Restaurant - Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant

Ocean Star Seafood Restaurant
145 N Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 308-2128
Genre: Chinese

A co-worker once told me that weddings come in two waves. The first hits you right after college, when lovestruck twenty-somethings wrapped up in ideas of what love should be, or those actually lucky enough to find someone who is worthy of a lifelong fit, end up tying the knot and reveling in the swirl of gossip that surrounds their newfound happiness.

The second, which hits before you and your peers turn thirty, is the kind that happens when people mature and are lucky enough to meet the person who is truly right for them, or, after attending plenty of friends' weddings, get tired of being the drunk single friend who ends up left alone by his peers.

Luckily enough I had the chance to celebrate two friends who decided to tie the knot in the legitimate version of the second way, which makes it okay for me to talk about it here. Meanwhile I dutifully played the role of the drunk friend in a sea of 500 people, downing more than a standard amount of cognac. Thankfully, nobody left me alone though.

I had never been to a Chinese wedding before; not only was I surprised by the number of female attendees donning white dresses to such a joyous occasion, but the entertainment was quite something else, sans the distant male relative who, as the MC, made cruder and cruder jokes as his blood alcohol level rose.

Special Roasted Suckling Pig Platter
Until the very end I wasn't sure if the gelatinous matter in the center of the plate was really some part of the suckling pig, or some random jellyfish pieces that was called in as some kind of magical filler material. It was quite good, actually, and it was nice to enjoy the meat cooked in four different styles.

Stir Fried Scallop Double Style
I'm not sure what to say about this dish, other than the fact that scallops were both stir fried and deep fried for this "double style" dish. It was tasty, and it made me smack my lips, wanting more. But there was none left.

Minced Shrimp Stuffed Crab Claws
Talk about strange bedfellows. Imagine being caught (or probably farmed), killed off, have your body minced up and then ending up in the shell of a completely different creature. I'm not sure what that would feel like, the shrimp that gave up their livelihood to be in this dish would know. If I could, I would tell them that they were quite succulent, and their friend the crab claw made them easy to enjoy.

Braised Shark's Fin Soup with Crab Meat
Most, if not all, of the shark's fin meat in the soup was legitimate. Or at least it tasted that way to me. Although the prohibitively high price tag for this delicacy keeps it out of the range of hapless graduate students like me. Perhaps if I was able to attend another Chinese wedding of this scale, I would be able to enjoy shark's fin soup in the same guilt-free, unconscionable air of ignorance that helps us live with ourselves when we eat other foods such as foie gras and baby back ribs. Let's face it -- dickery tastes good, and that's why it lives on; people like us are able to live with guilty pleasure. We all do it.

Sliced Abalone with Mushroom and Vegetable
Much to my dismay and delight, the others at the table did not seem to enjoy the Chinese-style abalone so much. My dismay, because I fail to understand how anyone could not make a run for their fare share of the shellfish, but delight, because I got to finish all the abalone that nobody else wanted.

Deep Fried Squab
None of us knew what the heck we were putting into our mouths when this dish was placed in front of us. The entire squab was deep fried, and the chefs were kind enough to leave the heads on the plate for us to think about as we tried to extract as much meat as we could. The meat tasted rather tender but in a healthy way; one could tell that these birds were far more fit than the fat, well-fed pigeons seen waddling around any public area in the world. No, they do not taste like chicken.

Baked Lobster with Ginger and Scallion
My only gripe with this dish was the lack of any efficient apparatus to get the lobster meat from the shell. The meat that I did manage to dig up justified the effort, though.

Steamed Live Fish
I thought my dismay / delight combination had peaked at the abalone, but it was trumped by what I experienced with the fish. Almost 3/4 of a fish was left virtually untouched after everyone had their pickings from the dish. And only a few seemed inclined for seconds. Steamed whole fish that had absorbed all kinds of flavors from the sauce that is typically poured over such dishes is definitely one of the best dishes one could enjoy at a Chinese seafood restaurant.

Four Treasure Special Fried Rice
Ordering fried rice at a Chinese restaurant is like ordering prime rib sandwiches at Lawry's. You know what you're getting into -- that is, a filler dish with bits and pieces of leftover meat; only this time around, the leftover meat was the unused portions of the suckling pig that came out at the beginning of the meal. Not that I have anything against this sort of deal; if anything, meats should be used to their full potential, much like the bento boxes you can find at any Japanese supermarket, which use meats that were left over from the meat section. It was just like any other fried rice you can make; hence the lack of a photograph here.

Dessert
Okay, maybe traditional Chinese weddings are supposed to have red bean soup at the very end, but this was handed to us after everyone had enjoyed a piece of the wedding cake. Needless to say only a few people had enough space to try more than a couple of bites of the red bean soup, and I was so full I even forgot to take the freaking picture.

Conclusion
It's quite a feat once one realizes that, in addition to its regular Saturday night business, the chefs at Ocean Star had to cook up enough food to feed around 500 hungry people. I'm curious to see how big a kitchen one needs to prepare such a huge meal, but overall they did an excellent job given the busy conditions.

Of course, the wedding itself was a pleasure to attend as well -- my gratitude congratulations goes out to my two friends whose wedding was a cause for celebration by so many people.