East Court Chinese Restaurant - Richmond

For my dad's 60th Birthday, he picked to have his celebration at East Court - a Chinese restaurant our West in Richmond. Due to his health condition of late, there are tons of stuff that my dad can't eat. Hence, as we knew the owners of this restaurant, it made it easier for us to tailor the menu to my dad's liking.

For starters, we had a deep-fried garlic stuffed prawn. When it came out sizzling and golden brown, it smelt absolutely amazing! Super garlicy and buttery. Bitting into it, it was really really delicious!  Crunchy and crispy, fresh and really tasty and as I love garlic, I loved this!

Deep fried garlic stuffed prawns

The next starter was the XO vermicelli oysters. We got two large plump oysters each. It was again, really fresh and really tasty :)

XO vermicelli oysters

The next dish was possibly one my favourites for the night. It was a vegetarian dish - with lots of tofu bean curd varieties, shitake mushrooms, black fungus, broccoli etc. I loved it! The sauce as just the right consistency and the right flavour.

buddha's feast

A glutinous rice which was chockablock full of ingredients was served next. Everyone liked the taste of this. It was definitely a good glutinous rice dish.

glutinous rice

An interesting mix of steamed fish fillets, ham and shitake mushroom bought 'wows' to the table because of the intricate carrot sculpture in the middle. I didn't like this as much - ham with fish was a bit odd.

fish with ham and mushroom and snow fungus

Hairy melon swimming in the middle of a sea of dried scallops was served next. It was a good tasty plain ish dish.

hairy melon with dried scallop

The pork chop in Peking sauce was probably a personal pick from dad cos he absolutely loves this.  It was done pretty well here.

pork chop in peking sauce

Dad and all of his guests really appreciated the 8 treasure duck (八宝鸭). The 8 treasure duck is traditional chinese dish where 8 different ingredients or 'treasures' are stuffed into a marinated duck. I'm not 100% sure what was stuffed into the duck... maybe some glutinous rice? lotus seed? chestnut? stuff like that... It's apparently an almost 'extinct' dish.

8 treasure duck

On birthdays, it's tradition for noodles to be had. So a stir-fry egg/hokkien noodle was bought to the table.

stir fried noodles

And though the order was a bit odd, the last dish was a steamed fish. Steamed almost perfectly - we all had some even though we were all soooooo full.

steamed fish

Dessert-wise, there was a fruit platter and a coconuty red bean soup. It's one of the better red bean soups I've had and so, whilst I normally leave these untouched, I finished the whole bowl of it.

coconut red bean soup

My dad had to have these 'birthday buns' (壽包) which is a soft sweet bun with a lotus seed paste inside. Again - tradition.

chinese birthday bun

It seems as though my dad and his friends all had fun here. The food was good and atmosphere was decent. Though my dad couldn't eat all the lobster, abalone, etc etc type stuff, these alternatives were all yummy and tasty.

Ratings:
Food - 8/10
Service - 8/10
Ambiance - 7/10
Value for money - 8/10
Overall - 31/40

East Court Chinese Restaurant
1st Floor, 144-148 Windsor Street
Richmond NSW 2753
Tel: (02) 4578 1755