#20 – Amber

Saturday, November 26^th

Kat was a good addition to this trip.  She can keep up with our eating game.  And she was also totally down with Adele and my plan of eating our way through the San Pelligrino Top 50 list.

We settled on the Wine Lunch at Amber, #20 in the world.  Amber is located in the Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hotel off of the Central subway stop on Hong Kong Island.

The place setting was lovely

The Wine Lunch costs HKD$928 plus a 10% service charge.  This equals about USD$120, so not overly crazy.  The lunch included five courses and four glasses of wine.  It was a rainy day in Hong Kong.  And we were more than happy to spend almost four hours eating and drinking.  Seriously.  We were one of the first people to arrive for lunch.  And we were the last people to leave lunch.  So did we enjoy our meal??  Yeah.  I'd say so.

Amuse Bouche – We had three items that I can’t entirely track back because they weren’t on the menu.  Not shown, the amazing champagne.

There were parmesan crisps over something.  I don't remember the something.  But I remember liking this one.  How do you not like parmesan crisps??

This is not a sausage.  But I thought it was.  It was not.

This one, I do remember.  It was basically a French Onion Soup on a spoon.  I am not a fan of French Onion Soup.  Either in a bowl or on a spoon.  I mean, I'm sure this was good if you like this kind of soup.

This was a crispy flatbread with some flowers on top.  And other things.  I don't think I enjoyed this one so much.

Starters – Amberjack

Served raw over stracciatella, with pickled cherry radish, shaved green strawberries, wild fennel and fennel seed crackers.

This was my starter.  I was more interested in the starter that Adele and Kat chose, but didn't want to have too much foie (I know, I sound like The Worst).  But this was a great choice.  It was a super light fish, with cheesy innards and a cracker on the side.  Paired with a dry Riesling, I was a happy camper.

Starters – Foie Gras and Black Trumpet Mushroom ‘pate en croute’ 

With curried kumquat and pineapple relish.

The best line from the menu was with this dish, “All of our game is hunted in the wild in France.  Please be aware due to this all wild game dishes may contain shot pellets and small bones.”  Adele and Kat each went with this one and were super enthusiastic with their choice.

Middle Course – Duck Foie Gras

Poached with fondant turnips, roasted soiles figs in a duck and cepe mushroom broth.

The middle course included a Chardonnay.  Now I'm not a big fan of Chardonnay, but it worked nicely with this dish.  As for this dish, it was basically one large chunk of foie.  I also loved the figs, because who doesn't??  I think I wanted more of a starch with this dish.  But I did not regret my choice at all.

Bread

We ate a lot of bread.  We couldn't help it.  Bread is wonderful.

Main Course – Huguenin Piglet

I have a few other pictures of the pork, but for the life of me, I couldn't take a better picture that was in focus.

Cutlet and saddle roasted, reine claude doree plum with yellow bell pepper black pudding coulis

This was going to be my choice if only because of the black pudding in the dish.  So good.  Sure, we could have had about double the portion size, but I was happy with the porky goodness.  The wine changed to red for this dish.  We had two choices.  One was a Pinot Noir, the other was a Cab/Merlot blend.  I don't remember which one I had.  I feel like it was the Cab/Merlot.  I do know I loved it.

Cheese Course – French Pasturized Cheeses

The only thing missing was more bread.

A chef’s selection for the table to share.

The “included” part of the wine tasting was over with the red wine.  But we weren’t really interested in the wine stopping.  So we opted for one last drink (for an additional price).  The dessert wine was a late harvest Chenin Blanc.  It was thick and sweet and lovely.  Our insides curled up like a dog in front of a fireplace.  Let the dessert course begin!!

Dessert Tasting – "Something" with Figs

 Caramelized with honey and deglazed with hydromel 5 spices bavarois and honey powder ‘burnt’ bread.

Ok, so my picture of the menu kind of cut off the first word of this dessert.  This dessert was nice.  A bavarois is a french term for Bavarian cream (file this under "Things I Learned Today").  The dessert was very good.  Light and creamy, it went down quickly.

Dessert Tasting – Chestnut

Mont Blanc 2016 with milk chocolate ganache, cinnamon meringue and black currant sorbet.

I'm not a chocolate person, but this was excellent.  The sorbet was great.  The chocolate bar was great.  The little toppers on the chocolate bar were great.  It was a wonderful end to the lunch.

Until...

Petit Fours

We were pretty full by this part.  But that's not going to stop me from downing a chocolate pudding and a raspberry tart.

Sorbet

Let's pretend for this moment that the sorbet is green apple.  It is green.

Nougat

And finally, there was nougat.  I always like nougat more than I think I do.

We rolled out of the restaurant both satisfied and ready to continue drinking our way through the city.  Fortunately (or was it unfortunately), we didn't make it to another bar.  The decision was made to go back to the apartment and change.  The rain kind of sucked the life out of us, so we ended up mostly staying home for the rest of the night.  Sure, there was a dim sum moment later in the evening, but that's another story.