Fourth anniversary

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Four years ago, we bid a teary farewell to our beloved Bro Bro, a.k.a. Kuma the Asshole. It was tough for us to go through that in the beginning stages of the pandemic, and other tragedies would follow. But here we are today. The night we let Bro Bro cross the rainbow bridge, we had a simple dinner at Nikushou as Foursheets could not handle the simple act of cooking even some instant noodles, and we were so devastated that she couldn't think of where she wanted to eat. Nikushou and their yakiniku (焼肉) was the default for her. And we have returned every year since then, with a bottle of red wine over some simple dishes.

This year, though, felt a little different. Just a couple of days ago Foursheets received a message from the restaurant, which advised us that their eighth anniversary is also likely to be their last. We all know that the economic environment in Hong Kong is tough these days, and the hospitality industry is definitely suffering. Although this is our go-to yakiniku restaurant in town, even we have halved our visits over the last year and a half... thanks to increased travel outside of Hong Kong.

Well... we would have come here tonight regardless, but it seemed particularly poignant to show our support at this point in time.

Fruit tomato (フルーツトマト) - always good to start with something like this, and a little dab of salt brings out the sweetness of the fruit.

The Park at the Forum

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While at dinner last night, someone threw out an invitation to join a dinner gathering tonight with representatives from Howard Park, the winery in Western Australia. I had heard about them from the time I started learning about wine, but for some reason I had never had the opportunity to taste anything from them, so I decided that it would interesting to meet up and try some of their offerings.

No dinner venue had been set by the host, so I booked us a table at Forum Restaurant (富臨飯店). I'm always happy with the food here - which isn't surprising given their 3 macarons - and we can call on Jacky's services should we need him. And since I appear to be the one most familiar with the restaurant, the burden of ordering dishes fell on my shoulders, naturally...

I couldn't believe that they had already run out of char siu (叉燒) by the time we started our dinner. Unimaginable under normal circumstances, but they were reasonably busy tonight. Oh well.

Salad prawn on toast (沙律鳳尾蝦多士) - this is always one of my favorites. I just can't resist ordering prawn toast every time I see it on a menu, and here they do it pretty well. Deep-fried toast?! Hell, yeah!

Old Napa night

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The Prince of Napa is back in town as he spends time at Vinexpo. I haven't seen him since that morning when we drank a few bottles while watching TayTay at the Superbowl, so he invited me to join a dinner where the wine theme is "old Napa" - specifying that the wines have to be older than 1990. This isn't a theme that comes up often among the wine circles in Hong Kong, so I found myself a bottle and agreed to join in the fun.

I laughed out loud when my friend showed me that a booking was made at The Merchants (嘗申匯), the restaurant purportedly serving Shanghainese cuisine inside the complex known as Forty-Five. When this place launched more than a year ago, PR8 sent out a press release declaring it to be “Hong Kong's most exciting new food and beverage lifestyle destination in a generation". I laughed out back then and inched my friend about the hyperbole. Since then, feedback from friends who were invited to tastings have been pretty lukewarm, with comments like "might as well go to Shanghai Fraternity Association (上海總會)" being a common refrain. Most tellingly, I don't recall any of my friends returning to the restaurant after their initial visit. If they did, there haven't been any posts on social media gushing about their meals. Meanwhile, I have had zero desire to pay the place a visit on my own dime.

But hey, I'm not the host of the event so I just went along with it. I did share my reservations with the Prince of Napa, who has, in the past, accompanied me on a couple of "take down (踢館)" meals. While I have a reputation of being the Arrogant Prick, I do believe that the Prince of Napa is even worse when it comes to fine dining restaurants. So... this was going to be interesting.

Somewhere along the line, my friend asked me whether there was anything that I wanted to pre-order. NOOOOO... I wouldn't want to do anything to detract from a "real" experience at this here restaurant.

We were seated in one of the private rooms, with commanding views of the city. I suppose that's why people come here, although personally, the view during the meal is not one of the factors I use to judge a restaurant.

We started with a trio of appetizers, but as I don't normally touch raw crabs, I gave my portion of drunken crab with 25-year Hua Diao wine (廿五年花雕醉膏蟹) to my neighbor.

Crystal pork terrine served with vinegar (水晶肴肉) - this was pretty nice, and probably the best version I've had in a while.

Pepe e pepe

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I hadn't visited Juve Fan for a proper meal in a while, and after giving my Maradona shirt to the Hungry Hungarian for him to wear during his recent visit to Estro, Juve Fan decided to invite me for dinner at the restaurant. I put up a protest about this invitational meal, as I'm more than happy to go on my own dime to support him, but he insisted - and promised to make for me the cacio e pepe I had seen others enjoy at an event last month. So I begrudingly accepted his invitation.

When he proposed that I buy a bottle off the restaurant wine list, the wheels in my head started turning... Did they still have wines from Emidio Pepe on the list? Could I have a bottle of Emidio Pepe to go with my cacio e pepe, and make it a Pepe e pepe pairing? The answer was 'yes'. Then this would be an interesting occasion...

Right off the bat, we were told by Martina that it would be a 7-course menu for us. So... not a small meal, then... and we started with the quartet of aperitivo:

Dill and vegetable tart - with honey peas and basil. The flavors of the basil was particularly strong.

The Hungry Hungarian Chairman

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The Hungry Hungarian was back in town and has been eating his way through Hong Kong where just about every place he visited had been arranged by PR8. One of the few meals where he wasn't led by the nose happened to be at The Chairman (大班樓), as he was fortunate enough to take over a booking from a mutual friend who was out of town. He had 2 Hungarian friends with him - one of whom wouldn't touch any seafood - and I thought they might need a "local" with them, so I agreed to join him at dinner tonight. After all, while we have had a few coffees together in the last 2 years, it has been a few years since we last shared a meal together.

I had come up with a choice of dishes - taking our Hungarian guest's preferences into consideration - and chosen what would normally be the maximum recommended number of dishes. But of course there was an intervention, and the menu we actually got - let's call it "the Margaret menu" - ended up with lots more food... and a lot more seafood than I had planned for.

We were a table of 7 tonight, as the Hungry Hungarian had local fans here, too, so maybe I wasn't needed after all...

Ginger and vinegar pig trotter terrine (甜醋子薑豬手豬耳凍) - I really love having this as the first course of the meal, since it really does whet the appetite and, in my opinion, is a much better way to go than the traditional pickled young ginger that the restaurant used to serve. Because how many pieces of ginger can an average diner eat before getting tired of it? Anyway, I loooove pig trotters, and I love 豬腳薑, too! So this is just PERFECT.