Seafood Meal Ideas
How To Pair Expensive Ingredients
To A Full-Blown Economic Dinner
With Class

Seafood meal ideas are a list of seafood related dinner menus. They are for you to plan a luxurious meal within a very affordable budget. If you love seafood, you know that having a full seafood feast could be very pricey. However, there are some alternatives to satisfy your craving.

5+ Seafood meal ideas are a list of seafood related dinner menus. They are for you to plan a luxurious meal within a very affordable budget.

Throughout my life, I am surrounded with many seafood lovers, especially in Hong Kong. I guess the islands are surrounded by sea which makes a difference. Fresh seafood comes easily. People make special trips during the weekend to the districts where there are tons of restaurants specialized in serving fresh seafood. And you can pick your own seafood and tell the chef how you want it to be cooked and served. That's right. You can skip the menu.

Coming to the US, there are 2 extremes. People swear will never touch any seafood or seafood lovers only like certain types of seafood.

I am so glad that my little family loves seafood. So, we indulge in this luxury once in a while.

While we are on the topic, I want to share with you some interesting facts. They all happened to me and gave me an eye-wide experience.

Seafood Types & Varieties

Seafood varieties between the East and West are big difference. In the West, typical seafood is shrimp, crab, lobsters, fish, oysters, clams and mussels.

In the Southern part of North America, there are more.

In the East, aside from what I mentioned earlier, there are sea cucumber, sea urchin, Abalone and many more. Some is preserved in a dried form, like salted fish.

Seafood Dining Cultural Difference

Growing up in Chinese culture, it is common to eat any meat or animals with head and tail on the plate. It symbolizes completeness. It is very rare to dine in a restaurant, or even at home, seeing that dish skipping the head and/or tail. Traditional Chinese will complain.

After moving to the States, I remember dining first time in a Chinese restaurant with my sister-in-law and mother-in-law celebrating Mother's Day.

We ordered a plate of shrimp. The wait staff asked us if we wanted to have the heads. My sister-in-law was so adamant to skip the heads. I still remember during that short conversation with the wait staff, her face was all scrunched up. The topic made her feel uncomfortable.

At first, I was wondering what made her to have that dramatic reaction. When my American husband went back to Hong Kong with me attending a wedding reception, he enjoyed everything, including the entire roasted piglet. Yep, head and tail. In fact, he was bragging how great it was.

Little did I prepare for my sister-in-law's reaction. Not until after the dinner, I finally learned the American's perspective from my husband.

Anyway, I thought that it was a very interesting story to share about the food cultural differences.

As you have seen, I wrote up a lot of seafood recipes. Some can serve as a meal for a family of 4. Some is more like side dish. So, how to pair them up to make luxurious and delicious seafood meal ideas? Let's check them out.