Pizza Valentine

I've been kinda feeling down for the last week or two, as the pandemic situation in Hong Kong spiraled out of control and dining out became an increasingly difficult proposition. Sankala kept prodding me about plans for Valentine's Day, but as I've always felt it's a manufactured holiday, and I really wasn't feelin' it, I made it clear that I had no interest in making any plans.

But we did have to have *some* kind of plan for tonight, because Sankala announced that she wasn't cooking tonight, and we couldn't even grab a simple dinner at any ol' neighborhood joint. We did consider taking a set of takeout from a nearby restaurant with a Michelin star, but as it required us to heat up some of the items, we figured it was a little more trouble than we wanted.

Which is how Sankala suggested that we order pizza from our neighborhood Dough Bros. After all, it's only a 3-minute walk from us - so we could be sure that the pizza would still be hot when we bring it back home. We would also be saving a good amount of money on dinner, and perhaps we could spend the savings on a nice bottle of rosé Champagne. I liked the idea, so that's what we did!

The BBQ chicken - I started with this first as it's not spicy, just the prominent taste of BBQ sauce with some sweetness to go with the acidity of the bubbly.

The Texas Hot - this, on the other hand, lit on tongue on fire... thanks to the jalapeños and chilli flakes. In the end this numbed my palate for the bubbly, which turned out to be a good thing, in retrospect.

I don't have a lot of rosé Champagne in my cellar as there are very few I actually like, so I did go out and splurge on this bottle with the money I saved on food...

2006 Dom Pérignon Rosé - lots of strawberries on the nose. Still some bitterness at first, but got smoother after my palate got decimated by chillis. Nice and toasty on the nose as it opened up.

The important thing tonight was that Sankala was happy, and as people keep telling me, "Happy _ife, happy _ife"...