I was invited to dinner at The Eight for a menu paired with Perrier Jouet champagnes Belle époque rosé 2006 and the premiere vintage 2007 – both my favourites of the night. Food and wines are very personal and I am not for sweet wines and champagne so these were perfect, citrus notes, slight bitterness, grapefruit in the 2007. I don’t like them minerally either.
We also had an interesting pairing of the Glenlivet Blethermen Single Cask that just launched on the market paired with the almond sweet soup with birds nest. I know very little about hard liqour and have no whiskey connoisseur opinion to share, but it was strong at 57% yet delightfully smooth and easy to drink (diluted with water for a lightweight like me of course!)
It was the fourth time I have been to The Eight in the last three months, two invitations and two sessions on my own. I was hosted at this wonderful dinner and gain I was faced with inconsistency of some food, over salty seafood pottage with bird’s nest, salty garoupa fillet, but I was very thankful I was seeing parsley everywhere like I did the last two times I was there.
Then we had a sweet chilli sauce lobster served on a bed of crispy bean curd, the menu says “chili and Wine Lees Sauce accompanied with crispy bean curd”, interesting with the Fujian reference of the fermented red rice wine sauce which is really subtle and I couldn’t taste it. I also always thought The Eight did haute Cantonese, Guangdong Yue Cai, I suppose the menu has gone regional Chinese too.
The Korean Hanwoo sirloin selection was an interesting choice, but I am spoilt by top grade cuts on a regular basis (yes, even grocery shopping), so this was way too beefy and chewy. I have had local Korean beef in Seoul thinly sliced at the BBQ places and they are meaty and delicious, but these were thick cuts in such large pieces they expected us to tear it apart with our chopsticks and teeth. (we had to request for fork and knives)
Highlight for most of us at the table was the deep fried chicken in “pei pa” style with cristal blue shrimp mousse – I didn’t get the mousse bit but I am assuming they meant the lovely springy consistency bed of fish cake like slice the chicken was served on.
Bit more on what we drank that night…
Wonderfully balanced seafood fried rice topped with sakura shrimp – nice blend of textures and flavours – we were served Martell Cordon Bleu with this… something new and interesting for me!
Some trivia for the night: The world’s record for most number of Perrier Jouet champagnes sold in a night is 1001 and Macau’s Cubic holds the record!
Another piece of trivia from our host: it takes 550 bottles of PJ champagne to fill a bathtub!
All in all a great night – wonderful conversation, great beverages and good food. I suppose I am going to go back to The Eight again because I am still not in search of the consistency it had before and I am puzzled why I am not getting the same experiences as my friends.
