Hongkitalian birthday dinner

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So this was it.  The first of my birthday dinners.  Months ago I started joking with Hello Kitty about where she'd take me for my birthday, and since she seemed to hate Spaghetti House with a vengeance while it occupies a special place in my heart, it seemed to be the ideal venue.  She couldn't possibly refuse my request, and would have to suffer through dinner while I savored my pasta (and the moment)...

For those not familiar with Spaghetti House, it's a chain of restaurants in Hong Kong serving "Italian food" catering to the Hong Kong palate.  I'm not sure if Italians would call it authentic, I just know I would happily eat there any day.  But I digress...

Things got even better a couple of weeks ago when I saw the ad campaign from the restaurant, as they were advertising their seasonal "Spicy Fusion" menu.  I began salivating at the thought of having spicy, Asian-flavored pasta... and drinking a nice bottle of wine with it.  Hello Kitty called and found out that corkage was HKD 50 a bottle, so I figured I'd fish a bottle out of my cellar that would cost about 20x the price of my pasta...

Kung soldier - I was sooo excited about trying this.  Spaghetti with kung pao chicken (宮保雞丁)!  How cool is that?  To my surprise the sauce was a little sweet, but that was soon overwhelmed by the chili.  There's both the heat of the dried chili peppers - and there were a few in my bowl - as well as the fragrance of Sichuan peppercorns (花椒).  Thankfully the latter wasn't very powerful, so my tastebuds were just on fire instead of being numbed.  Throw in some green capsicums, onions, and some (kinda burnt) pine nuts in place of peanuts.

But the nice surprise was the chicken!  In addition to the stir-fried diced chicken, there were also chunks of popcorn chicken.  I thought having two different textures for the chicken was a real nice touch.  Even Hello Kitty was impressed.

Parma ham, arugula POP UP pizza - this was a simple yet delicious thin-crust pizza.  The crust was decent, and all that was needed was slices of Parma ham and Parmesan cheese, and some arugula.  Pretty tough to go wrong with this.

Classic barbecued premium baby back ribs served with French fries and tomato salad with balsamic dressing - Hello Kitty wanted some meat, so we got half a rack of these Danish pork ribs.  The pork was definitely tasty, but unfortunately it had been marinated with rosemary - my least favorite herb - and the barbecue sauce wasn't enough to cover up the rosemary.

Of course I brought my own bottle of wine... I found this lying around in my cellar and figured it wouldn't be a bad time to open up a bottle of '86, even though nowadays it only costs about 10x the price of my spaghetti instead of 20x...

1986 Cos d'Estournel - double-decanted 50 minutes prior to drinking.  Still plenty of fruit here like stewed prunes, a little toasty and cedar.  But this bottle seems to be a little over the hill.

I was really happy with dinner tonight.  The food was pretty good, and the fusion pasta was surprisingly tasty.  Many thanks to Hello Kitty for indulging me...