the pressroom - the best french fries in the world!

there are some restaurants i return to, over and over again, simply to eat the same dish.  in fact, the dish is the reason i go back and when i make the reservation, it is exactly with the dish in mind that i make it.  i should not admit it, but it's like that...  so much that the staff eventually begins to recognise me and, with a laugh, they know exactly what i will be ordering....

pressroom serves those crazy french fries i could travels on foot miles and miles just for a taste of them.  they are the best in the world i tell you.  i don't know why, may be it's the taste (perfectly salty)?  or the texture (firm, yet tender and crispy all at once)? or the fact they they are served straight in a narrow and cylindrical receptacle and in wax paper the way they do in paris??

in fact, when i go to pressroom, i feel like i am in paris, or in at a place that feels like my imagination of paris.  better yet, i feel like i am back in montreal.  home.  that must be it.  the homey feeling i get when i dine at pressroom.

the atmosphere, the dark wooden floor and furniture, the oyster & seafood bar at the door.  the huge black board with the wine list and daily specials chalked on the wall, the authentic menu, simple yet complete with all the classic french dishes...

check it out and order the steak frites with an appetiser of 3 oysters from all over the world...

the pressroom: 108 hollywood road, sheung wan, hong kong, tel: +852 2525 3444

 

 

 

 

Published by jc on December 1, 2009

surprising dinner at cococabana

a big treat in hong kong is the beautiful hiking we can do not only in the new territories where there are fantastic beaches and you can believe to be in the absolute middle of nowhere, but also right here on hong kong island, not even 10 minutes from my flat.

and so, very often on a a sunday, we go for a 2-3 hours walk and end up for a long and lazy lunch at cococabana in deep water bay.  we usually, we go for the set lunch of tasty mediteranean dishes washed down with the house rosé.

i always thought coco to be the perfect sunday after-noon lazy lunch kind of place.  the music is mellow, the service a bit disorganised, the food super tasty, the view over the beach fantastic and usualy, as the sun becomes increasingly mellow in the after-noon, a perfect place to let time pass and recharge.

and so, i never thought of it as a dinner place until mario suggested we go there last sunday.  wow.

the service was as disorganised as during the day, but the whole atmosphere was even more mellow and relax.  the moon replaced the sun over the bay and the night time menu was more sophisticated than the ones we normally have for lunch. as a starter, i had the oven roasted goat cheeze wrapped in pancetta: the first bite made me stop and mark my appreciation.  delicious.  for my main, i had the lamb rumpsteak grilled with rosemary and in its "jus", together with summer vegs and butter-mashed potatoes.  delicious, perfectly grilled and super tasty.  i closed my eyes and reopened them and i thought i was back in a nice little village on the coast south of france.

the first bottle of rosé we had was disappointing (the only pinot grigio rosé on the list - dont'take it) but, thankfully, the bandol we had after that made up for it.

a very nice place for a nice dinner.  romantic, but also mellow with a small group of friends.

cococabana:  deepwater bay, tel: +852 2812 2226

 

Published by jc on October 30, 2008

a peacock's tail at pierre gagnaire's in hong kong

call me a groupie if you will, i do not mind.  i love pierre gagnaire's food and there is no denying i am start-struck each time i meet him.

and so, last night was his last evening in hong kong (for this time around that is) and i decided to surprise maria to a date and book a table at "pierre" for a break to my october diet (yes mom, a diet...).

not surprisingly, i was completely transported by the food...  and the wines selected by pierre legrandois, the excellent sommelier at the mandarin oriental hotel in hong kong.

firstly, i must confess that i was totally enchanted by the table they reserved for us.  a fantastic view over the harbour and a intimacy of the surroundings that i could only hope for in my best of dreams.  what a way to impress maria on the first "date" we have had in a long long time!

then, the extremley attentive and super kind care from everyone in the restaurant.  many people claim that french restaurant's service is cool, distant, and intimidating.  not here at pierre.  they were respectful, mindful, caring, and only enhanced the experience we had the whole evening.

and then, the food...

many people asked me today how i compared the experience with the one i had at the french laundry last month.  how can i compare, i asked, it is like asking me to compare picasso with rembrandt...

the food was certainly exotic, using asian ingredients that are not so uncommon in hong kong's fresh food markets.  the combination of those ingredients was definitely surprising and unusual.  combinations of ingredients that you would absolutely not believe they can pair together.

and that is, i am starting to believe (or, dare i say, to understand, as i am still new to this wonderful world of fine dining), the genius of pierre gagnaire.  he mixes and matches ingredients that defy conventional wisdom and food logic.  he creates a "third way" with food that is almost, i dare venture, "child-like", in the sense that his combinations can only come from the creativity of young, fresh, and widely imaginative minds that us, "grown-ups" would only frown upon. 

and yet...

yet, a mouthful of his creations carries us to another world altogether.  an intellectual challenge and a pleasure of the senses that i have only imagined in my most torrid dreams.  a gastronomic "orgasm" in all sense of the word.

all of this stimulation paired with the other pierre's wine selections.  a challenge that only a very sensitive palates must be able to accomplish.  legrandois' choices of wine have always opened new and wonderful vinous horizons for me.  each time i taste wines selected by pierre legrandois, i have learned something new and wonderful and i have discovered a higher plane of pleasure that wine could bring to my epicurist adventures.

one in particular last night give me a new sensorial sensation that i only knew existed from the books that i had read previously.  the sensation of the "peacock tail" so described about a wine that has a very long lasting after-taste that it so good in quality that it actually opens up like a peacock's tail long after you have swallowed the divine nectar.

the saint-joseph cuilleron st-pierre 2005.  to me an absolutely new and wonderful experience.  the body, the intensity, the length, the peacock tail...  what else can i say???  for me a new standard has been established in my short wine tasting career.  an experience not unlike "my very first time"....

what a night...

 

Published by jc on October 18, 2008

tastings wine bar revisited

of course, when opinionated people have something in their head, they do not have it anywhere else as they say. 

worst, they are the types who will look for and highlight every single little arguments in favour of that idea until their point is proven right.

worst still, they will gloat and seriously rub it in when they can find real life examples to demonstrate that very idea to the point of, as my father always warned me about, to "oversell" it to death.

well, i am exactly that type of people and tastings wine bar in hong kong is exactly that kind of real life experience that gets me super excited.

after dinner at yung kee 10 days ago, i brought chris, mike, alex, and jeff over for a "different" kind of wine bar to see if this new concept "sticks".

stuck around we did and seriously unstuck my wallet became!  tastings wine bar is different in that it has 5 enomatic wine dispensing machines and as i had described the concept before on those pages, the idea is that you buy a prepaid card with the amount of funds that you want to put in, go to the dispenser, select the wine you want to taste/drink and select among 3 choices of pour sizes.

the key here is that the smallest pour size is just enough for a taste, an "ombra"as the italians call it.  just enough so that it helps you decide whether you want to drink a whole glass (or the whole bottle if you are that thirsty).  my flickr contact "sunday driver" has a great set of pictures on her flicker that she took at tastings.

with 8 bottles installed on each enomatic, we had 40 wines to taste, and tasted we did!

the selection was varied and interesting, enough for us to spend the whole evening tasting the whole range available, sip by sip.  some were expensive to taste (but were great experiences in themselves), like the opus one from the famed napa valley mondavi/rothshild partnership, but most were reasonable and helped us to make some very interesting discoveries - like the south african syrah (the foundry 2004) which we all agreed was the best value for money we had all night - a wine i would have never selected from a wine list otherwise.  the owner, charlene dawes, later told me that they plan to change the selection at least once a month so that their guests have maximum opportunities to taste and discover.  a great concept and a great way to try out all kinds of wine and build a database of those that you might want to enjoy more fully later on.

well worth the visit.

tastings wine bar: basement, yuen yick bldg., 27-29 wellington st., central, hk, tel: 2523 6282

Published by jc on August 15, 2008

la festa dell'uva once again this year in hong kong

don't miss the greatest italian feast of the year where great wines and foods of italy are celebrated at the cyberport. cheezes and fresh grapes are directly flown in for this event. great night out with music, games, and all you can taste food and wine!

only 800 tickets are available (hkd 650/each) on a first come first served and i received my invitation last week. if you are interested, contact ms. Jessica Chan at tel. 2832 9799 (Dante Alighieri) for more information or get the ticket booking form here. 

Published by jc on July 17, 2008

lunch with pierre gagnaire - sort of

i love the french language, especially the one spoken by people involved with food.  when french restaurant people come at your table to ask for your order, they most invariably ask you: qu'est-ce qu'il vous ferait plaisir? which literally means: what would give you pleasure?  not: what would you like? non! non!  the french do not eat for love, they eat for pleasure...

and so today, i learned a lesson of food preparation first hand from the master chef himself pierre gagnaire at a cooking demonstration and private lunch organised by the good people of the centurion american express.  when asked if he was going to work with recipes that he designed, he simply responded: ah non!  i will cook with ingredients that will give me pleasure!

his genius is that he cooks according to very classical methods but push the envelop with modern twists and turns using ingredients that are, in themselves very tasty, but might not be obvious combination for most people.  yet, he succeeds to create dishes with textures and flavours that are completely new, yet, totally recognizable.

take the gazpacho we had as a starter.  its preparation started in a very classical way.  all the basic ingredients were there to make the gazpacho a gazpacho.  tomatoes, green peppers, cucumbers, garlic, red pepper, etc.  but then, he added water melon and honeydew to the mix.  kept all the vegetables and fruits nice and slightly chunky and served it on a sort of creamy base made with milk, some of the fruits, mustard, plenty of olive oil blended together and, voilà!  a totally recognisable gazpacho taste yet incredibly complex flavours that were unusual and delicate, yet powerful and succulent. perfect with the white grenache wine from côte de provence - fresh, fruity and mineraly.

we then had mullet, or small pieces of it, served with basmati rice, fresh mushrooms and sliced cuttle-fish mixed in a super tasty and unusual caramelized sauce made with a combination or soy sauce, brown sugar.  a taste perfectly reminiscent of a strongly flavoured shanghainese dish, yet, fresh, light, and tasty.  fantastic with our white chateauneuf-du-pape wine - complex, peppery, spicy.

the main dish was a "patty"of "chopped" veal slightly pan fried served on a most interesting cream sauce mixed with grappa and ginger and toped with simple yet succulent caramelized onions.  intersting dish but difficult to match with wine however.

many guests in the kitchen who were assisting to the presentation were very eager to know his recipe and took copious notes of the way he prepared his dishes.  that is one way, i suppose, to wow your guests at home.

what i learned from pierre gagnaire today in his "private" kitchen is that when you cook, you have to give yourself pleasure.  and that this philosophy can take you pretty much anywhere.  to me, that is the beauty of cooking.

 

Published by jc on May 24, 2008

breaking my pattern - dinner at zest

ok, i admit,  i am a creature of habit and it's not that easy to get me into doing something out of my pattern.  once in a while, i do and results are most enjoyable.

zest is just down from our office building so we go there a lot for lunch.  in fact some people call it my "cantine" which i guess is not very flattering a term... but, really, we do go there because the lunch special is probably the best value in hong kong.  i mean the flavours and the quality of the food they serve is just unbelievable for a lunch special. And so, we go there a lot.

anyway, i always think of zest as my "lunch restaurant".  because i have my "chicken vindaloo" restaurant just as i have my "people watching" restaurant.  you know, the kind of restaurant i go to for a specific reason and not always for the food (before i got married, i had my "favourite waitress" restaurant...).

and so, tonight, i decided to break the pattern and try zest for dinner.  wonderful idea! and how refreshing to break habits sometimes!  the team was super kind as they always are with me, bringing my cup of hot water without my asking for it. full of little attention and politeness - i feel at home here i thought!  however, equally,  it is the food i was delighted with.  the first bite of my risotto was absolutely wonderful.  an explosion of taste in my mouth.  enough to make me stop and think. Wow.

and the fillet with chanterelle mushrooms...  wonderful.  served tagliatelle style with a sweetish balsamic vinegar sauce, it was actually a perfect match to my slightly stewed, dark berries cabernet sauvignon from chile.

the only thing i do not like about zest are those odd square-shape plates that always make my knife and fork slide off and drop on my knees.  so, beware of your table manners...

a lovely dinner nonetheless.  i will consider coming for dinner again soon!

 

appetizer: pumpkin risotto, crispy sage, aged pecorino with masi pinot grigio 2006

main: beef fillet, mushroom chutney, pickled chanterelles with errazuriz cabernet sauvignon 2005

 

zest - 57 wyndham st., central, hk tel. +852 2526 7993

 

Published by jc on May 16, 2008

wyndham street wine walk

time out hong kong published its first issue last week in hong kong and i am told it sold out in just a few hours on their first day.  that is great news, for me anyway, because i have used their publication in buenos aires, paris, london, and tokyo and i have never been disappointed by their recommendations.  you can be sure i will peruse the magazine extensively here in hk!

and so, to launch their presence with full fanfare, i received information from the good people of zest and frog face fish on wyndham st that they are starting an annual "wine walk" to be held on june 7th from 3 to 6 pm. 

the concept is loosely based on hk's famous artwalk.  for hkd 280, wine lovers will get a glass and a passport and will be able to walk (or crawl) from one restaurant to another along wyndham street and enjoy as much wine you can drink & snacks you can eat on offer by those participating. 

a fantastic way to sample wines from around the world, sample the food of those great restaurants and meet the owners, chefs, staff, and generally flirt with other wine walkers.

maxxium will supply the wine and they have a whole bunch of other sponsors for this event so that all profits will go to a great charity called "room to read" which builds librairies and school around the developing world and help children get a better education.

check out their website for more details:  http://www.timeout.com.hk/winewalk/ .  be sure to check early because their will be space for about 800 wine walkers.  you will also be able to get your registration form at the various restaurants along wyndham st in early may.

see you on the crawl!

Published by jc on April 30, 2008

green t house

a cena al green t house

cibo di eccellente qualita non supportato da una lista dei vini all'altezza della cucina.Non buona atmosfera,posti a sedere alquanto scomodi e prezzi realmente eccessivi. La presentazione e' quella della nouvelle cucine cinese con piatti di stile molto occidentale e difficilmente avvicinabili come idea alla cucina tradizionale.

 

 

 

 

GREEN T HOUSE
N.208 The Arcade
100 Cyberport Road
Hong Kong
Phone 2989 6098 / 2989 6036

Published by jc on December 15, 2007

dinner at spasso hong kong


on my way back from china by ferry, i decided to try out this new place spasso in ocean center at harbour city.  it was very early so i did not have a chance to see it in full swing.  what i saw however is that they are very serious about trainning. 

i sat on the terrace overlooking the harbour (with a partial view from central to sheung wan and kennedy town) which was spacious and airy. 

the menu is traditional italian offering guests a culinary trip around italy with full of mouthwatering & interesting dishes and a large wine by the glass list.  thanks on behalf of wine lovers, i was assured that all wines are kept at the proper temperature in a eurocave cellar.

for my main i had the "black pepper pappardelle tossed with wild boar ragout".  it was delicious and perfect with my glass of zenato ripassa.

for a style, funky atmosphere, and the prelude of a good night out, spasso is definitely the hippest italian restaurant on that side of hong kong.

RIPASSA DI VALPOLLICELLA ZENATO 2005 (hkd 118 - glass) a pleasant aromatic of young ripe red & black forest fruits with vanilla, chocolate, and pepper; low acidity and smooth tannins.  medium body and high levels of alcohol.  flavours as nose but more spicy, with a medium lenght.. Pleasant mouthfeel, fruity yet spicy - delicious.

spasso: # 403, ocean centre, harbour city, kowloon, hong kong, tel. +852 2730 8027

Published by jc on November 21, 2007

san felice wine dinner at cipriani - 19 november 2007

As strange as it might appear, I love to go for dinner by myself.  not that i do not like good company mind you. 

it is just that my imagination goes absolutely wild when i dine alone.   it gives me a buzz to watch the service, listen to bits and pieces of conversations going on around me.  but most of all, i love observing people.  how they behave in groups, how they behave towards me, alone at my table.  it is the body language that tells me so much, or rather trigger my imagination.  i love to invent stories about one or the other, to imagine what they think, where they could be coming from, where they could be going next .  sometimes, this makes me sad, especially when i see someone who appears not to be assuming himself to the extent that i feel he should.  other times it makes me laugh at how arrogant or pompous others behave towards their guests or kin.  all the while, i love to watch and to make up stories. 

perhaps it helps me learn about myself?  as they say, what we see in other people is actually what we see in ourselves...

in any case... we are here for the wine and so:

VERMENTINO DI MAREMMA 2006 - matched to tuna tartare
pale golden color, aromatic with floral aromas; nice refreshing acidity, with simple flavour as it should for its kind.  fresh pears, citrus, lime skin, slightly peppery.  medium lenght.  pleasant as appetizer.

CHIANTI CLASSICO RISERVA IL GRIGIO 2004 - matched to risotto with radicchio di treviso
pale ruby, nice aromatic of dark forest fruits, spices, forest underwood; low acidity, medium body & alcohol, soft tannins, flavours as nose, smoky, medium lenght, fruity finish.  pleasant.

VIGORELLO 2001 - matched with rack of lamb with vintage balsamic sauce
medium ruby with purple tints.  aromatic of dark forest fruits: blackberries, black currents, blueberries and vanilla, low acidity, medium + tannin (slightly harsh), medium + body, palate as nose with hints of chocolate and tobacco box.  medium lenght with a fruity finish.  can drink now and can age.

BRUNELLO DI MONTALCINO CAMPOGIOVANNI 2001 - matched with rack of lamb with vintage balsamic sauce
deep ruby, aromatic of dark forest fruits, slightly herbaceous, with hints of minth and tobacco, vanilla; medium acidity,  medium ripe tannins, flavours as nose but fruitier and with a complex, spicy finish.   medium lenght.  a good wine, pleasant and complex.

VIN SANTO DEL CHIANI CLASSICO 2002 - matched with mango cheese cake with zabaione sauce
deep gold color, aromatic of creme caramel, slightly burnt sugar, raisins, dark honey; sweet, low acidity, full body, flavours as nose, slightly spicy: cinnamon, vanilla, long  and complex finish.  good.

GRAPPA DI BRUNELLO CAMPOGIOVANNI - matched with tea or coffee

 

Published by jc on November 20, 2007

brunch at isola - the best in hong kong

i have just returned from a brunch at isola in ifc 2 (click on the link for stunning pictures).

considering the quality and selection of the antipasti buffet, the main course and the dessert buffet, at hkd 248 (usd 30-) is, for hong kong, an excellent value.

the terrace offers stunning views over the harbour and the people watching is probably the best in hong kong.

carlo, the manager, will make you feel at home and warmly give you the impression that you have been his best friend since childhood.

the food is under the supervision from a very talented italian executive chef who never miss to be there on sundays and the food his team prepares is authentic italian, delicious, and changes each week.

the only cloud on this picture is the wine by the glass that is, unfortunately like all of the other gaia group restaurants, lacking in complexity and research.  for the price of those glasses, they are disapointedly ordinary at best...

in any case, that is a disapointment well compensated by the rest of the experience.

book in advance!

level 3, ifc mall, central, hong kong, tel. +852 2383 8765

Published by jc on October 14, 2007