: : Dynasty : :
During my trip back home to Miri, I had a wonderful dinner with the Khoo Clan and my parents. We had a delicious meal at the Dynasty Restaurant at the Dynasty Hotel. I must say kudos to the chefs of this establishment. Even the chef at the Dynasty Coffee House is amazing. The way the meals are served are absolutely terrific. Not to mention that it is forever tasty. Note that although the Coffee House is halal, the Chinese restaurant is not.
When we entered the restaurant, this was the first thing that we saw. I think the left hand statue is Quan Yin @ Goddess of Mercy and the other chap is one of the Gods (prosperity? Anyone?).
Once we settled down, it was a time to prepare the chillis that acts as a condiment for the entire meal as well as having some tidbits to settle our hunger while waiting for the food to come. It was a choice of chopped chilli with garlic and sugar or just plain cut chillis. The chillis are put into a small and cute little sauce bowl. If one is having cut chillis, black soy sauce is added although some people would add black vinegar instead. For my family, we would also add in some chopped garlic into the mixture of cut chillis and soy sauce. As for the tidbits, we had some pickled cucumber (that is sweeten) and boiled peanuts. I love boiled peanuts so had to seriously control my intake that night.
This was such a tasty dish that I just had to have two of them. The tauhu is fried first and then hollowed out so that chopped mushroom and pork is added into it. It’s like a little treasure chest, no? In the middle of the dish is some stir-fried chai sim. Chai Sim is something like spinach only that it’s very crunchy.
Another interesting dish : steam fish, mushroom, carrot and ham with an eggwhite sauce poured over it. On the side, the entire dish was surrounded by boiled brussel sprouts which was covered with oil, I think. Still, it was very nice altogether and fairly easy to do. Well, it look easy to do anyways.
As my young cousins were with us, we ordered this plate of roasted chicken especially for them. The chicken is salted so needs to be eaten with some rice or veggies. The crackers on the side is made from prawn mixed with flour and later deep fried. It’s very crunchy, by the way. Roasted chicken is a favourite for kids and just about everyone loves it. If it’s done well, the skin would be extremely crispy but the inside flesh is still moist (or perhaps oily).
The star of the entire meal was the roasted pork leg. Yum yum! It’s difficult to get good roasted pork leg around here and this one was done very nicely.
The waitress then started to cut up the pork leg into smaller pieces for us to eat it. It was so soft that the cutleries just slices through it easily. Needless to say that everyone “pigged-out” on the crispy skin as well as the soft and tender meat in between. Wah! So delicious.
Dynasty Hotel is located in one of the old parts of Miri. Growing up, the restaurant used to be part of a shopping mall area which closed down some time in the 90s. Not sure what happened to the upper floors but the ground floor was converted into this restaurant, or rather, the restaurant moved from it’s old location on the 1st floor of the hotel to this Ground Floor. It’s a very popular family restaurant and one needs to have a reservation during the weekends to dine here. Chinese families like to go out and eat during the weekends and enjoy the time together as a family on a favourite pastime : EATING! Including us, that is. Well, we were a mixture of Chinese and Kelabit family members all put together but the food was definitely so tempting!
