Di Vino – wine bar in Thonglor, Bangkok

February 7, 2011

The entry of di Vino wine bar in Thonglor

If you walk through the Thonglor-Ekkamai neighbourhood in Bangkok you might come to the conclusions that wine bars are like mushrooms, sprouting everywhere.

A good place to hang out, enjoy a glass of wine and have some Italian cuisine, is di Vino, a small and cosy wine bar in Thonglor, Bangkok. The play on words is funny too, is it “divine” or “of wine”? Both I suggest.

Roberto, the manager-owner, is a very sociable guy and a pleasure to talk to. He loves quality in wine and food and he is also a good cook. For my wife he made a fegato dish (liver), very difficult to make indeed, which was just superb. And he offers some great wine choices.

For instance the ‘2003 Il Lemos Negroamaro’ by Leone di Castris. The wine is not displayed on the website of Leone de Castris any more. You will fnid there only younger vintages. But the company has a wide selection of different wines on offer.

Leone de Castris was established in 1925 and the winery was the first in Italy which bottled rose wines. Many of its products are made from indigeneous grape varieties such as Negroamara, Primitivo and Aleatico.

2003 Il Lemos by Leone de Castris

This Negroamaro from Puglia produced in the Salento region, the heel of Italy, is just wonderful. It is a very earthy wine, rustic in character. Often it is blended with the highly scented Malvasia Negra as in the case of Salice Salentino. The grape produces some of the best wines of southern Italy.

Roberto has still some bottles left of the 2003 vintage, but you have to hurry to taste it before it is gone.

Address:
Di Vino
Penny’s Balcony, Thong Lo Soi 55,
Sukhumvit Road, Watthana, Bangkok, 10110

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Chinese New Year – Bring the rabbit on

February 6, 2011

I took a time out from blogging. While just watching from the sidelines I had a record number of visitors to my entry on the Johanna Budwig diet which I wrote as tribute to my friend, the late Peter Ryan. But since then, I had declining numbers of visitors to my blog. Well, let’s resume.

Every Chinese New Year we have a family at a Chinese restaurant in our neighbourhood Thonglor called Royal Kitchen.

The restaurant is just a side street away from where we live.

Happy New Year and good wishes from the Adam family

So what did we eat? Well, it was bit of a mix. We started with some dumplings, had lots of prawns, some tofu, a steamed fish and some sweet and sour soup.

Fried dumplings

Prawns in orange

Prawns Shanghai style

Sichuan style tofu

Hmm, was delicious on rice

Sea bass steamed sorry, I came to late for the photo

Sweet and sour soup

Needless to say that the meal was delicious and we had a great time on the first day of the year of the rabbit.

PS: We drank beer and we did not eat rabbit, honestly.

Address:
Royal Kitchen Restaurant
912/6 Sukhumvit 55, Bangkok, Thailand 10110
Tel.: +66-2391 9634, and 2714 8548
e-mail: info@royalkitchengroup.com
www.Royalkitchengroup.com

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Grand Cru from the Mosel: 2009 Dhron Hofberg Riesling GG by Grans-Fassian

January 30, 2011

Beautiful fish

Pomfret, or Bawal Putih, as we call it in Indonesia, is a wonderful fish; in fact it is one of my favourites. I also love “fish-Sundays” which always lends itself to a beautiful white wine. Mind you, I also drink red wine with fish, but if I have some Riesling in my fridge….

Pomfret

With the chilli-garlic-ginger sauce, the pomfret was just wonderful.

From the outset, I was clear about the wine. Well, actually our wine fridge is quite empty. But from my last trip to Germany in November last year, I brought with me two bottles of precious liquid: Riesling wines from my beloved Mosel river.

You might guess it, yes. I opened a bottle of ‘2009 Dhron Hofberg GG Riesling’ by Grans-Fassian Estate in Leiwen, Mosel. This grand cru (or Grosses Gewaechs as the German call it) is just wonderful.

2009 Dhroner Hofberg Riesling GG by Grans-Fassian Estate

Wine tastings last year by Weinwelt, a German wine magazine, awarded it with 95 Parker points. The wine is luscious and complex, with beautiful peach and citrus aromas. It has the minerality of the Mosel Riesling. The fine acids and the balance of the wine are just mind blowing.

Wine prices in Bangkok are astronomical. For a 5 EURO wine in Germany one has to fork out about 20-30 EURO here. You can have the Dhron Hofberg Riesling for a price below 20 EURO from the cellar door. The trip is worth it. Leiwen is a treasure trove for wine lovers and Riesling geeks.

I wrote about the Grans-Fassian Estate in an earlier blog entry. The winery is also member in the prestigious VDP (the Association of German Quality Wine Estates).

Cheers and “zum Wohl”

Address:
Weingut Grans-Fassian
Römerstraße 28
54340 Leiwen, Mosel
Tel.: +49-6507-3170
Fax: +49-6507-8167
E-Mail: weingut@grans-fassian.de
Openng hours: Mon. to Fri.
8.00-12.00 und 13.30-16.30 h
www.grans-fassian.de

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Red snapper with Sevenhill Inigo Riesling

January 5, 2011

What a beautiful red snapper

My friend Brett Travis had given us the above red snapper before leaving on a fishing trip to Samoa. This was a wonderful opportunity for another wonderful lunch at our vineyard. We prepared the fish for a six persons meal.

Yummy veggies

It was a beautiful summers day. The fish was “crying” for a white wine too. We took the opportunity to open one of the recently acquired bottles from Sevenhill Cellars in the Clare Valley in South Australia where our mate Neville Rowe is the general manager.

The ‘2009 Inigo Riesling’ is a typical Clare Valley wine. It is young and fresh and lively. Of course I prefer German Riesling wines, and it is my view that Australian Riesling cannot reach that ultimate Riesling level which I love so much.

Sevenhill Cellars is the oldest wineries in the Clare Valley. It was founded by Jesuits in 1851 to produce sacramental wines. We enjoyed the “sacrament” with the delicious fish, and thank all our benefactors. Cheers mate.

2009 Inigo Riesling by Sevenhill, Clare Valley

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4. Sunday of Advent with German Riesling

December 19, 2010

It was my time to cook Sunday lunch. Anyway, the three gorgeous women I share my life with were due to travel to Australia later today. In order to give them time to pack, I prepared lunch. I admit, however, that Margit helped me quite a lot. Otherwise, I guess, I would not have accomplished the task.

So what did I cook? A strange dish, I must say, straight out of the Jamie Oliver cookery book titled “Jamies does…”. It is a recipe from the Maghreb, Marrakesh to be precise. It consists of spicy vermicelli stuffed with prawns in a courgettes-tomato kind of sauce and on top a large fish is positioned (sea bass, snapper, etc.). Since we did not have a whole fish, we used fillets of sea bass.

The whole process is too complicated to be recited here. The recipe can be found on the internet, one of Jamie’s websites. Boy that dish is delicious, just wonderful. I would like to encourage you to try it, especially if you like spicy food.

The prawn-stuffed spicy vermicelli with fish

The fish is succulent but crisp

On the plate

As the title of this blog entry suggest, Riesling was the wine of my choice. German Riesling is my favourite. Wine does not age in my care here in Bangkok in the tropics. I selected a ‘2008 Riesling Kabinett’ by Schloss Johannisberg, one of the oldest Riesling producers in the Rheingau and Germany as a whole.

2008 Riesling Kabinett Schloss Johannisberg

A Kabinett was just the right wine because of its relative high “rest sugar” it’s off-dry or semi-dry, “halbtrocken” or “feinherb”, as the Germans say. However, the label did not say if the wine was dry or semi-dry. But my palate told me the sugar level must be at about 9 grams or so. Alcohol was 11.5%.

In any case the wine went extremely well with the very spicy vermicelli. I just love the bouquet, this slight petrol note on the nose. This is a wonderful rich wine, with a fine balanced acidity, the taste of apples and peaches are prominent.

2008 Riesling Kabinett Schloss Johannisberg

I wish we had more of this drop

If you buy this wine directly from the producer, you have to spend 17 Euro for a 0.75 litres bottle.

The meal with this wine was just perfect for the occasion. Time fly’s. Christmas is approaching fast and soon I will be back in Glenburn, Australia and taste many new-world wines.

Address:
Fürst von Metternich-Winneburg’sche Domäne
Schloss Johannisberg
D-65366 Geisenheim
Tel.: +49 (0) 6722-7009-0
E-Mail info@schloss-johannisberg.de
Restaurant
Tel:. +49 (0)6722 96090
E-Mail restaurant@schloss-johannisberg.de
www.schloss-johannisberg.de

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Christmas season lunch in Bangkok

December 18, 2010

While Europe is going under in snow, Bangkok is enjoying coolish winter days, some of them nice and sunny with temperatures in the mid twenties. Then a light lunch is what we need.

Grilled vegetables and some cold cuts are just the right food. And what do you drink with it?

Well, a ‘2007 Sauvignon Blanc’ by Mount Nelson from New Zealand is just the right wine. Apart from Riesling and Silvaner (only from Franconia), Sauvignon Blanc is my favourite white. Moreover, it goes well with light summer lunches, I think.

Grilled ‘veggies’

Cold cuts

Golden Sauvignon Blanc

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Restaurant review: Der Schützenhof, Würzburg, Frankonia

November 21, 2010

Der Schützenhof

A great place to eat and be merry in the town of Würzburg in Franconia is “Der Schützenhof“, a German country inn with a long and strong tradition. The views from it’s terrace are spectacular. You sit above the roofs of the historical city, so to say.

Great views

On top of the world and above the roofs – below: the city of Würzburg

The “Schützenhof” is not only famous for its views, but for it’s traditional German cuisine as well. I just love these tasty, robust, rural dishes made as if grandma had prepared them herself. Look at the pictures below, are they not mouthwatering? The food is just excellent, German country cuisine at it’s best.

Local Franconian sausages

Potato dumplings with roasted pork

Noodles/pasta with salmon

A local Franconian wine

I ordered the house wine, a local drop made from the Silvaner grape. My friends Romy and Friedel prefer other grapes for instance “Gutedel”, also known as Chasselas grape in France. But they also like Mueller-Thurgau, Pinot Blanc and Gris, Kernen etc.

With about 6,000 ha under vines Franconia produces excellent wines. It is famous for it’s dry Silvaner wines bottled in the so called “Bocksbeutel”, a rounded and flattened bottle type.

Franconia is a wine land (or German wine region) which wine enthusiast should explore. You’ll find amazing drops. Check it out.

Address:
Der Schützenhof
Mainleitenweg 48
97082 Würzburg,
Germany
Te.: +49-931-72422 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +49-931-72422      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +49-931-72422      end_of_the_skype_highlighting
www.schuetzenhof-wuerzburg.de

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Korean home style cooking – 비빔밥

November 17, 2010

I am back to my recent Korean experience. Apart from the fine dining at expensive restaurants, I had also the chance of “home style cooking kind of food”. One of them is Bibimbap (비빔밥), which literally means mixed rice. The photos below show you what you can expect.

Frankly speaking I was very apprehensive when I saw what was put in front of me. The metal bowl put me right off. But, boy, this was a delicious meal, I tell you. You should definitely try it, if you visit Korea.

Kimchi

Every Korean meal starts with various kind of Kimchi, which are usually very tasty. The metal bowl for the Bibimbap was next. We mixed everything right through. It was a strange feeling, I must say.

The next dish was a soup.

The metal bowl for Bibimbap

Mixed in with noodles or rice

The soup

Korean beef on table grill

The beef was very tender. We wrapped it the Korean way in sesame leaves with garlic and chili paste. Just the right stuff for someone like me whose taste buds have become used to hot dishes.

Fresh sesame leaves

Meat on leaf

Makgeolli (막걸리) from a plastic bottle

We washed the food down with Korean beer and “makgeolli” (막걸리) the fermented drink on a rice-wheat basis and low alcohol (max. 7%).

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Restaurant review: Ocean Pine, on Jeju island

November 13, 2010

Ocean Pine seafood restaurant

It was too dark when we arrived for dinner. Therefore I could not take any good photo of the surroundings, the ocean, the cliffs, the view. But I have photos of a truly spectacular seafood dinner, maybe the best I ever had in my life. Breathtakingly delicious the food was.

Ocean Pine was the name of the seafood restaurant at the Southern coast of Jeju island. We ordered a set-menu, consisting of fish and other seafood. The pictures of my photo blog entry speak for themselves.

A tray of crockery and condiments is put before you

It starts with a soup of mussels

Followed by a piece of art

As starter some raw fish was presented to the diners

Followed by more raw fish

Some more condiments as well

A spectacular boat of assorted raw seafood was one the main dishes

Many shell fish and other delicacies

..some slugs among them

And raw fish again..

….this time, eaten the Korean way with a sesame leaf

Then the main courses were coming

A white fish

some prawns

and another fish

Abalone were the highlight of the meal

It also ends with a soup

In case someone should be still hungry, rice with fish eggs and seaweed is served

We had Korean beer with the food. I missed white wine I must admit. Here there is tremendous capacity for development on Jeju island. They could import some of our Australian wines many of which are ideal for the pairing with seafood.

I suggest you visit the island when you are in Korea next time. I also hope that many of the journalists and professionals attending the G-20 summit had the chance to check Jeju out. I will come back, for sure.

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Korea: Seafood is just excellent

November 12, 2010

I hope some of the G-20 delegates in Seoul have the chance to stay on for a couple of days and go to Jeju island. This is a great place for nature lovers, famous for it’s mandarins, it’s abalone divers, it’s volcano mountain and good seafood.

You have the choice: some Korean fish or Japanese sushi? Your wish is my command. I just loved the food on the island and will show you some exceptional photos in some of my next blog entries. Stay tuned.

Delicious fish

Sushi collection

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