Thursday, April 19, 2007

The Monsieur himself - Alain Ducasse at SPOON

Had the opportunity to go to one of the two Alain Ducasse dinners at SPOON in Hong Kong recently - it was definitely an experience. Here are some horrendous attempts at capturing the dishes (judging by the tiny number of posts I've managed recently, you may have been able to guess that I've not really had the time to read the instruction guide for my new camera...)

    
Top L-R: marinated sea bass with aquitaine caviar and a lemon sauce; asparagus and leek; sole with morel sauce; lamb with spring vegetables; re-interprested vacherin - meringue, mango and passionfruit sauce.
Bottom: Beautifully tempered chocolate with raspberries.

The courses were set, so basically there was no choice (other than to choose the rare/done-ness of your lamb, for which medium rare was suggested anyway). Which was not a problem at all. After all, as long as the food was good, we weren't going to make any fuss. Each course could also be accompanied by a different glass of wine, but if we did that, we'd be drunk and very very broke. So we has a nice bottle of 2002 Chateauneuf-du-Pape Domaine de la Janasse instead.

Service and the irritable noise of the restaurant made the meal slightly less enjoyable as it should have been; neither of which should have been a problem at internationally-renowned dining establishments like this one, especially when located in a hotel.

Nonetheless, the meal was great, and it's not often that you get to see Monsieur Ducasse himself roaming around the service area.

On an additional note, I hear that SPOON now offers a hip-pocket friendly early dinner (around $500 per head), as well as a comparably priced lunch. So if you missed out on Ducasse or wish to be reminded of the good times you had when he was in Hong Kong, you can still get your fix doing much less harm to your personal P&L.

SPOON (Hong Kong)
Intercontinental Hotel
18 Salisbury Road
Tsim Sha Tsui
Hong Kong
Tel: +852 2721 1211