Fresh seafood from the local waters

I finally had the chance to try some of the famous seafood in Sai Kung this past weekend. In an earlier post about Sai Kung's Dragon Boat Festival I had written about the wide variety of seafood that were being sold directly from local fishermen.

But this time I actually tasted what fresh local seafood is like. The seafood restaurant I went to was along the pier and had a large selection of local seafood to choose from. There were tanks and tanks of crabs, fish, shrimp, and other shell fish.

Did you notice some lobsters are held inside plastic bottles? Apparently they are to keep them from cannibalizing each other according to this article. (Photo: CathC)

I couldn't tell which variety of shrimp would taste best, but tried the pink stripped ones--3rd last container in the top right corner. (Photo: CathC)

These were the largest and sweetest tasting scallops I've ever had--delicious! (Photo: CathC)

Most of the seafood restaurants in Sai Kung let you pick your own seafood and then they cook it for you. So the cost of each dish also includes an extra preparation fee. But the waiters were pretty friendly in giving suggestions like how much shrimp to order per person and also helpful in choosing the meatest oysters. I tried the meaty crab (ones in the tank on the bottom left), razor clams (long narrow shellfish), oysters, seabass, and  scallops. I really enjoyed the deep fried oysters which really were the meatest once I've ever had. But my favourite dish was the scallop. The cooked scallops are topped with garlic and green bean vermicelli (紛絲) and are very juicy and sweet.

There's just so much variety of seafood in Sai Kung that I'll have to come back again to try the rest. There's still mantis shrimp, lobster, and plenty of other fish to try...

The lively mantis shrimp (Photo: CathC)