Just the beef, ma'am

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It has been, once again, much too long since I last caught up with Fat Donkey over a meal.  This was partly thanks to the current situation, which saw the cancellation of a few planned group gatherings.  I had suggested a handful of venues for our Friday dinner, but as the local F and B scene seemed to be experiencing a strong recovery after almost 3 months without dinner serving, we were having trouble getting ourselves a table for Friday night with 10 days' notice.

In the end we defaulted back to Beefbar because, well, my friend loves steak.  And I don't have a problem with that.  As it turns out, he's enough of a regular that they greet him by name upon entry.

Neither of us were at our full capacity, so we decided to order up separate and smaller portions of beef instead of sharing a big hunk of meat.  We did decided to share a plate of pasta, though.

Our amuse bouche was a slice of roast beef with lemon mustard. 

Homemade Kobe ravioli - when Fat Donkey first suggested we take this, I thought the use of Kobe beef would be a complete overkill.  Why use something so premium when it's gonna be shredded/grounded to become stuffing?  Would it really make a noticeable difference?

Well, I am happy to admit that I was wrong.  The flavors of the fatty beef really came through after cooking, and it worked really well with the red wine reduction.  I noticed that my friend inhaled his share in no time.

Black Market Black Angus short ribs, 200g - I loved this cut from Rangers Valley from an earlier visit, and the serving size was just right.  This was slow-cooked and the minimum recommended doneness was medium.

When I first cut this open, my heart sank a little.  The color seemed to indicate it was far more "done" than what I remembered from last time, and I thought the kitchen had fucked it up and overcooked it.  But when I took my first bite, it was melting in my mouth as if it were butter - as it did the last time I ordered this cut.  The charring on the outside also gave it that delicious smoky flavor.  I was pretty happy.

Creamed spinach - not exactly the healthy choice, but hey, it's better than a plate of French fries...

We didn't have room for dessert, but these cream-filled choux did the trick.

I brought along what I thought would be a decent bottle of wine, but it didn't work out that way...

2003 Pavillon Rouge du Château Margaux - decanted 1 hour afer opening and served 30 minutes after decanting.  Very muted, with some smoke in the nose.  Finally opened up a little more after an hour in decanter, showing more fruit.  Pretty disappointing.

Happy to have caught up with my friend after so long, and we really need to meet up more often. But first, maybe we both need to lose some weight...