call me a groupie if you will, i do not mind. i love pierre gagnaire's food and there is no denying i am start-struck each time i meet him.

and so, last night was his last evening in hong kong (for this time around that is) and i decided to surprise maria to a date and book a table at "pierre" for a break to my october diet (yes mom, a diet...).

not surprisingly, i was completely transported by the food... and the wines selected by pierre legrandois, the excellent sommelier at the mandarin oriental hotel in hong kong.

firstly, i must confess that i was totally enchanted by the table they reserved for us. a fantastic view over the harbour and a intimacy of the surroundings that i could only hope for in my best of dreams. what a way to impress maria on the first "date" we have had in a long long time!

then, the extremley attentive and super kind care from everyone in the restaurant. many people claim that french restaurant's service is cool, distant, and intimidating. not here at pierre. they were respectful, mindful, caring, and only enhanced the experience we had the whole evening.

and then, the food...

many people asked me today how i compared the experience with the one i had at the french laundry last month. how can i compare, i asked, it is like asking me to compare picasso with rembrandt...

the food was certainly exotic, using asian ingredients that are not so uncommon in hong kong's fresh food markets. the combination of those ingredients was definitely surprising and unusual. combinations of ingredients that you would absolutely not believe they can pair together.

and that is, i am starting to believe (or, dare i say, to understand, as i am still new to this wonderful world of fine dining), the genius of pierre gagnaire. he mixes and matches ingredients that defy conventional wisdom and food logic. he creates a "third way" with food that is almost, i dare venture, "child-like", in the sense that his combinations can only come from the creativity of young, fresh, and widely imaginative minds that us, "grown-ups" would only frown upon.

and yet...

yet, a mouthful of his creations carries us to another world altogether. an intellectual challenge and a pleasure of the senses that i have only imagined in my most torrid dreams. a gastronomic "orgasm" in all sense of the word.

all of this stimulation paired with the other pierre's wine selections. a challenge that only a very sensitive palates must be able to accomplish. legrandois' choices of wine have always opened new and wonderful vinous horizons for me. each time i taste wines selected by pierre legrandois, i have learned something new and wonderful and i have discovered a higher plane of pleasure that wine could bring to my epicurist adventures.

one in particular last night give me a new sensorial sensation that i only knew existed from the books that i had read previously. the sensation of the "peacock tail" so described about a wine that has a very long lasting after-taste that it so good in quality that it actually opens up like a peacock's tail long after you have swallowed the divine nectar.

the saint-joseph cuilleron st-pierre 2005. to me an absolutely new and wonderful experience. the body, the intensity, the length, the peacock tail... what else can i say??? for me a new standard has been established in my short wine tasting career. an experience not unlike "my very first time"....

what a night...