Goodbye dins at The Brasserie

A few months ago, Mischka and I attended a dinner at Lord Gordon's place which was cooked by his then-housemate and housemate's partner. They are both chefs at The Brasserie by Philippe Mouchel. Dinner was awesome and I spent a bit of time waxing lyrical about how awesome it was to Ruilin and we both agreed that we should go to the actual restaurant to eat the French-style wares. Well that dinner finally occurred last night to celebrate Ruilin going to work at Shanghai Expo for 9 months. Booo :( but also Yay! :D for dinner!

Because I was half an hour early (kinda over-estimated how much traffic resistance I was going to meet), I decided to kick off the night with my usual fruity cocktail...

...a Bellini. But it was no ordinary peach and prosecco mix - it had strawberries and vanilla (that black stuff floating at the top).

Because our eyes are larger than our stomachs, we shared out entrees to maximise flavour potential. Both were amazing!

We are both lovers of fois gras so we had to have the chicken liver & foie gras terrine! Mmmmm...it was deliciously liverish and foie-gras-y.

We also had to have the escargots with garlic and tomato sauce. I know a lot of people have the *euw* thing about eating snails so I'd like to clear up some things. Firstly, theyre not the same snails as the garden variety - they're specially bred for our eating purposes. Secondly, they taste like garlic, not slime. And last of all, the texture is a bit like abalone. One billion asian wedding-goers can't be wrong!

I had a dilemma about what to order for dinner. I had a hankering for the milk-fed veal tenderloin (mmmm, baby cows), but also wanted some crispy fish with lentils. In the end,

the pan-seared king salmon with lentils and leek won out. And they were delicious!

All of the ordered sides were great but unfortunately not photographed. We ordered the french belgian fries (crispy on the outside, soft on the inside), the sauteed green beans (much better than those we got at Rockpool!), the provencale vegetables gratin (crispy on the cheese side, deliciously moist and thick cut otherwise), and the baby green peas a la Francaise. Now, at this point, I need to make a comment about the peas. Maybe I've just always ordered beans before but the peas rocked my socks off! Now, I'm aware that French-style peas involves putting the peas in a buttery, oniony-sauce...but who was the genius who decided to put pieces of bacon/panchetta into the mix?! It was awesome! I think I had as many peas as I did lentils!

Even though I was pretty damn full at this point, I couldn't go past the crepe with lemon and raspberry curd with lemon sorbet for dessert. Miam miam - the right combination of sweet and palate cleansing sour!

George had some strawberries macerated, beautifully presented in this glass bowl.

while Ruilin had the chocolate and caramel tart with passionfruit espouma.

And so with our bellies fit to bursting, all was excellent as we wished her good luck and good times over in the Shanghai for the next nine months! Don't forget to eat at all the restaurants so we know where to go when we visit!

Cheeeese! One course we didn't eat :(