We dropped by Caprice at the Four Seasons on the last day of Lunar New Year holiday (nin chor sei, or the fourth day) as we often did in the past few years as part of our "festival tradition". After stuffing ourselves with traditional Chinese dishes non-stop during the 4-day long weekend, we were just happy for a change.
It's another full house at the restaurant the day after the busiest Valentine's Day service, and like what we often do, we were more than happy to let the chef team decide what we were eating. With my last visit came
a month ago and missus' a few months back, we ended up with a combination of dishes that I have tried before, and a few that were new to both of us.
We started with a couple familiar ones - I enjoyed both the amuse-bouche of vegetable mousse with duck jelly and black truffles and the potato mash with caviar and champagne sauce so I didn't mind a repeat. Especially the large quenelle of the creamiest potato topped with a quenelle of caviar that's almost as big - something as decadent to taste as it sounds and it's definitely one of the more memorable dishes I had this year so far.
The fish course was next, with the silver pomfret butterfish fillet (Managatsuo from Fukuoka) slow poached and served with a lemongrass-infused beurre blanc sauce with calamansi zest, plus more Krital caviar and potato served on the side. I thought the fish fillet was slightly over-seasoned but then everything else was perfect, firm and bouncy texture with a delicate flavor. The sauce looked similar to the one we had with the potato dish right before, but it's a kick up in acidity and I like the refreshing touch of the calamansi zest.
The whole Beef Wellington was shown to us at the table before it's carted away to be carved and served. Presentation was gorgeous - on one side was the carved piece of beef, wrapped nicely in the golden puff pastry crust and topped with thin shaved slices of Perinord black truffles, and one the other side was the parsnip purees with a medley of root vegetables on top. Also poured on the side was the rich meat jus-black truffle sauce. The Beef Wellington was done sans pate so it's just a tad bit lighter than usual, with the duxelles and ham wrapped with the tender piece of beef in puff pastry and baked. I was amazed at how uniform the meat was cooked through and Chef Suveg shared with us how that's done - not like we were able to do the same at home any time soon for sure.
After the main course, we were served a larger-than-usual portion of cheeses on the wooden platter ("lucky 8 for the new year", we were told). Other than our usual favorite Comte, I thought the Epoisses, with its rich and salty tastes, worked well this time with the bottle of red we opened, a simple, no non-sense natural wine with refreshing red fruit and earthy taste. Happy to see the pastry team going from strength to strength with yet another impressive new dessert presented this time with the beautiful Mont Blanc, with the vanilla ice-cream and sable as foundation, and on top, layers of chestnut puree, meringue with more chestnut cream piped on the sides.
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