Valentine's Eve Dinner

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Ed, Celine and I have talked about doing dinner for some time, and the original plan for last evening was to go to the Steakhouse at the Inter-Continental Hotel, where we could have nice, juicy steaks as well as share one of the hotel's famously expensive burgers - made from a mixture of toro and wagyu (real Japanese beef, not the American or Australian versions).

Unfortunately, the restaurant was booked out due to it being Valentine's Day Eve (?!), so we went to our standby San San Trois instead. We invited my colleague Fayez along, so I was dining out with 3 Frenchies (OK, so Fayez is actually Tunisian...but he's still French-speaking...).

We started with our usual trio of sushi - aburi toro (seared fatty tuna), aburi kama (seared neck of tuna) and foie gras. Both the toro and the kama were nicely done, where the searing liquified the fat and made the fish so tasty... The foie gras was a bit overdone, but I was still a happy camper. We were ready to order a few more rounds of these.

We then had the usual trio of main courses: grilled kama, roasted Bresse chicken, and slow-cooked ribeye. The grilled kama was as good as I've had it - juicy, tender with the full-bodied taste of fatty tuna. I actually prefer it "as is" and without the grated radish and ponzu.

The Bresse chicken was a bit disappointing. The chef rolled out the chicken in front of us, made his first slice, and immediately apologized for undercooking it. The bird was taken back to the kitchen for further processing. As one would expect, food that's cooked twice rarely come out perfect. While the chicken was still delicious and the skin crispy, the meat was just a tad overdone. 

Finally, each of us sampled a small piece of slow-cooked ribeye (300g shared among 4 of us). As usual, it was quite a tasty morsel but I'm not sure that Fayez got enough of it. However for me it was just right, since the chicken was not a small bird.

Of course we did have wine with dinner. We started with the 1999 Kaesler Old Bastard, which is made from 110-year old shiraz vines. Kaesler is an Australian winery whose main shareholder is Ed Peters, the head of our Asian asset management arm and ex-head of Asian equities. As a result I've always wanted to try this wine. It was unfortunately a little disappointing. It was neither a classic, powerful Aussie shiraz nor a syrah in the Rhone style. Somehow it just didn't open up well.

The second bottle of the evening was the '01 Kistler Pinot Noir Kistler Vineyard. The wine performed reasonably well, with a nose full of black cherries. However it was not as powerful as I imagined it would be. Perhaps the wine needs more time to age.

We left the restaurant with very full stomachs, and all looking forward to our next visit.