Family Dinner @ Casa Victoria

I love coming to Casa Victoria for dim sum, this was only my third time here for dinner- the reason being that it is super expensive. I usually associate Chinese food with cheap food, so I don't really do much Chinese fine dining. This was one of those annual family meals, so I felt less guilty for splurging so much, even though I didn't exactly pay for the meal. We started with crab and fish maw soup, which was quite hearty and perfect for a cold, snowy day. I like to add a lot of pepper in mine to spice it up.

The next dish was salt and ginger chicken with jellyfish and shredded cucumbers (literally, sand-ginger chicken). This was one of my favourite courses: the chicken was moist and flavourful, and I love the refreshingly chilled jellyfish.

Next up, roasted whole spice-marinated squab was wonderfully executed. Crispy skin and delectably juicy and tender squab... what more can you ask for? I wish I could have more than one piece!

The most expensive component of the multi-course meal was probably the sautéed lobster with maggi sauce. Nothing pleases me more than sautéed lobster, so this was another winner! It had great "wok hei"!

I have a weakness for sweet and sour pork. Instead of pineapples, Casa Victoria's version featured other types of fruits, like melon balls. Personally, I prefer pineapples, but the pork itself was delicious and not overly greasy. A lot of the times with sweet and sour pork, I find that I'm eating more batter than actual pork. Here, the batter was perfect and not too heavy.

Our veggie dish was ginger and garlic sautéed Chinese broccoli (gai lan). I prefer my gai lan cooked a little bit more, but the addition of ginger was quite interesting.

Now onto the filler food that I didn't have much of. First came a big pot of e-fu noodle in broth.

I liked that the broth was very light, but I didn't eat much of the noodles.

Fried rice with shrimp and scallop could use a little more salt. But overall, I really enjoyed the fried rice. I usually don't eat rice at all (because it's too filling), but this was so good that I ate a small bowl.

Dessert time! Their seasonal feature is a sweet pumpkin soup, and I previewed in my 2011 top 10 desserts post. I don't generally love Chinese desserts, but this was so delicious that it rendered me speechless. I couldn't stop gulping down the soup! Creamy, warm, and comforting, it was truly wonderful! I want to have a bucket of this everyday and all year round!

We were also served a plate of mini desserts, but these were not nearly as good as the sweet pumpkin soup. Nevertheless, they were nice bites to wrap up an indulgent meal. All in all, I had a fabulous dinner at Casa Victoria, though the price tag means that I really wouldn't come back unless for a special occasion.