Journey to the mansion

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I felt like a lucky boy tonight. I had the privilege of being invited to a dinner where Ta Vie 旅 - one of my favorite restaurants - collaborated with Yong Fu (甬府), another one of my favorite restaurants in town. I know PR8 is constantly pushing his clients to put together these 4-, 6-, and whatever hands events. Often they feel contrived, and all you get is different chefs presenting their own dishes. Then there are some collaborations that truly live up to the name, where the chefs actually spend time creating dishes where each one adds their own input. Tonight ran a little different.

I have been looking forward to this meal ever since I found out about it. While I have had the privilege of attending a few collaborations involving chef Liu Zhen (刘震) of Yong Fu, sadly I can't say the same for Sato-san. I had no doubt, though, that any dish these chefs put together would be totally delicious.

We started with some appetizers, where the chefs chose two main ingredients, and each chef created their own expression with them.

Ningbo-style pickled and cooked winter melon with sea urchin, fermented crab, celtuce (雙味冬瓜咸蟹), by Yong Fu - the first main ingredient was chosen by Sato-san, and it's the "white winter melon (白冬瓜)" from Ningbo (寧波). These get covered with powdery wax that gives them names like "wax gourd" or "ash gourd" in English. Yong Fu's dish came with two squares of the winter melon cooked with different methods. The bottom layer was cooked by slowly feeding chicken stock, while the top layer was the traditional fermented winter melon (醃冬瓜) from Ningbo. Topped with sea urchin from Zhangzi Island (獐子島) off Dalian (大連), and some fennel flowers that came through with their anise-like scent. We were asked to make sure that we taste all the ingredients together, which led some of us to do it all in one bite. Well... if you do everything in one bite, then there will be a couple of flavors dominating and drowning out the others. In this case the winter melon won.

North, South, and something else

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It's been a while since I was last in the Hong Kong Room at the I Hate the Handover Club, since I haven't joined Pineapple for his annual birthday MNSC dinner for the last few years. I would be dining here tonight at the kind invitation of Christies and the Specialist, tasting through a line up of wonderful wines in advance of an upcoming auction. The consignor - an uncle with a colorful past who went from Shantou to Canada via Hong Kong, and eventually settling down in Bangkok - was in attendance.

Tonight the crowd was a little different from the usual, as there was not a single bottle of Burgundy around. The lineup was dominated by wines from the Rhône Valley, which was right up my alley. We started with some bubbly for the pre-dinner drinks:

Jacquesson Cuvée N°748, dégorgée en Mars 2025 - this was actually very floral and elegant, with a nice little yeasty nose.

Executive lunch for busy executives

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It's been a while since My Friendly Neighborhood Prime Broker and I had a catch-up session, and a kind invitation came for lunch at Duddell's (都爹利會館). I haven't been back here in YEARS, so it's always nice when someone gives you an opportunity to revisit a place like this.

Neither of us wanted to make decisions on what to order, so my host decided on the Executive Lunch set. There won't be any upside surprises, since these usually play it pretty safe.

We started with a steamer of the dim sum selection (點心拼盤):

Scallop siu mai (帶子燒賣) - nice to have the scallop on top, which added a nice jolt of seafood flavors.

Years of the Horse

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It was five years ago that the Gang of Pfour got together for dinner and brought out bottles from different Years of the Ox. That was a fun and successful tasting, so tonight we decided to bring out bottles from Years of the Horse. This dinner should have happened 2 months ago, but unfortunately I had to postpone. Thankfully Goldfinger was very understanding, so we reconvened at Andō tonight.

We had a choice of two welcome drinks, and I picked the one made with roselle and chocolate. Definitely different!

We started with the bocaditos:

Classic claret for classic dim sum

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I've been a terrible friend. I had promised to attend a gala dinner with my friend last year, but had to cancel on account of family obligations. We were trying to catch up again a couple of months ago, and again I had to postpone because of family. I'm very grateful for my friend for being so understanding, and really happy that we finally found the time to grab lunch together. It's been more than a year since I was last at Forum Restaurant (富臨飯店), and I was thrilled when he suggested it for our catch up.

I'm a cheapskate when it comes to lunch, and usually just stick to dim sum at places like this. Service is always great here, and today they offered to serve just one piece of each item for each of us, so that we can taste a larger variety of items.

Forum steamed premium shrimp dumpling with pork (富臨蝦餃皇) - pretty much the standard for me.