Anniversary dinner at The Chairman and Yip's

This week marks our 10th wedding anniversary. To celebrate, we went out to eat at one of our favourite restaurants, The Chairman and Yip's, which serves modern Chinese-inspired food with an Australian twist (the chef is from Hong Kong I believe). We had the Chef's tasting menu, which includes 7 small courses plus dessert. Oh yummy. And lucky for you, I embarrassed myself by taking a photo of every course (I think they all thought I was a poorly disguised restaurant reviewer... instead of a housewife with a blogging obsession). I'm sorry the photos are rather dark... it was dimly lit and romantique!

King prawns wok-fried with chilli plum jam

A fantastic start. The prawns were fresh and not overcooked. The chilli plum sauce was spicy and sweet, and the addition of basil and pine nuts was inspired.

Lightly fried calamari with a ginger sambal emulsion

This dish was our least favourite. While the calamari was cooked well, with a light batter, the sauce was too similar to the previous dish without any of its merits. It was too vinegary, and I couldn't taste any ginger which might have rescued it. The end result was bland and disappointing.

Sesame crusted ocean trout with cinnamon infused soy dressing

Fortunately, things looked up immediately: our favourite dish! The combination of cinnamon and soy sauce is superb... I want to try cooking Chinese greens with this sauce. The ocean trout was perfectly cooked, and the long snake beans were very briefly deep-fried and thus crisp and fresh-tasting. Oh man oh man this was delicious.

Roasted duck and shitake pancakes

This was a tasty parcel of duck, mushrooms and hoisin sauce rolled up in a pancake. Peter started eating his with his knife and fork, but I used my fingers... then the waiter suggested that Peter follow my lead! haha. Thus began what Peter perceived as blatant waiter favouritism towards me.