A Pic-y Friday

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It's been more than a decade since I spent 2 nights at Maison Pic (now known as Hôtel Pic) in Valence and dined both at the gastronomic restaurant with three Michelin stars and the casual bistro 7 par Anne-Sophie Pic (now renamed Bistrot André). My one regret was that for our main dinner, we all those to take the Collection Pic menu which featured more classic dishes from the family's history - thereby robbing me of the chance to get a full taste of Anne-Sophie's own cuisine. She did open an outlet in Singapore just before the pandemic hit, but it wasn't on my hit list and now it's gone.

I wasn't particularly interested on any of the outlets when The Forty-Five opened last year, figuring that most of them were overhyped and not worth my attention. I did wonder a little about Cristal Room by Anne-Sophie Pic, as I have heard positive feedback from friends. But I never took the step of walking in.

I was a little surprised when PR8 extended the invitation for me to join lunch at the restaurant today (especially after my dig at him for the initial press release), but I figured there's been enough time for the kitchen to work out the kinks after opening, so perhaps there wouldn't be any nasty surprises. The surprise, though, came in the form of my dining companions - with whom I shared a table just two days ago.

Billecart Salmon Pic - nice and floral nose. Good acidity on the palate with a little bit of ripeness.

We started with three small bites:

A very different Chindian

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For the last few years it seems that PR8 has been working overdrive to promote "4 hands" collaboration between kitchen teams, sometimes with very different cuisines. At times it almost appeared to me that nothing was out of bounds and the crazier the better. This cultimated in a joining together of Forum Restaurant (富臨飯店) and Chaat. I was not a participant and, honestly, was somewhat skeptical of the results. PR8 was, of course, adamant that it was genius. But as the old Chinese proverb says, "A dog cannot spit out ivory from its mouth (狗嘴裡吐不出象牙)".

Now that Chef Manav Tuli has set up Leela, there is a new collaboration with a Chinese restaurant - this time with Yong Fu (甬府), one of my favorite restaurants in town. Regardless of whether the idea did actually come from Chef Manav or Chef Liu Zhen (刘震), I will always blame the hare-brained idea on PR8...

Tonight was meant to be a preview of the actual event so a few of us guinea pigs were invited and placed in the private dining room at Leela. I did ask PR8 whether there would be any bitches in the room, but he wasn't very forthcoming beyond giving me a couple of names he knew I wouldn't have issues with...

The menu looked pretty long, so I was glad I had a light lunch in preparation for the onslaught tonight.

Bollinger Special Cuvée - good acidity but pretty simple and flat on the palate. Later on this showed a little bit of Chinese salted plums.

Rooted in Bangkok

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I received a message from The Great One asking me to join her at lunch today. Our friend Vincent Thierry is back in town for a few days, doing a collaboration with the team at Racines to celebrate the restaurant's second anniversary, and he's invited us to come to lunch. Although I've had a couple of chances to catch up with Vincent over the last 2 years in Bangkok, it has been 5 years since his eventful trip to Hong Kong - when the Hong Kong International Airport closed down from protests and he had to return to Bangkok by detouring to Macau.

Romain Dupeyre had worked with Vincent from their time together at The Lebua in Bangkok, and has now done a second collaboration with the head chef from Caprice. I was curious to see what these two would cook up, but I had full confidence in anything Vincent chooses to stick his hands into.

"Oreo" - this version of the famed treat comes with Parmesan cream sandwiched between two Parmesan cookies made with truffle jus. The cream in the middle had really nice milky and cheesy flavors.

Pig and more pig

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A friend is back in Hong Kong for the first time after moving away 8 years ago, and she sorely misses good Cantonese food. Foursheets decided to organize lunch at Moon Bay Chinese Cuisine (灣悅 賞 • 中菜) and grabbed a big group so we could partake in a nice little piggy. At one point we were almost going to be a big group of 12, so the restaurant put us at the big table at the corner of the main dining room.

Since we are meeting at lunch time, it seemed appropriate we would focus mostly on dim sum. They do a pretty good job here and have been more consistent compared to their FLM stable mates.

Baked barbecued Iberico pork buns, honey sauce (明爐蜜汁黑豚肉叉燒餐包) - this is always a good idea, and I love how the buns puff up. The filling was really tasty and sweet.