Hospice de Beaune Wine Dinner

A couple of weeks ago we were at the table for Hospice de Beaune wine dinner co-organized by Hip Cellar, owned by one of our friends EY. Other than the state-of-the-art wine storage facilities and event space at this industry building location in Tin Hau (I wasn't paid to say this, just to make it clear), under the same roof is Ta Pantry, a speakeasy/private kitchen by Chef Esther, where the wine dinner was held.

I have been to Ta Pantry a couple of times this year already (the thoughts after the first visit are here), and quite impressed with the innovative cooking style and its food, so I don't mind coming for a third time, especially the menu and the wines for the evening sound very enticing.

Crossover: Sake x Luk Yu Tea House

It may be arguable to say Luk Yu Tea House is the best Chinese restaurant in town, but given its long history, no doubt they are the standard bearer in the local dining scene, especially as far as traditional Cantonese cuisine was concerned. It's not uncommon to hear people compared food elsewhere to the food served at Luk Yu. 

Believe it or not we have never been to the restaurant - probably we were put off by comments from others about the discrepancy of services and food quality between a regular customer and a non-regular one. But when we heard of a special sake dinner event co-hosted by the restaurant and a local food distributor, we decided to check it out.

My Summer Dinner Menu - Salt Baked Fish and Pumpkin Soup

Many people thought cooking the whole fish is a very Asian thing - one may immediately relate to the classic Cantonese dish of steamed garoupa with ginger and green onions, or those grilled fish with chili sauce wrapped in banana leaves commonly seen in Thai restaurants. Well, it's only partially true. While this is probably more common in this part of the world, numerous western dishes involved cooking fish in the whole - for example, barramundi or rainbow trout are 2 kinds of fish often cooked as the whole - with barbecue in open fire or baked in an oven the preferred way of cooking.

Having spent a good part of summer in inner part of China where seawater fish was not readily available, I have been craving for fish when I am finally home. So I decided to do a salt-baked fish on this hot and humid Sunday evening.

Wine and Dine - An evening at 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo BOMBANA

There are places that wow you with excellent cooking techniques, or fascinating combination of ingredients, and there are some that impress you with consistently high quality, spot on dishes day in day out, and Chef Bombana's Otto e Mezzo certainly has a lot of both.