Friday night, Joe and I had dinner with our extended family at ABC Chinese Seafood Restaurant in Milpitas, CA. Joe called the restaurant manager ahead of time and special ordered the very popular winter melon seafood soup. If you have not tried this soup, I would highly recommend it. The soup has crab meat, scallops, etc in it. Most importantly, the winter melon meat is super tender. I could just eat that by itself as an entree. Another one of my favorites was the crab meat cream served with French bread (this is another "must try" but you don't have to pre-order this item).
We also ordered the salty fish/chicken/tofu hot pot and sweet & sour pork. Both were extremely flavorful, perfect to be eaten with white rice. Joe also ordered steamed fresh fish. The restaurant manager "caught" the fish from the restaurant fish tank and showed the fish to Joe first before taking it back to the kitchen. With fresh fish, the best way to cook it is simply steam it. That way, you can really taste the freshness. We also had garlic stir-fried spinach and beef rolls. The beef rolls were a special entree recommended by the restaurant manager. It was thinly sliced beef filet with asparagus wrapped inside. The dark sauce inside the hollowed cucumber was actually honey. You are supposed to eat the beef rolls with honey. Then we had peking duck. The restaurant server skinned the duck at our table side. You open the steamed buns, put the duck skin inside and top it with hoisin sauce. One thing I notice in many Chinese restaurants in California.... most of them serve peking ducks with steamed buns. In Asia, the proper way of serving peking ducks is to serve them with thin flour crepes. I honestly don't care for the buns, I always like the crepes; but possibly for efficiency and cost-saving reasons, Chinese restaurants here usually opt for the buns instead. At the end of the dinner, we got three kinds of desserts, courtesy of the restaurant manager. It was a good dinner with awesome company. :)