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Those who know me well know that I am never in a hurry to visit new restaurants, as the probability of "stepping on a land mine" is incredibly high. Usually I wait a few months - sometimes up to more than a year - for places to work things out. Why pay a good chunk of my hard-earned money if I'm gonna get subpar food and/or service?!
Starting tonight I'm throwing that philosophy out the window... if only for limited occasions. I've been invited by the South China Morning Post to be a guest contributor to their First Served column - which appears in the 48 Hours weekly magazine and highlights brand new restaurants in town. It's a short column, but it represents a complete departure of what you normally see in this space. Let's see if they actually ask me to keep writing this stuff after a couple of times...
The restaurant I chose for my very first review was Town, the latest venture from Chef Bryan Nagao. I haven't tasted Chef Nagao's food in years - probably not since my last visit to Kokage... but I figured since he's a well-known figure in town he deserves some coverage.
September 11, 2014
September 7, 2014
Smoky kaiseki redux
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I'm in Taipei hanging out with family, and that means spending time with Last Minute Uncle and... you guessed it, making last-minute plans for dinner. Sporty Cousin's birthday is coming up, and he had talked to the parental units about going to Toutouan (燈々庵), after asking me about it during my last trip back to Taipei. A couple of hours before dinner time, Last Minute Uncle picked up the phone and make a reservation, and I would have a chance to see how the cuisine has evolved since my last visit.
Once again I took the Toutouan set (燈々庵 会席) for comparison purposes, even though I didn't really wanna be eating this much tonight...
First a shot of apple vinegar, which really was sweetened apple juice with a few drops of vinegar.
Assorted starters (八寸 旬菜七品) - seven different items to nibble on:
I'm in Taipei hanging out with family, and that means spending time with Last Minute Uncle and... you guessed it, making last-minute plans for dinner. Sporty Cousin's birthday is coming up, and he had talked to the parental units about going to Toutouan (燈々庵), after asking me about it during my last trip back to Taipei. A couple of hours before dinner time, Last Minute Uncle picked up the phone and make a reservation, and I would have a chance to see how the cuisine has evolved since my last visit.
Once again I took the Toutouan set (燈々庵 会席) for comparison purposes, even though I didn't really wanna be eating this much tonight...
September 6, 2014
Mooncake tasting with mom
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It's customary for me to bring home a haul of mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival. For a few years I was buying them from Lung Hing Heen (龍景軒) at the Four Seasons Hong Kong, simply because Last Minute Uncle liked their distinctive fragrance.
But last year, mom did a side-by-side comparison of Lung King Heen's white lotus seed paste mooncake with double salted egg yolk (酥皮雙黄白蓮蓉月餅) with the very old school lotus seed paste mooncake with double salted egg yolk (雙黄蓮蓉月餅) from Wing Wah (榮華) - the kind of mooncakes I used to have 30 or 40 years ago when I was growing up. Believe it or not, the Wing Wah mooncake won hands down. Not only did it have a richer, denser lotus seed paste, the duck egg yolk inside was still soft with visible oil - while the yolk in the Lung King Heen version was dry and had visible clumps. That was a revelation.
For the first time in quite a few years, I chose not to order any mooncakes from Lung King Heen... especially now that the Four Seasons Hong Kong has decided to do what the Peninsula has done for a number of years - offering mass-produced, hotel- and not restaurant-branded mooncakes. I decided to try something new.
A while ago I heard that Dashijie (大師姐) had made some traditional mooncakes with lard. I got kinda excited, because this was the type of old school stuff that mom would like. So I got online and ordered some... In retrospect I probably should have asked Dashijie about her mooncakes at dinner a few days ago...
Last week I learned from mom that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Last Minute Uncle is now a fan of Peninsula's mini egg custard mooncakes (迷你奶黃月餅) that people have been going crazy over. I myself am not a fan of these, and try my damnedest to stay away from them. But Last Minute Uncle is someone I need to keep happy, so I quickly placed an order with Mara Js Pâtisserie since I tasted them not too long ago...
I dutifully hand-carried them back to Taipei this morning, and immediately went about tasting them with mom after lunch...
It's customary for me to bring home a haul of mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival. For a few years I was buying them from Lung Hing Heen (龍景軒) at the Four Seasons Hong Kong, simply because Last Minute Uncle liked their distinctive fragrance.
But last year, mom did a side-by-side comparison of Lung King Heen's white lotus seed paste mooncake with double salted egg yolk (酥皮雙黄白蓮蓉月餅) with the very old school lotus seed paste mooncake with double salted egg yolk (雙黄蓮蓉月餅) from Wing Wah (榮華) - the kind of mooncakes I used to have 30 or 40 years ago when I was growing up. Believe it or not, the Wing Wah mooncake won hands down. Not only did it have a richer, denser lotus seed paste, the duck egg yolk inside was still soft with visible oil - while the yolk in the Lung King Heen version was dry and had visible clumps. That was a revelation.
For the first time in quite a few years, I chose not to order any mooncakes from Lung King Heen... especially now that the Four Seasons Hong Kong has decided to do what the Peninsula has done for a number of years - offering mass-produced, hotel- and not restaurant-branded mooncakes. I decided to try something new.
A while ago I heard that Dashijie (大師姐) had made some traditional mooncakes with lard. I got kinda excited, because this was the type of old school stuff that mom would like. So I got online and ordered some... In retrospect I probably should have asked Dashijie about her mooncakes at dinner a few days ago...
Last week I learned from mom that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, Last Minute Uncle is now a fan of Peninsula's mini egg custard mooncakes (迷你奶黃月餅) that people have been going crazy over. I myself am not a fan of these, and try my damnedest to stay away from them. But Last Minute Uncle is someone I need to keep happy, so I quickly placed an order with Mara Js Pâtisserie since I tasted them not too long ago...
I dutifully hand-carried them back to Taipei this morning, and immediately went about tasting them with mom after lunch...
September 3, 2014
Food that don't work with red wine, episode 3
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Two years after his debut performance, Curry once again hosted his MNSC dinner at Megan's Kitchen (美味廚). There's no question that the MNSC boys all love the food here, but the reality is that many of the dishes simply don't work with the reds that we tend to pop when we come here. Tonight, though, there was an added bonus. It seems that the restaurant has been doing some renovation work, and I was hit with the paint fumes as soon as the elevator doors opened. Blind tasting under these circumstances would be a real challenge...
The host asked the owner to put together a menu for tonight, and given that she is a wine lover herself and knows exactly what we are doing tonight, one can only assume that she was deliberately trying to screw with our palates... perhaps on Curry's orders!
Deep-fried Bombay duck (椒鹽九肚魚) - always a crowd favorite, and that sprinkle of deep-fried garlic and chili was just perfect with the Cali reds we were drinking...
Two years after his debut performance, Curry once again hosted his MNSC dinner at Megan's Kitchen (美味廚). There's no question that the MNSC boys all love the food here, but the reality is that many of the dishes simply don't work with the reds that we tend to pop when we come here. Tonight, though, there was an added bonus. It seems that the restaurant has been doing some renovation work, and I was hit with the paint fumes as soon as the elevator doors opened. Blind tasting under these circumstances would be a real challenge...
The host asked the owner to put together a menu for tonight, and given that she is a wine lover herself and knows exactly what we are doing tonight, one can only assume that she was deliberately trying to screw with our palates... perhaps on Curry's orders!
September 1, 2014
The speakeasy next door
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A week ago fellow bloggueur Gary pinged me and asked me if I had any interest in joining a dinner that was being organized at a private dining room. Well, I was completely plastered when he pinged me on a Sunday afternoon, and it took me until well after dinner time to sober up, check out his pics from the last dinner, and respond.
At the appointed time, I leisurely strolled out of my office building, traversed the 10 meters to the other side of the street, and found myself in front of a building that, in my 2 years of working out of my current office, I had never once taken notice. Dinner would be here tonight, at a private entertainment facility in the heart of Central.
Although I had never had the pleasure of meeting the organizer before, I found myself among familiar faces. We had chefs, restauranteurs, and the venerable Dashijie (大師姐) - eldest pupil of the late Pearl Kong Chen (江獻珠). I had the pleasure of dining with Dashijie once last year, and tonight we were also joined by Mrs. Chen's godson Wilson. As I looked around the table, it was very obvious that the person with the least knowledge about Cantonese cuisine - or food in general - was yours truly.
Pan-fried termite mushroom (煎雞盅) - one of the guests supplies wild mushrooms from Yunnan, so we started with twin plates of shrooms. This was very nice. Pan-fried without any oil whatsoever, since the mushrooms themselves have enough oil and moisture.
Pan-fried matsutake (煎松茸) - I gotta admit that I'm a Neanderthal when it comes to matsutake mushrooms... I haven't had them all that many times - probably because my first experience left me wildly disappointed - and most have probably been dried slices which were rehydrated. Tonight, finally, a lightbulb went off in my head and I finally realized what all the fuss was about. The fragrance wasn't the intense, in-your-face type, but more subtle and elegant - with a long finish. Very, very nice.
A week ago fellow bloggueur Gary pinged me and asked me if I had any interest in joining a dinner that was being organized at a private dining room. Well, I was completely plastered when he pinged me on a Sunday afternoon, and it took me until well after dinner time to sober up, check out his pics from the last dinner, and respond.
At the appointed time, I leisurely strolled out of my office building, traversed the 10 meters to the other side of the street, and found myself in front of a building that, in my 2 years of working out of my current office, I had never once taken notice. Dinner would be here tonight, at a private entertainment facility in the heart of Central.
Although I had never had the pleasure of meeting the organizer before, I found myself among familiar faces. We had chefs, restauranteurs, and the venerable Dashijie (大師姐) - eldest pupil of the late Pearl Kong Chen (江獻珠). I had the pleasure of dining with Dashijie once last year, and tonight we were also joined by Mrs. Chen's godson Wilson. As I looked around the table, it was very obvious that the person with the least knowledge about Cantonese cuisine - or food in general - was yours truly.
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