Impromptu goose

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Sankala pinged me and asked me to meet her in Central for dinner.  It's been a long time since she was last in the area on a weekday, and she figured we could just grab something quick before going home. I wasn't very surprised when she chose Yat Lok (一樂燒鵝). After all, it's been over 2 years since her last visit here.

Lower quarter of roast goose (燒鵝下庄) - our way to guarantee a drumstick. Unfortunately we arrived at the end of the day, so we couldn't expect the goose to still be fresh and have that crispy skin. Still tasty, though...

Where's the beef?

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Two days after my last visit, I'm back in Tatler Dining Kitchen at HAUS. This time I'm checking out UZA by Nikushou and lend some support to RAW Yeah. As it turns out, I actually knew about 1/3 of the people who were dining here tonight. Hong Kong is a very small town...

We decided to take the recommended beverage pairing instead of our usual BYO, as I wanted a taste of Nikushou's umeshu.

Summer seafood and vegetables moriawase with dashi vinegar and plum wine jelly - with grilled squid, scallop, Japanese tomato, cucumber, corn, watershield, Taiwanese bamboo shoots, myoga (茗荷)... etc.

Nice bit of charring on the seafood. The dashi vinegar was definitely savory and lightly smoky.  Myoga and perilla flowers provided lovely fragrance.  The whole dish was very refreshing, with plenty of acidity to whet one's appetite.

Kong(girl) for one day

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I was due to dine out tonight, so I had planned on just finishing up the leftover canned tuna in the office fridge with some slices of toast for lunch. It's my way of balancing out my calorie intake. But when my colleagues suddenly suggested that we hit Dang Wen Li by Dominique Ansel so that we could try out the item we've been curious about, I caved and trekked downhill for what turned out to be a pretty rich lunch.

Blossoming hot chocolate - so... yeah... I had a sudden attack of the Kong girl (港女) and decided to be an IG hoe... There wasn't anything I particularly wanted to drink, and I figured I'd come and take a video of the "blossoming flower". Unfortunately the staff did a poor job of placing the marshmallow on top of the hot chocolate, and the whole thing kinda pulled a Titanic.

One night only

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Ever since Tatler Dining joined forces with Mercedes-Benz to set up Tatler Dining Kitchen at HAUS, they have been hosting a variety of chefs for varying periods of time at this venue.  I was lucky enough to book seats for the first event featuring Antimo Marie Merone, but I haven't been on top of things to book any other gig since then.  To be honest, I'm not sure I've missed all that much.

As I browsed through the 'net while waiting for my lunch one day, I happened to come across news about a collaborative pop-up between my friends at Ta Vie 旅 and Godenya (ごでんや). I am big fans of both restaurants, and I got pretty excited about the possibilities created by them joining forces. However, given that this was only for 1 night, I didn't think I would have to any chance of booking seats for it. But since I got time to kill as I sat there at Fini's waiting for my Caesar salad and linguini fini pomodoro, I figured I'd try my luck. To my surprise, I managed to grab a table of 4 for the time slot I wanted.

It's Sunday night, and the other pop-up in residence at Tatler Dining Kitchen was taking a break. The main entrance to HAUS was locked since the shop downstairs was closed, so we went around and entered through the back...

There were two menus on the table. One looked like what we are used to seeing at Godenya, and it looked reasonable enough with 5 courses. The second menu, though, was handwritten and hand-drawn. We would soon realize, after the food started to arrive, that THIS was our actual menu in terms of food...

Sake and breads: the bread - pain de campagne and rustic bread. This was kinda unbelievable because we are starting the meal with not one, not two, but three big chunks of bread...

Sake and breads: truffle honey butter - spread over pain de campagne. Needless to say this was very, very tasty... and someone just lapped up at least half the supply of the butter alloted to the four of us.

Bordeaux, toujours Bordeaux!

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It has been quite some time since I was last at Écriture, and it's been even longer for Sankala.  As the four of us were discussing where to go for our next gathering, we ended up tossing out all the Chinese options and opted for this.  Belo hasn't been back for a long time, and the Baller has never been here, so the choice definitely made sense.

I was actually tempted to ask for their vegetal menu, but I wasn't sure whether we would be able to take different menus for the table (it turns out that we could have), so I just let things be. Besides, Maxime had offered to tailor the menu a little to match the wines we were bringing, so I figured it was best just to sit back and see what comes our way. Most of our dishes tonight came from the Library of Flavours, with a couple of substitutions.

Premices:

Pomme dauphine, horseradish cream and caviar - a little lemon zest on top makes things a little more interesting.