Eat East, sample oriental cuisine

And ‘eating East’ is definitely a communal experience. It’s a good opportunity, especially in a bigger group, to sample a variety of dishes and taste foods that one wouldn’t normally choose. There are a lot of Eastern restaurants in the city now, most of them Chinese with space for a lot of covers, but at the beginning of the New Year many are still closed. The Great Wall at the top of East Road in Avondale is always busy.
We went for lunch on a Sunday and the inside car park was already full.  Friends who tried dinner that same night were turned away      and had to make a booking for the following night.
It was their holiday experience — finding restaurants either closed or full!
The Great Wall was bustling with a cosmopolitan crowd and obviously appeals to a wide clientele across a broad demographic.  We ate in the recently refurbished airy inside space. At night friends found the interior too brightly lit and chose the outside verandah, but during the day there is a nice ambience and cooling fans keep the heat down. The wine we had brought was opened promptly (corkage US$2)  but the other bar service took a while with waiters under pressure with almost all tables occupied.
Chinese menus are extensive and can be complicated and we left the ordering to one family member familiar with the choices.  We started with crispy spring rolls and a pile of pastel prawn puffs. All the mains were very good.  Sizzling beef was served really sizzling on a cast iron plate. The crispy fried chicken was succulent and crunchy. I really enjoyed the Szechuan aubergine — with a chillie kick to it. Other dishes were chicken with cashew nuts and old Chinese restaurant favourite, sweet and sour pork.  We ordered both rice and noodles to accompany the mains, but the noodles never came. One big bowl of rice turned out to be plenty for all of us. The aubergine was US$4 and the meat dishes between US$7 and US$10. The total for six people, including a couple of beers, a vodka soda and corkage on a couple of bottles of wine came to US$71. It felt very good value.
My only experience of Korean food before trying the Shilla on Connaught Road, was a delicious Maddhur Jaffrey recipe for beef strips in sugar and garlic (which I now cook often). The menu meant nothing to us — we had no idea what to choose, so asked our waiter to invite the Korean cook to advise us — which she did very graciously. We started with stuffed pancakes (US$5 for the small portion), and they were well flavoured — light and delicious. The mains were Bulgogi — a beef dish, Jae Yook Bokum — shredded pork with vegetables, and chicken in a red sweet sauce (US$15 each).
The dishes were accompanied by lovely sticky rice  — as much as you wanted — and traditional Korean accompaniments — a garlicky dish of chives and soy sauce, pickled cabbage, white radish and complementary potato pancakes. We were hungry and the food went down very nicely.
The restaurant is in a converted double story house. Monday lunch was quiet — a table of Korean men under a shady tree on the lawn, and ourselves under an umbrella by the elegant swimming pool. We were too hot by the end of the meal and may have been more comfortable in the recessed verandah space.
A meal for four was US$60 including US$10 for five small bottles of imported water.
‘Eating East’ is an easy, comfortable family experience. And interesting. We will be exploring more Eastern outlets in the city in 2011.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com