3-some in the Valley

CK's in town from Chili Crab Land and wanted to catch up, so in spite of my Diet 2.0, I agreed to meet up with an old foodie friend.  It was obvious that he preferred Canto - even though there were only 3 of us - so a reservation was made at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 (壹玖捌叁).

I had only been there only once, and looked up my blogpost to see which dishes I enjoyed.  We ended up repeating one of the dishes.

Snake soup with chrysanthemum (菊花燉蛇羹) - over the last few years I have been completely spoiled when it comes to Cantonese snake soup, and this one fell far short of my very high standards...

Interesting to see black sesame seeds in the deep-fried crisps that they provide as one of the condiments.

Deep-fried prawns with salty egg yolk (翡翠金沙蝦球) - this was excellent.  The batter on the large prawns were still crunchy, and the layer of salty egg yolk coating the batter was pretty tasty.

Braised giant grouper fin (生炆龍躉撥水翅) - this was a dish that I thought I'd repeat, but it was disappointing today.

Yes, we got the tail and also one of the pectoral fins, but unfortunately the meat just tasted muddy - not intensely so, but enough for one to notice and be annoyed by it.  Nothing else matters beyond that.

Braised lamb brisket in clay pot (枝竹羊腩煲) - it's winter... well, kind of.  So 'tis the season for lamb in clay pot.  This looked real good when they brought it to our table.

And it WAS good.  These fatty, lamby morsels were very tasty, indeed.  Loved the tofu skin, too... and the Chinese lettuce we added to the pot.

Stir-fried rice noodles in soy sauce with premium beef (頭抽特級牛肉炒河) - this was surprisingly good, with a good amount of wok hei (鑊氣), although the noodles weren't as caramelized and a little more charred as they could have been.  This disappeared quickly.

We brought a couple of bottles to dinner with us, and both turned out to be 2005 white Burgs.

2005 Vincent Girardin Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru Les Folatières - very mature and oxidized.  Obviously a very ripe vintage, but maybe overripe.  Nose was very sweet, very grassy with notes of straw, and almost sugarcane.

2005 Bouzereau Meursault 1er Cru Perrières - fairly ripe but a bit more mineral and flinty, a little buttery, with some honey notes later.