Question! - Amongst all your restaurant dining experiences. What is the LONGEST wait time, between placing the food order to receiving the first dish, you have endured?!..30 minutes?.. 45 minutes?..an hour may be?
Our meal at the super-busy Providential 9, yesterday evening, took a ridiculously long - 1 hr and 12 mins before the arrival of our first dish!! During this period, we have consumed two pots of Chinese Pu-Erh Chinese tea and each of us has all made a visit to the washroom! Ha! Thankfully, despite this unfortunate mishap, of which no explanation or apologies were given. Quality of our food was all tip-top, lovingly prepared and executed and most importantly, delectable throughout!
Menu for our party of five consisted of:
Three whole Sha-Tin style Roasted Pigeon…half and not quartered ( advanced order )
Pan fried West Coast jumbo oysters with XO sauce
Flash fried egg white with diver scallops and ( aka Choy-
Pon-Hai, imitation crab meat )
Fried Pumpkins and Jumbo Tiger Prawns with salted Duck Egg
Yolk coating
Wok-seared Angus Beef Filet Mignon Cubes with an exotic and
bizarre taste profile!
Chinese Lettuce with spicy, soy-sauce and sizzling oil dressing
The piping hot, well seasoned and super-juicy roasted pigeon was finger-licking/out-of-this-world good! Easily rub shoulders with some of Hong Kong’s Michelin star best!! By instructing the kitchen to half and not quartered the bird helped to retain most of the internal juices. Result rendered a moist and juicy product throughout……from dark meat to the usually vulnerable white breast meat! Simply exceptional! Needless to say, from the photo posted, one could easily deduce the gossamer, lacquered skin to be ultra-crispy.
Rest of the dishes, including a repeat or two, were all expertly executed. The fried Tiger Prawns and Pumpkins with salted duck egg yolk coating deserved a special mentioning for its addictive preparation! One of the best rendition in town!
Service provided by our lady server, ‘Rebecca’ was impeccable, friendly and attentive. That alone easily offset and more than make-up for the short-fall caused by the long, agonising wait/delay earlier.
Pork noodle stir fry. Onion, garlic, red bell, mushrooms, marinated and roasted pork tenderloin, green onion, hard boiled egg and a splash of tamari. Asian-ish slaw.
We enjoyed another sensational dinner at The Circle Restaurant in Fredon/Newton NJ, including outstanding pastrami smoked duck breast; awesome scallops; excellent lobster cavatelli; prosciutto di parma salad; and French onion soup. It all went great with a couple of excellent cabernets.
Made the most tender braised short ribs ever. Followed a NYT recipe with red wine and a whole head of garlic, plus my addition of anchovy paste and dijon, and finished with minced fennel fronds and lemon zest. Also sauteed crimini mushrooms. Three hours in the oven. Seriously good. Crash hot potatoes that didn’t crisp enough, but still good with a composed butter of minced garlic/shallots/parsley. BF’s green salad on the side.
Both the BF and I tested negative finally yesterday! (Tenth day for me.) So i went to my sister’s, and last night she made ATK’s Italian Wedding Soup. Excellent. We devoured it, with Acme toasted/buttered baguette.
And, for @gcaggiano - my Spanish gin (funnily enough, most of the writing on the bottle is in English, but it’s definitely a Spanish product.) Distilled with olives, thyme, rosemary and basil - this is what sold me on it at a bar there. I can really taste the briny olive, and then i just get a very green/herbal-ness from it. Had it on the rocks one night, and as a martini last night.
Last night’s dinner was a Halftime Ham Goulash with pasta. I started most of it in the slow cooker in the morning. I boiled the pasta at the 2:00 warning (for halftime), and served at Halftime.
Mr Bean would come home with lychees, kiwis, bananas, grapes and 10 other things we don’t need. Your cocktail sounds great. I’m a sucker for anything ginger but am unfamiliar with torch ginger - off to do some research!
PEER INFLUENCE ’ Red Wine Braised Beef Short Ribs '!!
Inspired by a fellow foodie member’s recent posting of his gorgeous looking ’ Red wine braised beef short ribs ’ on another food-blog. I stumbled on an ’ Angus beef short ribs SPECIAL ( $6.99 per lb ) ’ whilst grocery shopping at Markham’s Freshway Foodmart. As such, I bought some and decided to make my OWN version. ( addition of a star anise and a touch of premium soy-sauce to enhance the umami flavour! )
Also, instead of my previous usual approaches to braising red meat
by adding reduced ’ Port Wine ’ to provide additional complexity and ’ sweetness '. This time, I took a shorter and cheaper approach by adding Pomegranate Syrup instead.
End result was equally gratifying and enjoyable…off-the-bone tender, intensely complex and loaded with layered flavour and umami goodness. Only disappointment was a slight lack of sauce.
…Served with Mashed Potato and Lardon sauteed Cremini Mushrooms…not bad!..not bad at all!!
