My mom’s birthday is this coming Tuesday but she decided to have her celebration a bit early on Sunday. Apparently you’re not supposed to celebrate your birthday after your actual birthdate, it’s bad luck.

My parents planned this dinner at Koi Garden in Dublin, now their favorite Chinese restaurant in the area. It was quite the extravagant dinner, we were all quite stuffed and had leftovers to bring home. We had one of the private rooms in the back so my parents and friends also sang karaoke using a gadget called Magic Sing. All the songs are stored on a memory chip and all you have to carry around is the microphone and cable to hook it up to your TV. The songs are not like music videos but just a photo slideshow with the words for the songs. At the end of each song, they give you a score. It’s pretty handy… so much has changed since they came out with the huge laser discs.

My parents singing together:

So on to the meal…

Fried salmon skin, very crispy, like pork rinds (so a bit oily) but fishy… omega 3s?

Squab with cha su and seaweed salad.

A 6.5 lb Australian lobster. Apparently these don’t have claws, so all the meat is in the tail and body. The lobster is stir fried with sugar snap peas and chives, served with some broccoli. Surrounding it is also geoduck and ham.

Here’s looking at you!

A shark fin soup cooked in a winter melon, good on this cold evening.

There was chicken and pork in the soup.

Rehydrated dried abalone with fish maw (stomach) and mustard greens.

Each person got their own serving… with enough left for seconds.

Fresh crab meat served with vegetables: white mushrooms, Napa cabbage, asparagus, and Chinese broccoli.

The white mushrooms looked so clean, like they weren’t even grown in the ground… very fresh and delicious.

Drunken chicken.

Lobster meat noodles with lots of vegetables (especially packed with many types of mushrooms). They used the lobster meat from the little legs of the 6.5 lb lobster we had earlier.

For dessert, sweet bird’s nest soup served in a steamed papaya. Piping hot! but very good, good for your skin and possibly good for my cough because my throat felt much better after eating it.

My mom cutting her favorite cake, a Sogo mango mousse cake (the same as our wedding cake), plus those cute little buns that look like peaches.

A very rich meal and very delicious. I learned to love to eat good food from my parents. I used to go out with them a lot to eat dinner with their friends. I probably was a bit bored because I’d usually be the only kid there but I didn’t mind it so much as long as we had a good meal and I could spend time with my parents rather than sit at home.

The service here was excellent as usual. I think my parents frequent Koi Garden enough so that all the managers know them and are always willing to accommodate them when they come in for dinner, and even more so for a special occasion like my mom’s birthday.

Happy Birthday Mom!