Variations on a theme

E is perfectly dressed in his casual linen Zegna shirt.

I am ridiculously inappropriate in my $35 party dress from Forever 21.

Eighteen months in a town that reveres luxury and I'm still doing stupid things like dressing up for a 6-course wine lunch at Amber in the Landmark Oriental Hotel.

I should be wearing a polo shirt like the girls at the next table who are ignoring each other over their bubbly rose, tapping away on smart phones waiting for their food to arrive.

THEY probably arrived in one of the Lambos or Maseratis parked ostentatiously in front of the hotel. Meanwhile I am sporting seatbelt marks across my decollatage from the taxi. (Not to mention that I'm the only one in the restaurant sporting decolletage at all!)



Eh, whatever.

I am drunk as a skunk. We woke up this morning going "Oh man, is that thing today?" "That thing" being the wine lunch at Amber. We're leaving in less than two weeks and E has declared all-out eating for the rest of our trip. Let's get the most out of Hong Kong. So I say, Well, we haven't been to Amber yet -- #37 on San Pellegrino's Top 50 Best Restaurants list (top HK resto on the list) -- and a 2* Michelin joint.



So we woke up this morning groaning at the thought of five glasses of wine at lunch. And we were going to ditch the wine pairing entirely, but...

We showed up five minutes early for our 12-noon reservation (everyone else eats at 1). This is not cool with the hostess. Three or four other officious individuals gather around the podium and collectively determine that we *must* wait in the bar. When we ask about food *without* wine they push a fruit juice pairing instead. When we ask for a table by the window (we are the first in the dining room), someone has to check (i.e. "NO").



A tip I can't seem to remember: Don't try to improvise when eating in HK. Plan, plan, plan. People hate diverging from established processes. Mostly we get with the program these days, but some days we're rebellious.

After the hostess resists all of our requests, we decide we might actually *need* the wine (thereby causing confusion among the army of waiters carrying champagne flutes).

Whatever. I'm done empathizing today.

"Where IS the Barossa Valley?" I ask the wine-handler who's just poured a tasty Barossa Valley Syrah that smells like butterscotch. (He looks to be about 19.) Glancing at me in terror, he cautiously ventures "Where in the Barossa Valley is it from...or where in Australia...?" Not bad.

E gives me a dirty look. I whisper back "Who's the Prime Minister of Russia?"

I think sommeliers should be prepared for a few geography questions.

Turns out that the mostly-rigid service is a perfect accompaniment to the totally unimaginative but beautifully prepared meal that follows:

Bread shmorgasbord nearly identical to those at Pierre, Petrus, Agnes b. le pain grill...



Fois gras lollypops... kind of reminds me of that video we saw with Thomas Keller's tuna tartare ice cream cones.



A tomato-feta-aspic number that tastes very similar to the tomato-mozzarella-aspic starter at Robuchon.



E out-orders me today with a beautifully assembled veggie dish (but now I'm remembering something similar at Whisk) and a nice wild-mushroom-Parmesan number.





I meanwhile have unintentionally ordered two courses of green foam. "Foam is not a food!" I protest. But actually the second green foam is pretty good, although clearly accomplished with butter, which is kind of cheating in my book.





Our mains are, as is often the case in tasting menus, the weakest dishes. E's chicken looks like a braised pomelo peel ;-) My Tasmanian salmon is about what you'd expect in Cathay Pacific business class (wah, poor me!). We're ridiculous.





And then three desserts. Forget about the pineapple-y thing. Don't know what that was supposed to be. The Malaga strawberry thing is actually delicious. The strawberries look like the wilted produce in the bottom of my crisper-bin but they have an amazing perfumey-strawberry flavor. I dig that.



And then, this shows up, and I think to myself, For Christ's sake, get an imagination! The presentation is like a caricature of haute cuisine: a square, a disk, a line, three dots. All chocolate.



Ok-la, but it's friggin delicious! Amazing chocolate-y caramel-y flavor, delightful crispness at the bottom. Yum, yum, yum.

Finally, the petit four box (wait a minute...this looks just like the one at Bo Innovation). Again, imagination points=0, execution points= 8 or 9. Very nice lemony marzipan thing. Lovely passionfruit caramel. Mmm.



Our main server has nerves of steel. She manages to be gracious and charming while blithely ignoring our crabbiness. Impressive!

Finally having eaten at Amber, a benchmark Hong Kong luxury dining experience, I feel like I get it. I know what's on offer on the high-end here. It's all very similar. Small variations on a familiar theme. And some part of me feels like, Well duh! It's not unlike the vast number of furniture shops selling the same couches with slightly different upholstery or the vast selection of clothing brands offering similar styles with the same quality fabrics.

Lots of variation, but one theme, one form, one structure.

But yeah, at Amber, the execution is pretty darn good...