The last night.
The food at the Oriental is top notch. However, it is a little pricey. The other main feature of the place is the character that is "Mr King". No ordering from the Menu if he gets his way. So, we ended up with starters, 2 ducks and a banquet for the main meal. Mr King's eyes lit up as he mentally calculated the bill. Uncle Martin was doing the same but was keeping quiet.
The famous "Ding Dong" sauce on the far right.
Before the starters arrived we were treated to prawn crackers and the sample of sauces. Mr Kings personal favourite, the "Ding Dong". If I had a euro for every time he mentioned it.... Apparently people come from all over the world for his Ding Dong. It's better that "Viagra" for the "Rocket". The number of innuendo jokes flying around I thought I was in a "Carry on" movie.
Kath tries Mr King's Ding Dong.
Spicy is not the word for the Ding Dong sauce. It immediately burns your mouth and continues to get hotter. Kath and Uncle Martin appeared to enjoy it. They even put large dollops of the stuff in their soup. Crazy!
The chef prepares the pancakes.
Before the duck course, Mr King invited us to see the chef make the pancakes. The Chef has a handful of dough in his hand and slow creates a pancake by pouring the mix in to a hot frying pan and creating the circular shape with his fingers. He was putting his fingers into a red hot frying pan! I have to use three tee towels with oven gloves to get things out of the microwave.
We ordered two ducks and two platters appeared with various trimmings. It looked a bit sparse for two ducks but Mr King explained. "The duck is beautiful because I massage away all the fat". He then went on to demonstrate how we should eat the duck. First you take your pancake a spread the special sauce (he wouldn't tell us the recipe) in a straight line across the centre (I'd always smeared it over all the pancake before). Then you take some cabbage like thing from the platter (Again, Mr King refused to say what it was) and place it on your plate. This is for eating after the pancake. Then you take a little of each of the other ingredients such as cucumber, spring onion etc, and put on the line of sauce. Then the duck. Roll and eat. It has to be said, it was the best duck I had eaten.
Between the duck course and the main meal, Mr King fielded questions from the inquisitive trying to guess the ingredients to the sauce. Kath guessed at "Plum". "No! No! No!" and off went Mr King returning with a spoonful of sauce whitish sauce for Kath to try. "That's plum sauce! It gets nowhere near my special sauce!". So all we know is that it is 100% organic food and vegetables from China.
The main course came and we all tucked in. The sizzling beef and curried chicken my favourites. I even tried one of Monica's king prawns, after she had shelled it for me. Very tasty. Everyone enjoyed the food and the entertainment provided by Mr King. Although, he took it a bit far when he joined us at the table. He hovered around when the bill was presented also. He needs to be a little more discreet. Maybe he had heard of my Dad's reputation of being tight and was worried he was going to do a runner. The total bill, 35 Euro a head. Sounds expensive, but when you break it down with all the beer and the quality of the food, it was OK.
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