Hong Kong Diner – Number One Restaurant

I’ve had more dinners at Edinburgh’s Yum Yum HK Diner than any other restaurant anywhere. It’s a charming little slightly hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop operation, dominated by a huge screen showing undubbed Chinese TV which distracts the staff and leads the eye away from the view into the kitchen below. Otherwise the room is pretty simple, and the most significant Chinese decorations are the tables and stools themselves. It’s tight for space and not the kind of place one would tend to linger in, even if they didn’t close at 8pm to go get their own dinner and family time. What really lifts it well above the run-of-the-mill cheap and cheerful Chinese is the laudable Chinese delicatessen section of the menu. The delicacies are apparently intended more for the palate of the Chinese diners, but the owner has given up asking if we are sure we want to order duck tongue or ox tendon or whatever else she considers an unlikely order for squeamish Western tastes; yes, we are sure, we want to boldly go where probably quite a lot of gastronomic tourists have gone before us.

On our visit to HK Diner last Friday, we tried Steamed Rice with Beef and Bitter Melon. The main attraction was the bitter melon, which the proprietress grows in her own garden. The beef was very soft, though, and we couldn’t help reflecting that not only was it better than the beef curry we had recently at Dusit, it was also little more than a third of the price. As for the bitter melon, it lived up to its name; the texture was what you’d expect from cooked melon, and the bitterness lurks in wait for the back of your palate, allowing you to think, “that wasn’t bitter – oh – hang on - ”.

My favourite dish at the Diner, which has become a sort of comfort food, is the lamb belly hot pot. This is an exercise in textures. The melting chunks of lamb, the bits of ginger masquerading as lumps of meat but instead offering crunch, and the smooth bits of Chinese cabbage are but foils to the real attraction, the ribbed strips of belly lining that look like sauce-soiled parchment; what you’d expect a Shakespeare first folio to look like if you cooked it. I recommended this to my Korean student Sung Hee, whose apparently approving verdict was that it reminded him of eating dog. I also told Sung Hee that we had a puppy at home, and he asked how old it was. Nine weeks, I told him. “Ah, nine weeks, most adorable age. After that, not so adorable. But no problem. Still tasty.”

The view from the far side of the hill

Not so long ago I was at a dinner to celebrate an engagement, and a bottle of wine from the northern Rhône valley was brought out with the air of something intended to be special. It was indeed a grand bottle, but it was the newest available vintage fresh from the wine merchant’s, and there wasn’t even a decanter in the house to help it breathe for a while. (I had been recently been witness to my host’s decanter shattering spectacularly on the tiled porch floor.) What we drank was a wine that, while evidently beautifully poised to age into something special, was still a fairly impenetrable mesh of tight black fruit and pepper.

By and large, the better the wine, the longer it should be kept after bottling before it reaches its drinking peak. While low end wines should be ready to drink immediately, and will only decline if kept, in the best wines, the youthful state is only a hint of the joy that can unfold in manifold flavour layers when the wine is properly aged. Even moving down from the elevated category of very grand wines, I think that most wines retailing from £15-£20 are drunk quickly, without the couple of the years lying on their side in a cool, dark place that so many of them would benefit from. What is devilishly difficult, of course, and is often only achieved in retrospect, is determining when the wine has reached that properly aged state, beyond which, while it continues to develop, the overall trend will be downwards.

I myself rather enjoy wines that have gone a little beyond what most people might consider their optimum drinking window, since that stage of wine development, as well as a smooth, low tannin texture in the reds, can sometimes throw up odd, gamey flavours that are rather different – things like that may sound unpleasant, like rotting mandarins and Worcester Sauce, but that are actually – at least as far as I’m concerned – intriguing.

It was in this spirit that I asked my favourite wine merchant if he had anything in the back shop or the vaulted cellar that, while doing me for everyday drinking, would also give me a well-aged wine hit, and this Portuguese wine is what he came up with.

Quinta de la Rosa ’91

Quinta means farm in Portuguese, and can also refer to a wine-producing estate or vineyard. Quinta de la Rosa is a large, well-regarded producer of both ports and unfortified wines from the classic port grapes.

This red wine is faded at the rim, but there’s no hint of the rust or brown colour that can appear in very aged wine. The first sniff does say the Douro (in Portugal) / Duero (in Spain) river valley, with the hot black fruit of port and Ribera del Duero. It has that characteristically aged smell of fading, muted fruit mixed with smooth oak. On the palate, it is sharp, the tannin mostly having worn out and the acids mostly remaining; so the feel, an acid, alcoholic tang, reminds me of mouthwash – but not, as an Australian friend would say after she insulted you, in a bad way. It isn’t a great wine; it has not developed any fascinating secondary or tertiary flavours, and while there is some fruit left, it’s a dull, faded core. But it does have that soft, aged feel, a bit of wood; a pleasant mix of oaky vanillins, the remains of plummy fruit and enough acid. In a better wine that mix of acid and well-aged fruit would be doing fascinating things like chutney and damp earth. This is by no means a grand wine, but considering the nineteen years of age, has survived well enough to remain a pleasant, if unreflective, evening’s tipple.

Dusit, Edinburgh

Dusit has a reputation as Edinburgh’s finest Thai restaurant – in fact, according to the List Eating & Drinking Guide for Glasgow and Edinburgh, it’s one of the finest restaurants around, period. Quite a billing – can it live up to it?

We started with Too Mun Pla, (“Run Away Fish”), shallow fried fish cakes made from haddock. This being a Thai restaurant, the lack of much chilli burn left my palate feeling a bit hard done by. Then we had Song Gleur Jeur (“Two Friends Meeting”), sweet potato and taro 'cakes'. What were billed as 'cakes' turned out to be deep-fried pieces of taro and sweet potato. Now, I've nothing at all against deep frying, but cakes are probably - ought to be - more interesting, and this seemed like a case of not what we were promised. Not that they were bad per se, they were at least acceptable pieces of Thai tempura. Taro, being quite bland, takes on the flavours of sauces well; here, it went well with the chilli dip.

Curry next – the big test. One green, one red. Gaeng Phet was the red curry, which we had with beef, and Gaeng Keow Wan was the green, with chicken. The Gaeng Phet was frankly disappointing – the beef was tough, and the vegetables were still a bit crunchy. Crunchy vegetables are lovely in the right context, but not in a supposedly slow-cooked curry. The aubergine in particular still tasted of the oil it had been (quickly) cooked in, and hadn’t yet taken on any of the curry flavour. The Gaeng Keow Wan was a little better, in that chicken can take on flavours more quickly, but it still hadn’t been in the curry for a long time. While the green was a little hotter, neither really had very much heat – they both felt like very Westernised curries. Neither were particularly good, and as Thai restaurants go, Dusit is expensive. We didn’t feel like desserts; they seem to be of the bought-in variety.

The food at Dusit disappointed us, especially considering the price. Everything else was fine; the staff were charming, and the dining room is a beautiful place to sit. It’s a surprisingly dressy restaurant. But we’ve had better Thai curry for less money a few blocks away at Ruan Siam.

Meursault v. Puligny-Montrachet

The adjacent villages of Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet, in the Côte de Beaune, produce some of Burgundy’s best whites. These are classic expressions of Chardonnay, usually showing typical varietal character in straw yellow, oaked wines. As well as the differences imparted by vintage and the individual winemaker, the impact of terroir is clear: while Meursault tends to make wines with a certain savoury character, Puligny-Montrachet will tend to make sleeker, more elegant wines with more of a fruit or floral character. This is in part down to the different soils in the two villages, Comblachien limestone in Meursault and Pierre de Chassagne limestone in Puligny-Montrachet, and partly down to the fact that the vineyards of Puligny-Montrachet are on higher, more exposed ground than in lusher, more sheltered Meursault. In some cases wines from the vineyards where the two areas meet are harder to tell apart, although in this tasting even the wines from these areas – such as the shared Les Perrieres and Les Charmes in Meursault – mostly retained their appellation character.

This comparative tasting was one of the excellent Rose Murray Brown Masterclass series, hosted in Edinburgh on 6/9/10. The most attractive wines of the evening for me were the Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Clavoillon 2007 Domaine Leflaive, and the Meursault Premier Cru ‘Genevrieres’ 2005 Moret-Nominee. A score draw for Puligny-Montrachet versus Meursault. These being white wines, they are not suffering as much as reds of similar quality and vintage might from being unready and needing more time in bottle. The 2005s are definitely showing well.

AC Bourgogne Blanc (declassified blend of Meursault and Puligny-Montrachet)
Bourgogne Les Setilles 2008 Oliver Leflaive
The rather steely, limey aroma on the nose here made me think of Riesling; there is some oak, but it’s not obvious. Maybe it was because it was getting served cold; as it warms, the palate opens up with heavier flavours of banana chips in the lime, a sub-tropical cocktail; not quite the body of a New World wine, but throwing hints in that direction. Quite a creamy texture. I suspect this is relatively good value (retailing at around £14) for the area as it lacks the cachet of being either AC Meursault or AC Puligny-Montrachet. Accessible as an introductory wine.

AC Meursault
Meursault Clos du Cromin 2007 Olivier Leflaive
Initially, I found this rather closed on the nose. The palate seemed watery, with the oak character dominant not because it was heavily oaked, in the way of old-school white Rioja, but because there was relatively little fruit character. However, the mouthful improves a lot as it warms up a little with the emergence of a counterbalancing creaminess. This is a fairly typical Meursault profile.

AC Puligny-Montrachet
Puligny-Montrachet 2006 Domaine Marc & Alexandre Bachelet-Monnot
The first impression on the bouquet is the oak character, a mixture of dust and talcum powder. On the palate, it is a firmer, flintier wine than the preceding Meursault, with flavours of peach and lime. Not an epic or great wine, but a typical Puligny profile.

AC Puligny-Montrachet
Puligny-Montrachet ‘Tête de Cuvée’ 2006 Francois d’Allaines
Once again, dusty oak shows up first, but this time with a powerful melon and passion fruit bouquet. This is fairly classic Chardonnay character, in a style veering slightly towards the new world. On the palate, it’s a mixture of honey, melon, oak and banana. This is clearly a wine that’s at its best now, not for cellaring. It’s no more expensive than the preceding two (all retailing at around £25) but is clearly better than them at the moment; I suspect the preceding two might benefit from a year or two of extra aging.

AC Puligny-Montrachet
Puligny-Montrachet 2007 Domaine Jean Claude Bachelet
This is a much harder wine to get hold of at the moment, still tight, not yet very giving on the nose. Quite fine, thin, but very balanced, it feels like something that may give a lot more in a few years time. At the moment, there is light oak among notes of lemon and acacia. At £40 a pop, this is one for the cellar.

AC Meursault
Meursault ‘Vireuils’ 2007 Jean-Yves Deveney
The bouquet offers a notable switch back to the more savoury style of Meursault, with the creamier notes in the wine reminiscent of Brie, along with a hint of lime. This lime quality initially dominates the palate as it isn’t very oaky. However, some oakier notes do emerge as the wine has more time to breathe, again suggesting the wine has development to do and could profitably lie in a cellar.

AC Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru
Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Clavoillon 2007 Domaine Leflaive
Definitely in the Puligny style, this luscious, floral wine has nothing of the Meursault about it. The oak expresses itself as a creamy vanilla, among intense fruit and complex minerality, all beautifully integrated. Obviously very high quality, even as it is also a bit young. Also expensive, retailing at £50; but rather spend that on this than £40 on the AC Puligny Montrachet Domaine Jean Claude Bachelet.

AC Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru
Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru La Garenne 2006 Château de Puligny Montrachet
Limeblossom and citrus on the nose, with a suggestion of gunflint. The oaking is very discreet and the wine is very well integrated, rather reminiscent of good Chablis. Beautifully integrated, quite restrained, high quality and once more in need of a few cellar years, methinks.

AC Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru
Puligny-Montrachet Premier Cru Perrieres 2005 Etienne Sauzet
A fuller bouquet than on the previous wine, this has the usual Puligny mix of flowers and citrus, slightly heavier oak than the last, and a little more acid. Quite an intense mix.

AC Meursault Premier Cru
Meursault Premier Cru Charmes 2007 Domaine Michel Bouzereau
While Les Charmes does border Puligny-Montrachet, in the case of this wine at least the Meursault character remains quite clear, as among the cream, passion fruit on the bouquet were the very savoury notes of mushrooms and, classic in Meursault, toasted oatmeal. Quite multi-dimensional.

AC Meursault Premier Cru
Meursault Premier Cru Perrieres 2007 Joseph Drouhin
Les Perrieres, bordering with Puligny-Montrachet, is one of the finest premier crus in Meursault. This wine is flintier, with less obvious oak than the last, citric, acidic, and youthful. Tighter just now, it feels like it needs more time.

AC Meursault Premier Cru
Meursault Premier Cru ‘Poruzots’ 2005 Château de Puligny-Montrachet
With a little more age on it, this wine is starting to show very well, offering tropical fruit on the nose together with honey, butter and nuts – a fairly classic Meursault style.

AC Meursault Premier Cru
Meursault Premier Cru ‘Genevrieres’ 2005 Moret-Nominee
Quite an incredible bouquet on this wine, throwing up orange blossom and pastry. The palate is a similarly exciting mixture of fairly classic Meursault, honey and very floral notes among the nutty, oatmeal oak character. Very well structured

At the Wolf's Mouth in Soho

We rushed into Bocca di Lupo on Archer St in Soho for a quick pre-theatre; it turned out to be the best Italian meal I've had since Babbo in New York and La Corte Sconta in Venice. (I had probably better add at this point that I haven't travelled extensively in Italy. But still.)

The menu at Bocca isn't conventional; every dish comes in either small or large portions, so there is no clear distinction between starters and mains. There are also little Fritti, which joyously fulfil the role of antipasti. A battered courgette flower was filled with mozzarella; it's just as well we cut it longitudinally, or one of us would have missed the anchovy rolled up in the base. N1 said there was too much batter. I didn't mind. Next came an artichoke a la giudia, a dish apparently originating in the Roman ghetto; with the outer leaves peeled off, it had then been deep fried. The leaves around the heart had opened out as they crisped up, and it looked like a miniature pineapple head. No peeling required. Then we had a (huge) deep-fried olive filled with pork and veal; more meaty than olive.

Pansotti - I learned - is triangular filled pasta from Liguria. Bocca's pansotti is filled with nettle and chard, but N1 complained that there wasn't enough filling for the taste to show. I was too busy enjoying the taste of the walnut sauce against the pasta to care. It turns out that pansotti is in any case supposed to be lightly filled, not heaving. Then came a pork and foie gras sausage served on a bed of farro, which seemed to be pearl barley. Despite being called “rustic”, which evokes images of paté with chunks of varied meat and an uneven texture, it was strangely smooth for something tasting of sausages, even smart ones with herbs and foie gras. But this rich, unusual combination made me wonder why restaurants don’t mix foie gras and pork more often. (If, of course, we should be eating foie gras at all: roll on ethical foie gras.)

Ossobuco - stolen from the pre-theatre menu which we weren't otherwise following - does deserve the label rustic, in the best possible way; simple, strong flavours that combine beautifully - and in the case of the lemon zest in the gremolata, unexpectedly. I didn't notice the garlic in the gremolata at the time, probably because I was enjoying the other flavours so much, but it came back to haunt my palate later. The saffron risotto the meat was served on was just right, and the marrow in the bone felt like a glutinous freebie.

For dessert, there was no question what we were going to order: Sanguinaccio, a sweet paté of pig's blood and chocolate from Abruzzo. In fact, it turned out to be chocolately and not at all bloody, simply a superior Nutella. It didn't seem to want the bread it was served with. Not yet sated, and still with a bit of time, we then ordered a Sicilian chocolate and marzipan ball. It's a pleasure to have proper, almondy marzipan, not the commercial, Christmas-stocking stuff.

Service was crisp and pleasant. Since we didn't have a lot of time for dinner, we made sure to arrive early and get our order in quickly. Bocca reciprocated, so we were able to give the meal all the slow attention it deserved (nul points there for the Anchor & Hope down in The Cut). Bocca gave us one of those rare meals where I wouldn’t have done without a single dish.