Wednesday, October 18, 2006

The Teahouse Banquet Style

Banqueting Style At The Teahouse

It is time for a banqueting style dinner at the Tea house. An approach to a balanced nourishing diet. There is fresh fish, seafood, lamb, beef, chicken, pork, vegetables and of course you can't go without the rice and other accompaniments. This is virtually a whole night session. I once remember I used to do about 120 people on a New Year's night at a larger premises than the current tiny size restaurant down at Salamanca Place.
We can see there is the ever popular Indonesian Nasi Goreng here. with a seafood platter in the background. Malaysian chicken satay on skewers with peanut sauce is a real hit with the populace. Sambal Udang the king size prawns cooked in fiery fresh chilli red wine sauce ginger and red tomatoes. Rendang Daging(Beef) is rich in sauce subtle in flavour spicy certainly in every sense of the word but not necessary hot and chilly. Lamb in Garam Marsala is actually my favourite. We can also envisage deep fried specially made meat dumplings as entrees and don't forget to overlook the Singaporean famous street hawkers' Hokkien spicy noodles liberally sprinkled with seafood tit bits.

Its because for the first time my premises is a BYO (Bring Your Own) It no longer remains licensed to sell alcohol. On Wine Riesling is good and cool for summer. It goes very with chicken dishes. Chardonnay also goes smoothly with any Asian dishes that I know of. Most would prefer red or heavy red for spicy beef or lamb dishes. Sauvignon or Cabernet. But generally when folks come out to celebrate they usually bring a mixture of bubblies , champagne ,beer, liqueurs and the likes. We used to stock our own different version of skinless wine specially labelled for banqueting during our eight years trading then at the Teahouse Salamanca.

Inclusion is the best policy for not every member of a party can be expected to favour or savour all things hotly spiced and curried.Notice how I also incorporate a few less exotic and exhilirating dishes such as the traditional marinaded beef in black bean sauce and and the non challenging deeply fried battered fish in sweet and sour sauce. In a typical banqueting situation we are not trying to please every Tom Dick and Harriet for it is impossible. But it is to the greatest happiness for the greatest number that is what we do go for.



Producing food is a consuming task. First off there is a lot of calculations in approaching a banquet style dinner. Consideration has to be given to the number of people partaking a zestful style of banquet. There is also the cost of labour involved as well as the actual costs of raw material. I tend to avoid any overheads run. Allowance must also be made for some wastage at times.http://domsasianteahouse.blogspot.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wah! A wonderful combination of mouth watering dishes! Cantonese, Malaysian, etc Where is the Kam puan & ting pian hu??

you look so familiar to me. Its just that my memory is fading!

I do hope you enjoy all that hard work!