Bromance dinner

I needed some time to catch up with V after being separated by a border over the last 30 months or so, and we made plans to grab a simple meal together. We had no plans about where to go eat, and we putzed around until we were seated in a moving car in need of a destination. That's when I came up with the idea of going to La Maison.

I had been to the restaurant only once, which was a few months ago when I needed to open a particular bottle of wine and wanted some simple bistro food. The decor was very "Kong girl (港女)" although the service staff are uncles... The food is simple "Western" fare with French/Portuguese bent, and reasonably tasty. Pricing is very reasonable, and best news of all for some - they charge no corkage.

So two guys showed up on a whim and ordered some simple dishes to go with a nice bottle of red...

Shrimp toast - this looked distinctively different from the shrimp toast I enjoyed here last year, but I'm not complaining. Always nice when there are sesame seeds around.

Mushroom flan salad - savory soufflé. OK la...

Grilled whole sardine - these were OK, although not the perfect accompaniment for our red.

Grilled diced salted ox tongue - the corned beef tongue was very fatty and very tender. Really, really tasty. Nothing fancy but went well with the red wine.

Signature roast piglet, quarter - when there's a roast pig on the menu, best to order up some! Always happy with some tasty crackling and fragrant fat underneath the crackling.

Baked rice with shredded duck meat Portuguese style - the rice was a little too wet for my liking, and I wasn't expecting green olives here, but overall still decent.

But tonight was about the wine, and V shared a nice bottle with me.

1985 Chave Hermitage Rouge - decanting and served. Initially not open, with some leather notes showing. Improved after 15 minutes and the nose was pretty fragrant. After 1½ hours the acidity was a little higher. Drinking reasonably well but not spectacular.

I don't think my friend would have ever chosen this place on his own, although I think he was OK with it in the end. The important thing was that we had a chance to catch up. Looking forward to doing more of that next week.