In late 2024, Lobster Port became the “go-to” restaurant for family dinners with my dad. It’s centrally located for our clan, parking is easy, the food is good, and it doesn’t take too long to get through a multi-course dinner (about an hour and a half on most visits). Service is fairly friendly, albeit not the most attentive. They’re not perfect, but hits most of the elements we look for in a place to gather.

And since we generally visit as a large group, their set meals are a staple order. The Peking duck and lobster menu ($528) easily feeds ten and begins with one of our favourite dishes, a Peking duck. It’s carefully sliced table side and presented with a host of garnishes: traditional hoisin, cucumber, and green onion, but also cantaloupe and plum sauce as well.

The duck was lean but tender and the skin crispy without being too fatty. Their wraps are on the smaller site – so it’s difficult to put more than a slice of duck if you’re a fan of garnishes - but they did provide ~16 wrappers, so it was enough for most people to get a second.

Restaurants tend to offer either lettuce wraps or chopped up duck for the second course of the Peking duck. At Lobster Port, they switch it up by cutting the carcass into bite sized pieces and stir frying them to create a sautéed duck with scallion in soy sauce. It radiates wok hay, and the sweet soy makes the bony duck so tasty that we finished the dish.

During busy weekend visits, you may have to serve the fresh crab meat and fish maw thick soup yourself, as was the case with our table. In this instance, I would have preferred the soup in a deep bowl as the large shallow dish makes spooning difficult. Nonetheless, the soup was good, a nice consistency with tons of seafood scattered throughout and enough flavour.

Of course, most patrons visit Lobster Port for lobster and the stir-fried lobster with Maggi sauce didn’t disappoint, all six pounds of it. Rather than providing one large lobster, the dish was made from three smaller ones. Personally, I don’t mind this combination as I find the shell isn’t as thick and the meat more succulent. Plus, there are more claw and tail pieces to go around.

Their lobster was lightly dusted before being flash fried and then stir fried with the ideal amount of Maggi sauce, it was flavourful without being overly saturated with the sweet sauce that can sometimes overpower. It was also cooked well so the lobster remained sweet and tender.

While I’m not a fan of sea cucumber, their stir-fried king mushrooms, fresh abalone, and sea cucumbers had the ingredient chopped into small pieces, so they soaked up the satay sauce without becoming mushy. Some people found the dish salty, but it was perfect for me, especially paired with the abalone that would otherwise be tasteless.

The crispy salt and pepper beef bites looked weird arriving heaped into a bowl with fried King mushrooms and asparagus on the side. Did they run out of serving platters, so they had to present them separately? Still, the lightly battered beef bites were tasty, tender with a slightly crunchy coating. If you like popcorn chicken, you’ll love this dish.

Their steamed green bass with green onion presents the soy sauce in a separate vessel so it remains hot. Poured on table side, you can customize how salty you want the fish, which was steamed well – just cooked through so it’s flaky and moist.

With all the heavier dishes, I would have preferred a lighter vegetable dish, such as a simple snow pea shoot with garlic. Rather the meal comes with stir-fried pork jowl and green beans, which would be okay if the green beans weren’t flash fried so that they feel a little greasy and heavy. It’s not a bad dish, at least the pork jowl slices were tender and meaty and the seasoning well balanced.

While the garlic seafood fried rice lacked colour, it wasn’t missing any aroma. The dish smelled incredible and was a solid finish. The best part was it didn’t too long to arrive, a common occurrence with set meals where the final dishes sometimes get forgotten and put on the back burner.

Fully sedated after the filling meal, I forgot to take a picture of dessert: a white fungus and date sweet soup. It was surprisingly hot containing a generous amount of ingredients. I don’t always like this dessert, but during the winter it does feel soothing on the throat. A platter of delicious lychee and goji berry jelly and crumbly butter cookies also arrive for one last sweet bite.

I sense visits to Lobster Port will continue into 2025, with the biggest dinner challenge to come… Lunar New Year. How will the restaurant fair during the most manic times of the year? More to come.