No more Nino

I haven't been to Nino's Cozinha for a long time, and was thinking of doing something a little out of the ordinary tonight.  My friends very kindly obliged me, booked a table a week in advance, and made sure to reserve a quarter of a roast suckling pig.  I hadn't touched alcohol in almost 3 weeks and was very much looking forward to tasting a couple of bottles.

I arrived to find the couple fuming.  Apparently the restaurant has run out of pig, and insisted that my friend never reserved it.  The waitress had also apparently not followed instructions when it came to wine service.  Looks like we were off to a great start...

A cold night in Macau

I needed to go to Macau tonight for an emergency board meeting, and decided to visit an old favorite for dinner.  I've been going to Estabelecimento de Comida Portuguesea Porto Exterior for the last few years, and found their Portuguese cuisine to be pretty yummy.  It's reasonably close to the ferry terminal and too short of a cab ride, so we braved the cold weather and trekked over on foot.

The chouriço assadas was a nice way to start the meal.

A date with Joël

I've been looking forward to today for some time.  I went back to Macau and made a long-overdue visit to Robuchon a Galera.  The man himself was in town and in the kitchen, and I wanted to see what he would come up with for these gala dinners.

After barely catching the scheduled ferry, Froggie and I made our way to Henri's Galley for lunch.  At the launch party for WOM Guide Macau a couple of days ago, Fergus had recommended this as the place he goes to when in Macau, so we decided to check it out.  Actually Froggie flipped a coin, and the other side was Afonso III.

Not wanting to get the same dishes I'd always go for, I left the ordering to Froggie.  She started with caldo verde - which I didn't have coz I knew I didn't have the capacity for it.  Soon the ameijoas a portuguesa came and I dug in right away.  The clams were pretty tasty in the white wine sauce, and the cilantro added the fragrance while red chili peppers provided a little kick.  Yum.

Even though I wasn't responsible for the ordering, we ended up having bacalao à brás anyway! This was such an interesting version... The potato on top were in such thin shreds, then deep-fried in very high heat... making them very fluffy.  The bacalao came in larger chunks, making them extra chewy.  Very delicious.

We asked the waiter for recommendation on rice, and he pointed us to arroz chau chau.  I've always thought this was a hilarious name for fried rice...  Anyway, this was something that I wouldn't normally order, but it turned out to be pretty good.  The rice was fried with minced beef, tomato, smoky chouriço and ham.  Tomatoes in the fried rice... definitely ain't Chinese!

We were stuffed, so walked around a little in the old city center.  I picked up a few jars of shrimp roe at Loja Sopa da Fita Cheong Kei (祥記麵家), and eventually we made our way to Margaret's Cafe e Nata for their famous Portuguese egg tarts.  I managed to try out the "original" from Lord Stowe's earlier this year, and was curious to see what the ex-wife offered.  There were simply too many people around, so we grabbed a couple to go and had them back at the Mandarin Oriental Macau, where Froggie was staying.  The tarts were definitely pretty custard-y, more eggy than creamy - closer to the Cantonese egg tarts than the Portuguese pasteis.  Pretty yummy nontheless.

We met up with our friends for a quick drink at Bar Cristal at Encore - mocktail for me - before crossing the road to dinner.  We ran into SONFA and her hubby, who also had reservations for dinner.

While we waited for our last dinner guest, we started on the 1989 Trimbach Riesling Clos Ste Hune Vendages Tardives.   Definitely petrol, and the nose was very ripe, round and sweet.  Notes of peaches, botrytis, orange marmalade, a little floral... and some butter in the end.  Definitely some residual sugar, something between kabinett and spätlese.  A very beautiful wine.

The bread trolley was rolled around and we chose from the wide selection.  Bread at Robuchon has always been a serious affair, and it was not different here.

But the real excitement tonight was the butter.  They finally got around to getting themselves some from Bordier!  Waiters came and used a dinner spoon to scrape butter from these two big lumps... very impressive indeed.  Robuchon bread + Bordier butter... heaven!

We started with tarte fine croustillante aux cèpes de sous-bois.  Cèpes are in season, and shrooms are always yummy when you sautée them.  Nice layer of finely chopped cèpes in between thin layers of crispy filo.

Le gazpacho de cerises avec un lacté de brebis givré aux éclats de pistaches à l'huile de basilic - interesting to see that this was made with some cherries, which gave it a deeper color and slightly higher acidity.  The goat's milk sorbet was really milky, and the interplay between savory and sour flavors was fun.  We also saw the first appearance of the gold foil...

We ran out of the white wine but weren't ready for the red, so we asked for the wine list to get ourselves another bottle.  We must have looked like tech retards, because they didn't give us their new, cool iPad-based wine list...which my friends at the other table got to play with.  We got the traditional big book instead.  Pout.  OK... so the wine list is impressive in its original form, too... It is, after all, pretty much the largest and best wine list in Asia!

The 1992 Henri Clerc Batard-Montrachet took a bit of time, but we had a fine bottle of wine in front of us when it finally opened up.  The nose was pretty funky at first, with a hint of straw, wheat and definitely camphor - smelling like some kind of Chinese medicinal tonic that one rubs on oneself to relieve muscle aches...  From the second pour, some toast emerged along with ripeness and sweetness, with corn and almost nutty nose.  Very perfurmed on the palate as well as the finish.  Not bad at all!

Le duo de foie gras d'oie et d'artichaut violet en salade mêlée aux copeaux de parmigiano reggiano - nice, but honestly I was disappointed in the quantity of foie.  For the first time that I can remember, I actually thought artichoke was delicious - which is kind of an achievement.

Le crémeux d'oursins tremblotant sous une émulsion mousseuse au wasabi - very interesting dish, exception for another appearance of the cursed gold foil.  The sea urchin was creamy and sweet, while I was surprised by the light flavors of the wasabi emulsion.  Underneath it all was a delicious lobster mousseline.  The most interesting dish of the evening.

Le homard des Iles Chausey Rôti au beurre salé et un bouillon épicé de riz nacré aux pistils de safran - a very yummy dish, flavor-wise.  Soooo full of lobster flavor... I couldn't help but lap up the bouillon.  The young peas were not peeled, and I found a couple of them with pretty thick skins.  The lobster was unevenly cooked, and I found a couple of pieces to be a little overdone.  Downright disappointing in this respect.  An opinion which SONFA expressed and I concurred.

Le poulet fermier ivre de Château Chalon mitonné doucement en cocotte, fricassée de craterelles et de girolles au jus - Froggie just about flew off the handle when we received the menu by email.  Initially it was "poulet de Loue", which is nothing special and one can buy in any Froggie supermarket...  It did turn out to be an interesting way to do chicken, broiled in a cocotte with fragrant shrooms like girolles and black trumpets.  The use of Château Chalon was pretty interesting, and the fragrance somehow reminded me of Taiwanese sesame oil chicken (麻油雞), where rice wine was used.  Chicken itself was pretty tender and juicy... The famous Robuchon mash was as divine as ever, but I was already too stuffed to be able to finish it...

1985 Dominique Laurent Latricieres-Chambertin - we pre-ordered this bottle, and the sommelier decided to open it as we were running out of our first bottle of white - without realizing that we would be ordering another bottle.  It was a while before we got to taste the bottle, and we were concerned that there would be too much aeration.  Nose of mushrooms and grilled meats.  Pretty muted at first but developed well after a while.  Light and elegant.

Les baies noires de Bourgogne glacées, lait d'amande douce, caramel Bourdaloue, paillettes de cassis - the kitchen redeemed itself somewhat with the first dessert.  Lots of cassis around, which I love dearly, and the sweet almond cream was pretty rich and yummy.  But the killer was the Bourdaloue - a mini version that was simply awesome... especially the caramel on top.  Wow!

Une symphonie chocolatée, compote de mendiants à la liqueur de mirabelles - the chocolate thingy was pretty good... nicely balanced by the slightly sour compote at the bottom.

These were pretty cute, but I just didn't have any room for them...  I was way too stuffed, and just a little buzzed from all the wine...

We were all given bags containing a very love lemon pound cake on the way out.  This moist, fragrant cake made for a great breakfast the next morning...

Joël and his team came out to greet the diners, as was expected.  Just when it was to be our turn, he and the team abruptly ran off somewhere else.  I thought it was gonna be a repeat of what happened to be at Arzak, where Juan Marie Arzak repeatedly dissed my friends and I by running off and not talking to us.  Fortunately Joël did return some time later, and Froggie totally became a groupie by yapping with the man in French.  She got her wish of hugging him and didn't even come close to be tackled by his team of security guards...

Honestly, the dinner was a little disappointing.  While there weren't any "bad" dishes, there were very few surprises - and not a whole lot of creativity.  I guess the premium I paid was for the opportunity to take a picture with Joël...

The wine service was... shall we say... "commercial".  Basically Mathieu Gaignon - the sommelier - and his staff just kept refilling our glasses quickly.  I guess they were trying to sell more bottles of wine... and I find this type of behavior really annoying.  What had me really fuming, though, took place before we even arrived in Macau.  We had asked Mathieu for the evening's menu since we wanted to choose the right wines to match our food.  Mathieu replied that the menu had yet to be finalized, then proceeded to suggest that we "start with some Champagne, have some white wines then a red wine."  OH REALLY.....?!  Is THAT how you're supposed to do it...?  What a revelation....

Anyway... I made the mistake of booking a late-night ferry as I didn't want to stay in Macau overnight.  It was definitely a painful journey back to Hong Kong...

Tokyo 2010 day 2: The birthday party

Woke up early and jogged/walked around the Imperial Palace.  I was a little dehydrated from being drunk the night before, and I had the wrong shoes.  Nevermind... it was nice to do a loop around the place anyway.  The bellhop at the hotel handed me a towel and a bottle of Vittel as I came in all sweaty... That was a nice touch.

I had ramen (ラーメン) for lunch in Ginza - an interesting experience which will be part of another post just on ramen.

The hunt for Bijofu's Yuzu Liqueur was unsuccessful - for now.  I've got a few more days to hit some sake shops, and let's hope for the best.  I did manage to pick up the ponkan (ぽんかん) version made with shochu (焼酎).

After checking myself into the Mandarin Oriental Tokyo, I rushed over to my friend Brian's house for the big party.  It's a joint birthday party for the couple, and the Cow had just hit the big four-O after recently becoming a mom.  I had to rush over because I was bringing Brian a 5-pound can of hoisin sauce - at his request.  The elves had helped me procure one of these cans from the professional supply side of Lee Kum Kee, and it definitely beats buying lots of those little jars...  The sauce was going to used to marinate meat for the party.

As usual with one of these big parties at Brian's, there was a ton of food.  Besides the usual finger foods like cold cuts, salads, gravlax, homemade dips and pesto penne... there was a ton of meat.  Brazilian sausage was pretty good and juicy, and the Brazilian spicy chicken breast was not bad, either.  I was surprised to see a big pot of feijoada on the stove, and scooped it over some rice.  This was really nice... Chunks of Brazilian sausage and pork among the black beans made for a very tasty meal... and the rice went down easy, even though I was already getting full.

The main event arrived on a big platter - barbecued baby back ribs in hoisin sauce.  The ribs had been grilled and now are dripping in the mixture of meat juices and hoisin sauce.  Very, very yummy and a real crowd pleaser.  The freshly cut coriander sprinkled on top worked very well to pick up the flavors a little.  I had 2, and was definitely thinking about more meat...

The crowd was getting full, so the lamb chops were filled on an order basis.  I had mine, of course, and it was as good as always.  Looking forward for more of them next Friday.

Amazingly, I stayed dry the entire evening.  I'm never sober at one of Brian's parties, but as I was pretty inebriated the prior evening, I decided to just drink tea the whole night.  I guess I'm saving the drinking part till next week...

Another free lunch

I received an email from the people at WOM Guide informing me as the winner in their weekly draw for review submissions.  I have won another free meal, and I now needed to find somewhere to eat within a week and post a review about the meal.  You wanna pay me to eat?!  Oooooohhhhhh yeeeeaaaaaaahhhhh!

A friend had told me about Casa Lisboa, which she preferred over Nino's Cozinha in its current incarnation. Since it's nearby, I thought I'd take my colleague there for lunch.  The place looked pretty nice, with some Portuguese elements such as azulejos.  The owner (who also owns Olé) was in the restaurant along with the very affable manager.

Since I was here to write a review - and with a generous budget for lunch - I decided to forgo the set lunch and order à la carte.  I knew I would have so much food that I'd have to pack it home, but I didn't mind.

Prawns in olive oil with chili and garlic - pretty tasty as this simple dish should be.  The slices of garlic were pan-fried until golden, and I kept munching on slice after slice as I mopped up the olive oil with the bread.  Sure glad I don't have any meetings this afternoon...  My colleague did think that the prawns were not as fresh as they could be, and I nodded in agreement. 

Bacalhao a bras - yes, I do order this dish every time... but it's how I measure the skill of the restaurant.  And today, unfortunately, Casa Lisboa failed the test.  The whole thing was way too soggy, thanks to the wet scrambled eggs.  It was so wet that the thin, crispy strips of potato fries became soggy, and that just ruined the dish for me. 

Arroz de pato - for some reason the rice had the opposite problem of the last dish... it was too dry.  The best duck rice needs to achieve a good balance between being too soggy (where the rice grains become mushy) and too dry (when the rice grains become hard and chewy), and this one was definitely too chewy.  When you dig into it with a spoon, the rice grains fall away from each other and no longer stick together.  Not the right consistency for me.  Otherwise the flavors were good - the bacon and sausage were smoky, and the shredded duck was not bad.

I was too full to have dessert, and enough packed away enough food for dinner...  Thank you, WOM Guide!

Nino x4

A couple of my friends wanted to try out the Macanese/Portuguese restaurant I had been telling them about, so I booked a table at Nino's Cozinha's new location and grabbed a few more friends.

Ever since Nino's first opened they have been busy like there's no tomorrow, and it became very hard to get a table on short notice.  They've recently moved to QRE Plaza and took up two whole floors, and it looks like they have easily 4x the space that they used to have.  On this Saturday night both floors were packed when I arrived.  Business is going Gang Busters.

At first it seemed difficult to get anyone to pay attention to me as I stepped off the elevator - all the staff was busy dancing around in their routine.  An observant waiter eventually came over and led me to our table, and throughout the evening I found him to be well-trained and courteous - as long as I could get his attention.

The menu at Nino's is fairly extensive, and my friends soon had that bewildered look on their faces.  So the decision was left to moi...as I'd been here a few times before.

Lulas salteadas com alho cebola e picante - the calamari was pretty nice, and the spicy chili sauce had a nice kick to it.

Bacalhao à braz - OK, OK... so I order this dish everytime I'm in a Portuguese/Macanese restaurant...but I really love it!  The dish looked a little different tonight, and the eggs and onions tasted a little more soggy than usual - thanks to the addition of tomatoes, but the shredded potato was crispy and yummy as usual.

Arroz chau-chau á moda Macanese - I still remember cracking up back in 1996 when I first found that the Portuguese expression for fried rice is "arroz chau-chau".  Well, I wanted to try something different here, and the Macanese fried rice at Cafe Florinda (澳門茶餐廳) is one of my favorites.  Unfortunately the version here is a complete disaster.  The rice was soggy, and the ingredients were chopped into pieces which I find too small.  I like the big chunks of chourico and other meats in my rice... Oh and one other complaint - why the hell was the rice served so early during our dinner?!

Rabo de boi guisado - one of our resident froggies requested oxtail, so here we are.  The meat was tender and came off the bone easily, and the carrot and tomato-based sauce was pretty yummy, especially with the use of cloves.

Couve branca assada com bacalhau e alho - yeah, this looks like a Chinese veggie dish, but with the twist of adding the yummy bacalhau to impart that savory seafood flavor.  I can't get enough bacalhau, and I tried to restrain myself tonight so that my friends don't get an OD of it...

Frango assado com piri piri - I ordered the piri-piri chicken for its authenticity instead of the Macanese chicken with its curry sauce.  I still don't think they give you enough of the sauce, so next time I'm gonna ask for extra.  In Portugal the chicken comes without the sauce, and you simply add however much you want from the bottle on the table...

After a long wait, the camarao com pimenta no forno arrived.  Earlier, one of my friends caught a whiff of the smell from another table and thought they were serving stinky tofu (臭豆腐). Well, the smell of that much peppercorns can be a little pungent, but I would prefer to call it fragrance.  The prawns were yummy, and I still picked up a few peppercorns and rolled them between my fingers liked I've done on previous visits.

We were still kinda hungry so we ordered the arroz de pato.  Not quite happy with this, and the group agrees.  As my friend remarked, this does taste and smell like Chiuchow duck - with the classic fragrance of five spice (五香).  The rice, unfortunately, wasn't up to par.  It was moist enough that the rice grains stuck together, but in this case I actually prefer them to be either soggy (because there was so much sauce) or just a bit dry and chewy.  In any case the rice on top wasn't crispy at all, which should have been the case.  Oh well, maybe they were rushing this one because they didn't want us to wait half an hour...

I brought along two bottles of wine, and after making sure that no one objected to having them (why would they?) proceeded to serve them.

2005 Château de Sancerre Cuvée du Connetable - initially nose was a little muted, with lemon, minerals, toasty oak and a little bit of buttery notes.

2001 Marqués de Riscal Baron de Chirel - one of the bottles I carried back from the winery a few years ago.  A very nice wine, with sweet fruit, vanilla and smoky nose.  Full-bodied and still a bit tannic, with a long finish.

Will Nino's do well after this massive expansion?  I hope the food quality can remain high while the success doesn't go to the owner's head.  Remember Ingredients?

The Macau I never knew

I was in Macau today to show the sights to a visitor from overseas.  It's been a while since I had walked around and gotten some local eats, so I decided to lead a mini "foodie tour" for us.  What's more, I decided to hit a few famous Macanese spots which I never got around to visit.

I passed by Loja Sopa da Fita Cheong Kei (祥記麵家) on my last visit without going in.  This is one of the famous noodle shops in town, and I wanted to stop in and buy some shrimp roe (蝦籽).  Since we had come all the way here, we decided to sit down and have something to eat.  Of course I was going to get a plate of tossed egg noodles with shrimp roe (蝦籽撈麵).  This turned out to be the disappointment of the day.  While I really liked the consistency of the noodles, for some reason soy sauce was added to the plate.  This easily overpowered the flavors of toasted shrimp roe.

We took a long ride to my next stop - Lord Stow's Bakery in Coloane Village.  I had heard about the shop opened by Englishman Andrew Stow which is famous for their Portuguese egg tarts, as well as Margaret's Café e Nata opened by Andrew's ex-wife.  I had never been to either locations, and I thought it was high time I tried them out.  Well, they were definitely pretty good.  The puff pastry was nice and yummy, and the custard was pretty decent.  But this IS the local/Asian recipe, and ultimately it was no match for the original pasteis de nata from Pasteis de Belem.  Those tarts I had back in 2006 were incredibly creamy that I could have eaten half a dozen in a sitting...

After taking my visitor through a quick tour of various casinos, it was time to grab some Macanese food for dinner.  A Lorcha (船屋餐廳) was small and packed, and we had no reservation... Fortunately Restaurante Litoral (海灣餐廳) was just a few steps away, with plenty of space to accommodate us.  I ordered up a few of my favorite dishes:

Camarões com alho - these de-shelled shrimps were cooked with loads of olive oil and yummy garlic salsa.  Needless to say, I greedily lapped up the yummy garlic olive oil at the bottom of the plate with the typical bread that comes in these restaurants.

Amêijoas à casa - ooooh yeah... a big pot of these clams was exactly what we needed.  Lots of onions and a little bit of chili and garlic to pick up the taste.

Caril de caranguejo - I ordered the curry crab and totally forgot that someone at the table is too lazy to eat crabs, so the big dish was left to the other two of us.  The curry sauce was typically salty, but I wish it had been a little lighter so that the sweetness of the crab meat would show through better.

Bacalhao à braz - do I ever step foot into a Portuguese restaurant without ordering this dish? NEVER!  The version here is not as dry and crispy as I normally prefer, but was yummy in its own way.

Arroz de pato - they did it pretty well here.  Big slices of chorizo and duck breast on top of a layer of rice crackling, with duck leg confit meat buried underneath.  The crackling was really nice, and I wish I could have eaten more of this.

Repolho branco assado na panela com alho - the cabbage stir-fried with garlic was just what we needed to balance things a little, but I was pretty full by this point and struggled to stuff more into my tummy.

I had serradura for dessert, and I thought this was pretty decent - very light and airy mousse.

The restaurant only serves Portuguese wine and I know next to nothing about these...so I asked for recommendations on a fruity wine.  The 2006 João Pires Branco Terras do Sado was kinda fruity and pretty easily to drink.

We were pretty stuffed by the end, and it was a good conclusion to our day trip.  I managed to visit 3 new places in Macau, and I'll continue mapping out more destinations on my next trip.

Sacrificing a pig

There was a big gathering of chefs and foodies tonight, and a tiny suckling piglet no more than 2 weeks old was sacrificed to satisfy our appetites.  The venue of this ritual?  Nino's Cozinha.

The first to arrive was the pig - leitão assado no forno - which we pre-ordered.  I'm always happy to have roast pig, especially with that yummy layer of fat and crispy crackling.  But honestly, this isn't anywhere near the best pig I've had, and better value could be had elsewhere.  As in my last visit, I thoroughly enjoyed nibbling on an ear - which has puffed up like a soufflé potato chip...

A series of starters came next.  Bacalhao à braz remains one of my favorites.  It was already cold by the time I finished the pig and got around to it, but I still loved it.  The fragrance of crispy fried potato strips stir-fried with onions, eggs and bacalhao... Mmm mmm good!

Dobradinha com grão de bico guisado - the chickpea stew with ox tripe, chouriço and morcilla was delicious, with a base made from tomato and sweet peppers.  How can I say no to tripe and blood sausage?

Lulas asado na panela com alho cebola e picante - the sauteéd squid was very fresh and delicious, with the light taste of olive oil and "salsa".

Pasteis de bacalhao - these deep-fried balls of shredded bacalhao and potato mash are another favorite of mine.  I wish I had more than one of these, though...

Amêijoas à moda de casa - this is the usual clams in white wine sauce, but I only had one little clam...

Frango assado com piri piri - today's piri piri chicken was disappointing.  There wasn't enough sauce, and even then the sauce just didn't have enough kick.  My tongue was supposed to go numb from the Sichuan peppercorns!  Others at the table agreed with me, and there was lots of chicken leftover.

Rabo de boi guisado - the oxtail was pretty good.  The meat wasn't falling off the bone, and instead was slightly chewy.  I liked the tomato and carrot-based sauce.

Repolho branco assado na panela com bacalhao e alho - I love cabbage, garlic and bacalhao separately, and the combination of all three is even better!

Finally, two claypots of camarao com pimenta no forno - in my opinion the best dish in the house.  The mix of green, white and black peppercorns from Morocco was just amazingly fragrant.  The prawns today were much larger than the ones I had before, perhaps they chose to use different types due to seasonality.  The prawns were first pan-fried, then loaded into the claypots with the peppercorns and baked at 300 degrees.  The pan-fried garlic here was damn good, too.  One of my friends decided to break apart some of the grissinis and bury them in the peppercorns, letting the flavors infuse into the sticks. I should have tried one of them...

I was never very impressed with their desserts, so I decided to share a small piece of the lemon tart and passed on the serradura.

Amazingly the 11 of us only managed to drink two bottles of wine.  The 2002 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard was smooth on the palate with good concentration.  The 2006 Dr. Loosen Erdener Treppchen Riesling Kabinett had notes of lemon, minerals, a bit of plastic and was a little sweeter than I expected from a Kabinett.

We ended up having a lot of food leftover, which was a surprising and probably a function of the crowd eating less than they normally would.  No one even bothered to touch the costelas pimentão no forno. I think next time I will pass on the suckling pig, though...

Cozy Nino's

Last night I had dinner with my colleague and a few of his friends, and coincidentally ran into a partner of mine in a business venture. Later on we find that this partner also has a connection with my colleague through a third person...proving again that the world (or at least Hong Kong) is very small, and that 6-degree of separation business may actually come down to 2 or 3 degrees in this town...

Anyway, the venue was Nino's Cozinha, the Portuguese/Macanese place I visited 2 months ago. I have been wanting to come back, but was never able to get a reservation on short notice because the place was so small yet popular. So I was pretty psyched when I found out that I would have be able to sample the yummy cuisine again.

Funnily enough we actually started the meal with the leitão assado no forno - the roast suckling pig. Because this has to be ordered in advance - and we weren't able to do this - we had to take the 1/4 pig that was left over from other tables' orders. It was delivered to our table as soon as it was ready, and this came before all of our tapas. The pig was pretty good, but I didn't get enough to really appreciate it fully. I did manage to nibble on an ear, though...which was interesting.

Next came a series of tapas:

Chouriço assadas - the sausage was pretty tender and juicy, full of flavor.

Presunto de 'pata negra' - your run-of-the-mill pata negra ham - a bit dark and not fatty enough for my taste. But I guess the price wasn't so expensive, either...

Bacalau frito com batatas fritas - bacalhau in potato croquette. This was as awesome as the last time, and exactly what I wanted. Still really yummy with a good blend of bacalhau and potato on the inside, while the deep-fried shell was light and crispy.

Mexilhão fresco - I'm not a big fan of mussels ever since I read Kitchen Confidential, so I only took one to sample.

Then the main dishes started to arrive:

Galinha ã Portuguesa - the Portuguese chicken was pretty decent, although I would have preferred the tastier piri piri chicken with that wonderfully spicy sauce.

Arroz de pato - the famous Portuguese duck rice, done slightly differently here. You still get the slices of duck sausage on top, and the shredded duck meat inside, but they used long grain rice and cooked it in a dry style. The individual rice grains weren't sticking together, and were more chewy as a result of being dry. It's different, but I'm thinking I like it when the rice sticks together and the top is a bit more burnt or au gratin.

The pièce de résistance of the evening was certainly camarao com pimenta no forno - the shrimp with pepper in claypot. This was surely as good as the last pot I had. The fragrance of the peppers - green, white and black peppercorns - hits you immediately. I joked about having my sinuses cleared, but when I accidentally bit into a peppercorn, my nose started to run and my sinuses were being cleared.

Camarao assado na panela com alho e cebola - the prawns were juicy and tender, and the garlic olive oil was to die for. But the stupid waiter took the plate away after we had taken out all the prawns...did he not realize the whole point was to soak up the oil with bread?

Costelas pimentão no forno - the beef spare-ribs were done really nicely, covered with this delicious sauce.

Legumes assadas na panela com tomate e porco - cabbage in tomato-based sauce, which I didn't have very much of.

At the end of the meal, I was a tiny bit upset because I realized that Uncle Joe, the manager, had decided to cancel my order of bacalhao a bras. This is one of my all-time favorite dishes, and I just couldn't believe that he just made the decision to nix it.

I was pretty full so ended up not having any dessert.

On the whole it was yet another wonderful meal. I didn't drink much of the wine, because my stomach has been a bit upset for the last two days. But I'm really glad I went back to Nino's and look forward to my next visit.

A nice little Portuguese/Macanese joint

Tonight I met with with a couple of wine lovers, and we had some very interesting wines over a very simple dinner. The venue was Nino's Cozinha, a new Portuguese/Macanese place in Wanchai. We had an al fresco table, which made the experience even more enjoyable. The food was simple yet simply awesome.

Bacalau frito com batatas fritas - bacalhau in potato croquette. Very awesome. The thin outer layer is really crispy and fragrant, while the inside is mushy and - amazingly - light.

Chouriço assadas - really tender and juicy, with just a bit of spice. Goes very well with the spicy Zinfandel.

Camarao assado na panela com alho e cebola - the shrimps have had the shell removed, and sit in a wonderful sauce made of garlic and olive oil. You can smell that garlic from a mile away.

Bacalhao a bras - this is one of my favorite dishes, and they do a pretty good job here. Strips of bacalhao fried with red bell peppers, onions and eggs. I could come and just eat multiple portions of this!

Rabo de boi guisado - the surprise of the evening. The oxtail is not stewed with red or port wine, so the taste is very light. Lots of carrots, tomatos, celery and herbs. Actually this paired better with white wine compared to the heavy reds we brought.

Frango assado com piri piri - kudos to the chef for cooking spicy chicken the way I had it in Lisbon. This is not the Macanese African chicken drenched with lots of sauce, but the real deal with some piri piri sauce kinda sitting at the bottom of the dish. You scoop the sauce onto the chicken only if you think you can handle it, coz it sure is hot! The tiny Sichuan pepper is ground into powder here, and soon the tip of your tongue goes numb... 

Camarao com pimenta no forno - the shrimp with pepper in claypot was a good way to finish the evening. The claypot came about 4/5 full of white peppercorns, and the shrimps were buried underneath. The shrimps were fresh and sweet. As for the peppercorns, I can tell you that the fragrance was amazing. When the waiter first lifts up the lid for the claypot, the fragrance hits you immediately. I am immediately reminded of the Singaporean bak kut teh (肉骨茶) that I had at Ya Hwa (亞華) last month, because that also had a heavy dose of white pepper. At the end of the evening, I found myself playing with individual peppercorns, holding one between my fingers and just sniffing it, enjoying the perfume.

But let us not forget the real reason for getting together - wine! John brought 2 bottles while I contributed one, and three bottles was definitely more than enough for the 3 of us, especially given the high alcohol levels of all three!

2001 Marcel Deiss Mambourg - this is a very interesting wine as it is a blend of all Pinot varietals: Pinot Blanc, Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Pinot Beurot and Pinot Meunier. At 13.5% alcohol it tasted spicy and ripe on the palate, and was a bit fizzy on the tongue with a long finish. The nose was initially very muted, belying the complexity of the wine, but showed minerals and a hint of sweetness coming from ripe pears. A very tasty wine, and I'd love to get my hands on some of this.

2000 Turley Zinfandel Hayne Vineyard - the star of the evening, and at 16.7% alcohol packs quite a big punch. The wine was very sweet on the palate, but a bit spicy on the tip of my tongue. Nose was classic Turley sweet red fruits, but with some marmalade and a hint of acetone.


2002 Pax Syrah Alder Springs 'the Terraces' - I double-decanted the wine at home because of my last experience with Pax wines. These wines need lots of time to breathe. Unfortunately the result was that at dinner, the nose of the wine was initially muted without a lot of fruit. There may have even been a hint of TCA. But the nose did eventually come out about 3 1/2 hours after opening, with iron, cotton candy, marmalade and red fruits. The tannins were firm and chewy, and the wine was spicy on the palate. A bit disappointing, but maybe it's just bottle variation. 15.2% alcohol.

I was pretty drunk by the end of the evening, and very satisfied with the cuisine as well as the casual atmosphere. I am definitely going back for some yummy Portuguese, and soon!

My worst meal in recent memory

Tonight I had the worst meal I have had in a long time.

Everyone who knows me knows that I love food. I am known for being a gourmand, for not being shy about spending money on the good stuff. What many people forget is that I am also happy to eat a simple bowl of noodles in a cafe, and most times I have no complaints because I have no expectations.

The venue was Madeira, a Portuguese restaurant in the Grand Canal Shops at the Venetian Macau. We were at the Venetian taking a look around, and wanted to try one of the restaurants instead of eating at the food court. We definitely regretted this decision.

The waitress came and dumped 2 water glasses on our table, and one of them wobbled and almost tipped over. We were given two buns, both of which were slightly burnt. The waitress then poured too much water in the glass and it overflowed. Twice.

The Madeira salad was a shocker...I haven't seen such an unappetizing salad in a while. Two slices of processed cheese (don't think they were even Kraft mozzarella) over some canned tuna, sad (and soggy) slivers of bacalhau, dry slices of pork (I think it was pork...) and some greens.

The African chicken was a disaster. They must have put in about 2 pounds of salt in the damn sauce. I quickly understood why they sell water in 1.5L bottles...since you need to desalinate. I struggled to finish one piece and left the rest.

The curry crab was no better. The curry sauce was just a tad less salty than that for the chicken, and the spices and the salt helped to cover up the fact that the crab is less than fresh. When the meat of the crab sticks to the shell, you know something is up.

It takes a lot to get me worked up about bad food in a restaurant - it's usually the poor service that sets me off. But this place....gets the honor for my Worst Meal of the Year. Here's a picture of the restaurant, so you know to stay away.