Oh, this was a fun experience! I was the one of the only two customers that evening; the other one was also a “crazy” man like me, who will go to a restaurant himself. He is a musician, by the way, from Australia but was teaching some courses in universities in German and Italy. We both get a lot of food and they are all very nice.
Let’s go back to the beginning.
I was fashionably rushing from the airport to the hotel, changing to a proper dress, and then walking very fast to the restaurant.
Luckily I was not late.
The restaurant occupies a rather nice house.
A lady shown me in and took my jacket and bags.
Then I realised it is awfully quiet and I was the first customer in a very long table facing an open and extremely clean kitchen,
though they do have a separate back kitchen.
The dining area is also very light, compared to many fine-dining restaurants often using minimum light to emphasise the dishes.
Their menu contains a starter group and three large main groups plus a final sweat group, which is a very fun way to organise dishes.
To be more entertaining, the restaurant presented all or half the dishes in the group before giving us the menu for the group.
Also most dishes are organised in a mini-set way: sometime I got several dishes together.
The welcome bites, a gorilla shape biscuit, already set a high expectation and standard.
In fact, they use a lot of gorilla decoration in the restaurant.
Despite the first set, named Sea, is also interesting, but in an expected way since seafood are much more flexible to make “posh” dishes.
I found the second set more appealing.
Given the name, Countryside, it focused on vegetable, specifically, zucchini (or courgette) and asparagus.
The first round of presentation was very cute, comprising all dishes apart from the last “Risotto”.
All the seasoning was very light.
I did not taste too strong flavours but only the vegetable themselves.
Those dishes, I believe, were good pause between the previous fish dishes and the tomato risotto after.
The next dish, “My Mom’s Parmisan in a Risotto”, was a highlight of the night.
It had very rich flavours, Parmisan and tomato.
The tomato powder was made by themselves, by concentrating large volume of tomatoes.
I could feel a blow of tomato, sour and even bitter, on my tongue, then following the richness the Parmisan.
Although I felt a bit too much because it was not a small dish, I really enjoyed it.
Another main dish of the night was Wagyu beef (no picture is provided in the post), which I think a bit boring.
Also the beef is a bit too pink to me.
Last, I really liked the final dessert.
Instead of ending with overly sweat bite with coffee, they served a fresh dessert, ice cream and raspberry.
The presentation is also very attractive.
Oh dear, this was a very fun night, and I was completely full. Since there were only two customers, the chef entertained us very well. I really appreciated all the young cooks who probably felt a bit nervous and tried their best to explain in English. Also, I enjoyed the company of the another customer, which I cannot remember his name; he was much talkative than me so I can just be the quiet myself.
