Four-month wait

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At one of our gatherings earlier this year, my high school friends and I were discussing Japanese eateries in town. As it turns out, most of them have never been to Hidden (秀殿), my favorite kushiage (串揚げ) joint in town. For many friends and I this has become somewhat of an institution over the last few years, and as its popularity has grown, it has become increasingly difficult to secure a booking. But for those with Japanese roots or connections, the food here is just a little piece of home.

There are five of us, and for a group this size, dinner was booked nearly 4 months ago. And yes, they have long ago run out of available seats for dinner for 2021. Likewise, one needs to get on a waiting list for lunch on the weekends. This has become the new reality in times of Covid.

While I waited for the gang to arrive, I ordered up one of the many fruit-flavored drinks here. For tonight, I started with some melon plum wine (メロン梅酒).

Initially the gang asked me to choose the food, and I picked out a number of them for round 1 - knowing we would be doing multiple rounds tonight. The others soon started to chime in with their own requests...

Last toast at the Porn

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I was pretty impressed with the food when I last visited the Porn Pawn earlier this year, and have been thinking about going back when the time came for a casual meal. When I found out that they were making big changes starting the middle of this month, I decided to book a table to try their current dishes one more time. I also managed to rope in Mr. and Mrs. Birdiegolf for a night out.

Calamari: sautéed calamari, red vin sorrel, basil, pesto - I confess that I didn't look at the menu carefully, and I really wanted fried calamari hahaha... But this was nicely done.

50+1

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So... it was finally time to hold my "birthday MNSC" for the boys. I had been planning a big one for my 50th last year, but of course just about everyone's plans got derailed by this thing called Covid-19... So I kept the bottles set aside in the cellar for another year, until the time when all of us - well, except for Dr Poon... who is still MIA - could find a date to sit down together.

There was never any question of where this dinner would take place. I trust Hairy Legs and his sommelier Victor to come up with the best selection of dishes to match whatever wines I bring.  So once again we convened in the private room at Caprice for what I hope would be a better lineup of wines than our dinner 3 years ago.

As usual, we started with a trio of amuses bouches which arrived in a jewel box. Some of us were more special than others and had their own individual boxes without having to share with someone else...

Tomato ravioli with Parmesan cookie - topped with black olives. Nice to get some seasonal flavors with this.

Balik salmon with Kristal caviar and crème fraîche

Pita with curry chicken mousse

Is it red or white?

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We haven't seen DaRC and Ro Ro for a few months, but they are finally back in town and can meet up for a meal or three.  They haven't been to Mian (紅棉), so we decided to meet up for some dim sum today.  Mindful of the unstable weather these days, we decided to dine indoors and not try to bring CC out today.  Our decision would be proven correct when we were hit with a severe thunderstorm during our meal.

As I've never tried their dim sum items, I suggested that we pick out a few of those, then supplement with some main dishes. We had about 2 hours for our early session before needing to vacate the table for the next seating, which should be good enough.

Baked taro puff with seafood and egg white (芙蓉海鮮芋角) - not a fan. The taste of ammonia from baking soda was too strong. Blegh!

All crows are black

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The Candidate has been wanting to visit Yong Fu (甬府) for the better part of last year, but somehow she had missed out on joining us for our last visit. When I felt it was time to return and try out their beautiful cuisine - following a break of a few months after a less-than-satisfying meal - I suggested that we meet here tonight for our little drinking session.

As usual, I asked the restaurant manager to get the kitchen to suggest a menu for us. Given what happened last time, I reminded myself to pay more attention to the dishes being proposed to make sure that they would be suitable for my palate. As it turns out, I still fell a liiiittle short on this.

We started dinner about a half-hour later than originally planned due to some late arrivals, but I figured we still had about 2½ hours until we had to vacate the premises. That should be plenty of time and we could still have a relaxing and enjoyable evening. I could not have been more wrong.

Sankala was munching on the snacks while we waited for the others to arrive. We were pretty hungry.

It is customary in Shanghainese/Jiangsu/Zhejiang cuisine to lay out the series of appetizers all in one go, or at least in quick succession. I'm used to that so no issues here.

Fresh walnuts with sun-dried shrimp (蝦皮拌鮮核桃) - this was surprisingly good. The sun-dried shrimps - about the size of sakura shrimp (桜海老) - were definitely tasty.