Casual in the hood

Pin It

It's been about 10 years since someone last dined at Neighborhood, and a request was made to make a return visit on the back of the Chairman dinner. So I duly made a booking for tonight.

A couple of days ago The Kitchen Nazi pinged me to tell me that he won't be in town tonight, as he will be on vacation. No problem, I said. I've been to the restaurant plenty of times when he's not around. In fact, sometimes I prefer for him not to be around, since I could then order whatever dishes I felt like having. That's not really happening when he's in the kitchen...

I tried to get the group to order what they thought they wanted to eat, because I don't want to keep ordering the same dishes over and over again. I also kept the amount of food reasonable, as we had pre-ordered a large main course.

Fried escargot / basil / garlic - I've always loved this dish, as the combination of garlic and escargot is just so classic.

The watery Chairman

Pin It

This is the first of two nights out that I’m spending with the King. I had promised months ago that I would get a booking at The Chairman (大班樓) so that some of their friends from Taipei could get to try it, so here we are. I had asked the visitor to choose the dishes tonight, with a couple of inputs from me. Some of their choices were a little surprising, but as we would find out later during the meal, the regular customer isn’t always right.

Crispy taro cake with smoked duck (荔甫鴨盒) – flavors from the Chinese celery were pretty noticeable.

Where the mountain meets the sea

Pin It

I'm traveling to eat again. Only this time, I'm taking the train to Guangzhou for one dinner and a short, overnight stay. The reason? A collaboration between Jiang by Chef Fei (江 - 由辉师傅主理) - a restaurant run by Chef Huang Jinghui (黄景辉), whose cuisine I really enjoy - and Meet the Bund (遇外滩) - one of the most talked about restaurants in Shanghai which, curiously, serves Hokkien cuisine. I haven't had the pleasure of dining at Meet the Bund, but it receives near universal praise from friends around me. And Chef Yoda Chen (陈志平) is obviously very well-liked. So I figured I owed it to myself to join Mr. Chichi at the invitation of the Mandarin Oriental Guangzhou.

The special dinner tonight was by invitation, and the two of us were the last two to arrive for this event – having taken the train up from Hong Kong at the end of our workday. Everyone else had arrived earlier and started their 2-day program. We apologized to Chef Fei for making everyone wait…

The best biryani I've ever had

Pin It

It has been 6 years since Fishball passed, and for the last 5 years we have been visiting Amber and taken their vegetarian menu. While we have been amazed by Chef Richard Ekkebus’ creations, we had also heard about our friend Chef Suveg Kavatkar’s special vegetarian menu served by special order at my beloeved Caprice. So we asked him to do this for us tonight.

Except, of course, that it’s Monday and Caprice is closed. When his lovely wife The Bombay East Indian Girl heard about this, she very kindly offered to cook a vegetarian feast for us at home. I was, of course, incredibly moved by her offer… and accepted the invitation with gratitude.

Khakra, apple chundo – as the person who originally introduced khakra (ખાખરા) to us, of course she had these ready for us to snack on. She made sure to substitute apple for mango in the chundo (छुन्दो) given Foursheet’s allergy.

The sunny mountain

Pin It

Now that we're neighbors with the Zhongmeister and Winnie the Chew, I have tried to occasionally see if we could meet up over a bottle of three. I had recently acquired a batch of wines at very affordable prices - most of which were unfamiliar to me – so I was particularly eager to find excuses to pop some open. My original plan was to see if my new neighbors would be up for a casual drink after dinner, but they took this in a slightly different direction…

Dinner at Hiyama (日山) was proposed, and suddenly my friend offered to bring a bottle that cost 10 times the price of the bottle I had envisaged opening. Well, then… I needed to bring something to match! The casual bottle can wait until after dinner.

What we didn’t count on was a typhoon coming our way.

Even though I had never been, I had known about Hiyama in Tokyo being known for their beef. As we were drinking some nice bottles, it seemed only appropriate that we opt for the Hiyama premium dinner set (日山特撰).

Kuruma prawn, sea urchin, baby peach, ume somen, bonito sauce (先付：車海老、雲丹、若桃、梅そうめん、鰹だし) – it’s always so nice and refreshing to start dinner with cold somen (素麺) in warm weather. The green peach (若桃) was very sweet and nice.