In a pathetic effort to revive this blog, I thought I'd include more about what we'd been doing. We aren't big New Year's Eve people, and almost always end up at home when the clock strikes. This year, we thought we'd give our helper the evening off and spend the night with RJ, so we celebrated at lunchtime. I'd been meaning to try the wine lunch at Amber for some time, and we took this opportunity to do that.

In Hong Kong, restaurants tend to be judged by their bread baskets. I still maintain that Cepage and Otto e Mezzo do it best.

Olive oil... yum

Parmasan foam, some kind of citrus jelly, rocket puree, tapioca pearls in truffle

Iberico croquette with curried juices. This is a fixture at Amber.

Beetroot and foie gras "chupa chup". Another fixture, though the first time I've heard it referred to as a Chupa Chup.

... all served with Veuve, which was very disappointing. Apart from my general lack of interest in Veuve, it didn't stand up to the spices of the croquette, or the depth of the foie gras.

There was a choice of three starters - Dungeness crab salad with creme fraiche, avocado, granny smith and cucumber; Royal Cabanon oyster #1 served over a oyster panna cotta, beetroot, shaved cauliflower, with a hazelnut and malt vinegar; or this...

The duck foie gras marinated in red wine (which we couldn't taste) prepared as a terrine with quince and toasted pistachio. There was also a pistachio shortbread, which was delicious. This was served with brioche. In the grand scheme of foie gras terrines, I think that this was fairly standard. Personally, I have a preference for pan-fried or a more robust pate (speaking of which, I would recommend the foie gras and girolles pate at Monsieur Chatte in Hong Kong).

This was the only course where we offered a choice of wine. It was between a pinot gris and a soave. We opted for the Mount Difficulty.

There was also a choice of middle course. The choices this time around were a kaboche squash volute with autumn truffle and white onion bread roll (my choice); Petuna ocean trout dorsal fin confit, belly seared with grennobolse (I can't read the menu here so may have made that up) and yarra valley caviar, leek in vinigarette (Hub's choice); Wild mushrooms over parmasan reggiano, with something and chicken juice.

Wine was a Dolcetto d'Alba. I can't remember if I did this for the Century wine challange, damnit. About midway through the course, they brought out the next wine, a chianti. I was confused by the random inflow of wine, but what Bacchus gives, I cannot deny. Even if it was fairly uninteresting, and ill suited to the food we had at that point in time.

The choice of mains were Atlantic cod roasted with thyme , salt roasted celeriac and Iberian pork neck in a cab sav (my term) reduction; Grefeuille lamb neck braised with spices, heirloom carrots, and dried apricots, hung yoghurt with lemon and sesame crisp; and the Pheasant pie that both the Hubs and I opted for. This was almost like a wellington, lined with foie gras and bacon, with a side of autumn salad with chesnuts and cranberries. I fully intend to rip this off sometime in the near future.

Perturbingly, the pie made me think of the Tefal Pie & Co gadget that my mother was given for Christmas. Could it be?

The wines stopped here, just as the we managed to convince the staff that we wanted to pick our cheeses rather than opt for a standard plate, which resulted in the frantic pulling together of a cheese trolley.

The cheeses were fairly good, though we lacked anything to eat with them for a few moments before fig and apricot bread was offered. After all the bread earlier, this felt like crossing some sort of line, and I had a huge hankering for poire william, but managed to resist. This is meant to be our austerity year, and indulging like that doesn't fit in.

Then came the desserts, plural.

A lemon and basil jelly with granny smith sorbet and a solo wild strawberry

Tiramisu inspired and delicious

Guanaja over speculoos & coffee ice cream

All in, I think that the meal was consistent, but the wine was a let down. I suspect that the objective was to offer good value, which it certainly does, at HK$798 (cheese an additional $179 or something) but I would have preferred more interesting choices given that I have had most of those options in bars. Amber is two Michelin, I think (though obviously that means I don't think much of it's potential), and so I would have expected better wines, or at least the ability to have chosen better wines. Something like this Luca Abrate event was more like what I had in mind, and could have been achieved, in effect, with wines from one house and explanatory notes (I like these pretentious events to be educational, particularly if mingling is required). The food was fairly noteworthy but the best thing about it was probably the Christofle everything. The cutlery, the tiffin box like thing the petit fours were served in... . Apparently, the subliminal messages worked because the Hubs and I went straight out and bought the champagne bucket we'd been lusting after since 2006. At least we know we'll like it!

I am planning a proper blog post about how I think RJ was an officer or strategist at Guantanamo Bay in his last life. Fingers crossed I manage to get there before the next cop-out opportunity.