rose, rose, i love you!

the song rose, rose, i love you is a very very old song, with chinese songstress yao lee recording it in 1940 and about a decade later, frankie laine cutting it in 1951.
why am i going on about this and what has it do with drinks or food? plenty.
i thought of the song as i sipped my first glass of jacob's creek sparkling rose, the latest sparkling wine from the australian master wine producer, at mizu, a japanese restaurant in bangsar village, kuala lumpur.
it was billed as an evening with a chief winemaker who turned out to be jacob's creek's philip laffer.
the rose was the star but laffer also brought along bottles of reserve chardonnay, riesling, shiraz and cabernet to go with some splendid japanese food.
featured here is the menu for the evening with a bowl that had miso soup - nice and as you can see, i finished it - a glass of shiraz on the left, finished the cabernet and the remnants of the rose.
the rose is great.
had a couple of glasses of this sparkling wine made from chardonnay and pinot noir grapes.
the non-vintage fermented sparkling wine is dry, combining the best of the citrusy chardonnay and the strawberry flavours of the pinot noir.
a soft appealing taste without the plumminess of red wines, the rose at 11.5 percent alcohol by volume, is great as an aperitif or with the dessert that we had, ice-cream with strawberry sauce. i did try it with some wasabi but it didn' t work out that well. guess there is a limit to both the rose and the wasabi.
having said that, the meal at mizu was quite good. it started with a sesame bean curd with a hint of wasabi combining well with the reserve chardonnay. a better combination followed after the clear soup when the reserve riesling superbly accompanied the shashimi trio of tuna, salmon and yellow tail with the wasabi and shoyu in attendance.
the riesling tangoed with the fish and wasabi, dancing in unison as i slowly savoured the complex flavours.
it was time for some red and the reserve shiraz made its appearance. the big and bold wine was paired with some foie gras delicately sitting on daikon or white radish in sauce. good stuff as the shiraz and the foie gras - featured here - held out their distinctive taste.
the cabernet heralded the start of the main course, a beef teppanyaki that was accompanied with rice, miso soup and pickles. quite good.
a great dinner to start the week.

whine and din at the ribshop

i really have no beef with the rib shop since it opened a couple of years ago. the food is great and the wines superb.
but the wine-and-dine rib speciality restaurant in medan damansara didn't score full marks last night. their most under-rated speciality, chilled australian tenderloin beef in red wine sauce didn't taste as good as it did previously.
well, to put it mildly, the red wine was missing from this mouth-watering delicately medium-to-welldone roasted chunk of meat garnished with sauteed mushrooms and potato cubes in red wine sauce.
maybe chef danny liew was missing too.
an off day for both the chef and the dish.
could that be possible? i didn't bother to find out.
thankfully, the fettucine with crispy bacon, creamy parmagianno and a dash of nutmeg made up for the dinner as diners at another table put on their party hats, clinked their glasses and sang happy birthday as they busily snapped away with their cameraphones.
the pasta dish was splendid with its creamy cheesy flavour meshing well with the crispy crunchy bacon and the al dente fettucine.
just what i needed to offset the disappointing tenderloin.
the saving grace was the beef carpaccio remains without equal among the few places i have had this wonderfully simple dish of slices of beef, lemon juice and olive oil with scattered slices of heavenly parmagianno cheese and garnished with rocket.
and the wine of the day? well, the wine shop people had said it was an argentinian wine but that went missing too.
to my surprise, and subsequent delight, the house wine was a wonderful medium bodied haywood cabernet sauvignon 2001. a refreshing and spicy wine, it had flavours of berry and pepper plus hints of vanilla and oak.
had two glasses. nice.
the rib shop is at 120-122 jalan kasah, medan damansara. its open for lunch 12.00 to 2.30pm and dinner 6.00pm to 10.30pm. wines from the wine shop can be consumed in the restaurant without any corkage.