Wedding dinner, Tai Thong Summer Palace

Second wedding dinner this month (hopefully my last for the year) this past Sunday night. No excuse in not going because

1. I'm in town.
2. Tai Thong's Summer Palace Restaurant is near the house - not near enough to walk, but near

...and I've not been back for years, so what the heck. I had planned to drive myself and until I was offered a ride, I realised that parking might be limited as it's otherwise a pretty intimate space. So it was a good thing I took up the offer because the basement parking (RM2 per entry) was running out of legitimate parking space and the cars coming in behind us were parked semi-legally. Cheapskate me would've just parked outside or in the residential area, but anyway...

The dress code was red and cream, which threw me for a loop (yeah, really didn't have any red, dressy tops, just plenty of red-coloured tee shirts for CNY) when I got the card in the mail a few weeks ago, but was glad to have time to shop around for something. No time for white pants, though. Oh well. The room also looked pretty modern from the last time I was there.

By the time we got there, the bride and groom were already there and were taking pictures with the arrivals - one guy with professional photography gear, the other with an Instamax camera. Feels so red carpet, haha.

Sadly, no money in that red envelope, just Tai Thong Group vouchers.
If anyone wants them, let me know.

The night's menu

The night was pretty lively, in part to the children in attendance. They were still better behaved than some of the adults :P

Was seated at the (bride's) collegemate table, so it wasn't too bad, at least there was company. There were 10.25 people at our table as there was a young 'un at our table, who I thought did okay considering the racket around us. I also saw my primary school classmate (as one of the chi muis? I already knew that she and the bride knew each other, thanks to Facebook) and her family (husband and daughter) but I don't think she noticed me until she saw her own high school friend at our table and chewed the fat a little.

The good thing about musicians getting married was that there was a live band performing and NO KARAOKE. That said, my night was marred a little by several tables around us being rowdy, endlessly yumseng-ing for no discernible reason. At least they had a better night. They were so loud I couldn't quite hear the band in front and what was happening on stage... 

I'm not sure if they were understaffed that night or what, but dinner service was inconsistent: not every table got the same dish at the same time in that intimate space (40 tables, I've been told), which I noticed while walking to and from the restrooms: we were getting the fish as tables closer to the front was just getting the suckling pig. For some reason the service at our table (the collegemates table) was also pretty shoddy - after waiting for what seems forever for our food (after watching other nearby tables tucking in), the servers were very eager in clearing the table 5 minutes (or less) after getting it. I've seen better service in a bigger room.

The food was okay, some of the dishes were a little salty (this, coming from someone whose had salty cooking most of her life). Instead of the de rigeur shark fins soup, they went with a chicken soup with dumplings, scallop and a whole chicken just to prove that it's actual chicken soup.

Could be a lot worse..