m getting hungry just from all this food talk lol and its like past midnight already.
I’m just about to have my lunch, Cornflakes, thanks for that.
Cornflakes for lunch – times must be tough! Personally I’m more of a Frosties man.
LOL Corn Pops, that’s where its all at.
Good Chinese food is the best! These photos are making me sad as I eat my boring sandwich!
- Raymond
Gotta love Asian weddings! Invite as many people as possible, and serve them the best food as possible and as much of it as possible.
LOL, I wonder how much that ended up costing them with everything factored in or how much John spent on his own dot com mogul of a wedding
I wonder if John got them a good deal with the restaurant in exchange for this post as a wedding present. That would be typically
of John I think!
I guarantee that if John had anything to do with it he got an exceptionally evil deal – probably involving no actual cost!
Looks delicious!
Almost all Chinese wedding food menu is the same!
Yeah, you go to enough of these, you’ll get sick of the free food.
You can never get sick of free food – surely!
You will if you have to eat the same thing over and over again.
I’m old fashioned, I’m a big fan of free beer at weddings. The food I can take or leave.
Yeah I’m with you – free booze is the real reason to go to weddings – after enough of it you can’t even taste the food on offer!
those purple squares look good for some reason
Geoduck Sautéed with Prawn and Chicken
YUMMY! :p
It is 8-10 course per table in M’sia and S’pore. It is rare or never heard of to have 12 course here.
The pictures are very nice!
Personally I can only stomach 4 or 5 courses – especially after all the alcohol that flows at weddings – too much to drink and too much to eat followed by drunken dancing are not good combinations!
dude, where did you put all that food???
I am sure with that many people, it shouldn’t be hard to find a place for all the food.
Tons of left over. That is a requirement of a Chinese wedding dinner. It’s consider bad form if there is no food left at the end. Generally, the first five dishes are consumed. After that, you’re pretty much full and the rest of the stuff you take a bite here and bite there and pack the rest home.
You get to keep the leftovers? We’re so far behind in the UK! Is that a common thing elsewhere, what about restaurants?
Yes, you can pack the leftovers home. As far as I know, nearly every restaurant in Vancouver will let you pack a dogie bag.
Yeah I think the doggy bad phenomenon is mainly a North American thing – i’ve never eaten in the UK and seen it and the same can be said over here in Australia.
To be able to afford laying on a spread like that you need to be a dot com mogul – oh hang on!
It’s a good job earnings are up!
Haha, I think John makes more than enough =]
Oh John hasn’t yet seen banquets of Albanians, where they spend nearly 10k Euro and the medium payee is around 250 euro a month…now thats what i call “stupid expensive”.
One thing i like, both chinese and albanians attend 300+ people during the evening banquete, but what i can’t understand is that albanians are couple millions while chinese are couple billions
Unfortunately there are too many idiots in this world who spends excessive amounts of money on needless things (many celebrities for example). While I am all for spending a lot to have a good once in a lifetime wedding, I wouldn’t spend a ton for no reason.
Wow – that is a lot of cash. What kind of food is traditionally Albanian? There must be some rich grooms in Albania to be able to afford that kind of outlay.
That third picture is just scary John. Don’t drop it while you eat or it may snip something important!
Looks amazing.
malaysia have all the foods,
juzt vacate it
come here,Malaysia,Malacca
http://doubleuisw.blogspot.com
The noodles look pretty tasty
and that desert looks good as well.
Yummy..the crispy roast pork is my favorite!!
My favourite Chinese food is Peking Duck – yum yum!
Can I get discounts from restaurant.com?
It looks great John!
I’ve also been to a few Chinese weddings and they both had a 10 course meal!
I love Chinese Weddings!
Regards,
Carlo
I love them too!
Love your site. Love the food as well. Yum.
It’s interesting to know that the chinese wedding banquet in Vancover is very similar(price & menu) to those found here in Singapore.
I think you can find the same menu anywhere as long as you find a restaurant that caters the same type of food. They can be found here in the US too.
just looking at the food makes me wanna go to a chinese restaurant right now!!
I was so hungry I went to go get food at 2am in the morning. Now I’m stuffed lol
It’s definitely not free food.
They invite almost any distance relative. Even if you decline, you are expected to pay $35-$50 USD. Attending one, cost at least $100 USD pp. More if you are closer to the bride/groom $500-$5,000+++ pp
In Chinese banquet, the whole purpose for the dinner banquet is to MAKE money (and receive jewelry). They probably (100%) make more money on that night than Dot Com Mogul’s August blog earning.
Yes.. all chinese banquet serves the same food. They start out with suckling pork/jellyfish, broil live shrimps, big white snails, abalone with veggies, followed with shark fin soup, followed by dry scallop with black hair thingy, fried chicken, lobster, whole fish, dessert.
Gets boring (and costly) after a while.
So you’ve gotta have a lot of disposable income to attend a Chinese wedding. Aren’t Chinese families typically quite big? Sounds like it could get very expensive very quickly – especially if there’s a crop of family members around the same age who decide to get married in quick succession!
I eat some of those myself since I came from Asia too. I miss those kind of foods sometime here in America.
chinese food iS very delicious~~~
John, I can’t stand the food reviews and pictures. The reason is that you make them look so good and make me unbelievably hungry with the beautiful pictures.
Today is labor day, I have no plans but to hang out with my girlfriend. I’m up early and she’s next to me sleeping. So until she wakes up, and I take her out to breakfast, I’m stuck here starving and staring at your pictures!! Evil!!
Just check out the old lobster video nasty – that might put you off food for a while! It did for me!
So delicious…. I feel at the party with you John…
Is there Indonesian menu there ?
Damn, i never have this nice foods for quite a while.!
Price per table sounds pretty cheap… only thing is there was so many of them!
This food looks incredible! I am so hungry looking at it now, hope you had a blast and eat for a week
Great photos! Have you ever considered a career in food photography?
John – with all this great food you are eating…how do you stay so thin?
My stomach hurts. I feel like going to my Chinese buffet. It has AYCE sushi, crab legs, and of course noodles.
Yum Yum
I hope you enjoyed and savored that food.
John, u still have this great appetite for food.
Wow these pics are making me hungry
Come on maan, your bring along your camera even for a dinner at hotel? Imagine all of the guess delicously tasting the food but suddenly there is one man shooting your food with macro shoot in front of you. Aaah maybe its normal in Canada…
You mean to tell me you don’t bring a camera to a wedding?
Great! but abalone is sliced which is not so great. There better be 4 head abalone for everyone
I’m officially hungry.
is that a chicekn head?
What a feast in Vancouver? Vancouver right?
I thought Chinese Banquets are popular and a must in Asia. Wow, it’s available in Van ! Bravo, John.
Ahh, the joys of Chinese food in Richmond! I just had dim sum myself and I’m stuffed. But yeah, you gotta love the dinner at Chinese weddings…you just eat, eat, and then eat some more!
the roasted pork and the deep fried crab claw looks tasty ..
in hakka roasted pork is called sao chu lol
lol my mouth is watering now eheehehe
Those noodles look delicious… I think I may have to order some in tonight for dinner.
Looks nice. Did you know all those people john?
Glad I just got done eating a good home-cooked meal before reading this post or it probably would have made me hungry.
Too much meat. Not enough vegetable.
Wow.. makes me wanna have chinese wedding
Congrats to the couple!
Wow. I think it’s lunchtime now…
Cool, I ate some similar Chinese food at my friend’s wedding 2 weeks ago. It was freakin’ good, we were all wasted though…before…during…and after…
Oh, YUM. You said you hoped you wouldn’t make me too hungry, well, you did. What a feast. I have to go get something to eat now.
I would love to attend such royal receptions. I can just imagine how classy the whole ambiance of the place would be.
And yes John You have made me feel very hungry.
Get me some foooooood
hmm.
http://www.romangelsi.com