Big fish in the 'hood

I'm back hanging out with the City Foodsters and DaRC tonight, dining at Neighborhood for the first time in a few months. As usual we were well taken care of by The Man in White T-shirt, as dish after dish came out from the kitchen to satiate our hunger and cravings.

We started with some padron peppers, which came with some melted cheese and a sprinkle of chili powder.

Pancetta - the pancetta is always a welcome sight, but somehow most people at the table stayed away from all that fat.

Culatello di zibello "Massimo Spigaroli" - but this was definitely more special. The Man in White T-shirt tells us that he gets 1/3 of the tiny allocation Hong Kong gets of the culatello from black pigs. Delicious as always.

Hangar steak tartare / caviar / bone marrow - this was very, very good. The slightly springy texture of the diced beef, the soft and gooey marrow, the soft caviar eggs popping and releasing their liquid contents, and the light crunch of the chives.

And it was all perfect on sourdough toast.

Pigeon eggs 'œuf mayo' / black truffle - love these little eggs, especially when you've got black truffle shaved on top.

Buffalo chicken wings / Roquefort - interesting to have a simple plate of buffalo wings, as it's usually a tad more "creative".

Burrata cheese / tomatoes / strawberry - the burrata has always been very good, and they made a very good terrine from tomatoes and tomato jelly. Perfect with some olive oil and balsamico, which really brought out the umami.

Matsutake mushroom / egg - I guess we're getting into fall mushroom season, so here comes the matsutake (松茸) from Yunnan (雲南). These came with sujiko (筋子) cured with fish sauce, which unfortunately made them much too salty for my taste. There was also a sunny side up egg, which was mixed with the other ingredients. Some fragrance was provided by sansho leaves (木の芽).

Boudin basque / pepper jack - always one of my favorite dishes ever since the On Lot 10 days, and today this was served with flambéed peaches.

Black truffle vegetables casserole "Mr. Ducasse" - the obligatory greens, which were wonderful with some sweet peas and shaved black truffles.

Handmade garganelli / foie gras / ganbajun - the garganelli was baked with plenty of cheese, along with bits of ganbajun (乾巴菌) mushrooms from Yunnan and cubes of foie gras. Loved the cheezy crust, and the ganbajun had such amazingly intense fragrance.

The Man in White T-shirt also told us that in terms of pricing, ganbajun is priced at about 5 times that of matsutake.

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Giant grouper saffron rice - the fishing season had just started again after a few months' break, and yielded up this 100-catty (60kg) giant grouper (龍躉) found in the waters around Hong Kong. Naturally this was divided up and The Man in White T-shirt took a few cuts - including the "little" fin that we see in front of us, on top of a bed of bubbling saffron rice.

Needless to say, this was amazing. The giant grouper comes with very thick skin with tons of chewy gelatin, and we had plenty of Hokkaido sea urchin to go with it. How was this not heavenly??

Salt baked 120 day local "Ping Yuen" chicken / ganbajun / morels / giblets rice - we've seen this dish before, but today the Ping Yuen chicken (平原雞) came with not just morels, but ganbajun as well. The fragrances from the shrooms were incredible.