A small gourmet meetup with the usual crowd at Polpo. Calling it a gourmet meetup did not mean the menu itself changed much, but the bottles the participants brought along were something else. Corkage was not free, so it did add to the bill, but it was a great chance to drink across a whole range of genres.

Bread

As always, the bread from Lee Boulanger is beautiful.

Cheese flown in from Italy

One of the group had just been to Italy, so we got to have cheese from the source as an appetizer. Not bad at all as a nibble with drinks on an empty stomach.

Abalone

Perfectly boiled, as always.

Tonight’s donated bottles

San Vicente is the house wine, priced around 150,000 won, and for that price bracket it is unbelievably good value. I still cannot forget that silky finish. If you love wine, it is worth a special trip just to drink this one. Next to it are the donated bottles: an undiluted Japanese shochu (Mitake genshu), Hakushu Japanese whisky, a magnum of wine (Clos de la Cure Saint-Émilion) and a bourbon (Woodford Reserve). With this much, running short on alcohol did not look likely. Maybe because of the shochu, there was alcohol left over at the end. I should have balanced things properly, and usually I do keep an eye on it, but I never expected this many donations that day.

Bagna cauda salad

The same dish as always.

Eggplant gratin

My first encounter with the eggplant gratin. As someone who loves eggplant dishes, I found it a very satisfying plate.

Dom Pérignon Œnothèque 1996

This was probably the highlight of the night. I never imagined I would actually get to drink an Œnothèque, something I had only ever heard about, in my lifetime. Modern and clean. It kept the Dom Pérignon character intact while the aroma and the taste both felt upgraded.

Chawanmushi

Another regular on the menu.

Avocado and octopus salad

A dish like this is a perfect match for white wine or champagne, but usually only the first bottle or so is white, so you end up with the food and the drinks out of step. I think the clean, lightly seasoned dishes should probably stop around the abalone or the bagna cauda. Of course, if the place had a cellar full of cheap, tasty whites it would be a different story, but serving delicate white wine well is no easy thing.

New additions to the lineup

Sadly the Clos des Papes never opened up right to the end. The bottle next to it, a limoncello flown in from Italy, was sweet.

Mushrooms

The aroma and texture of the mushrooms were really nice. The olive oil was fresh too. Come to think of it, not a single dish that night, start to finish, was one to pair with red wine. This one would go well with white as well.

Olive oil

I was dipping bread in it and the olive oil was so good that I asked, and it turned out to be a very special premium olive oil. The chef is so interested in good ingredients that he seems to buy premium ones out of his own pocket now and then. Ingredients like that cost too much to go on the regular menu, but it feels great when they turn up on the table by chance like this. Well.. the reality is that most of us cannot tell the difference even when premium ingredients show up.

Whole steamed squid

Feels like a Japanese restaurant~ I think we opened the shochu around this point. It tasted good but was a bit strong. There was a sense that too much hard liquor came out that night.

Pork

Antibiotic-free pork, so they serve it slightly rare.

Cilantro salad

A salad makes a fine nibble with drinks too.

Pickles

Pickles coming out before the pasta, that is the Korean way.

Hard clam linguine

The seasonal hard clams are really sweet and delicious. The linguine was cooked just right too. I would say this was the best dish of the night.

Fresh anchovy pasta

Two pastas coming out seemed like a freebie, probably served because both were seasonal dishes. But they were so similar in character that the flavors overlapped. They were tasty, but I was fairly tipsy by then, so comparing the two was impossible, and it felt a bit like eating the same pasta twice. Once the cooking settles down a bit more, this kind of issue will gradually disappear.

Nibbles

Even after all that eating and drinking, there was alcohol left over. We could not even finish the magnum of wine. The Hakushu 18 was opened around this point too, and with plenty of peat worked in, it has a different character from the 12. A truly wonderful whisky that drinks far more smoothly than I expected.

Birthday cake from Oliver Sweet

A cake from Oliver Sweet, the dessert shop near Polpo, and it was high level. Polpo really chose its location well in every respect.

The chef

Brewing the coffee himself. This has to be the first bistro in Korea where the coffee is actually good.

Coffee

The endless feast of food and drink was finally over. But just heading home felt like a letdown, so we had a quick beer nearby.

Beer at the gastropub

Well.. it was drinkable enough.

Snacks

I do not remember much after this, but I really did drink a lot that day. I resolve once again to drink in moderation from now on, but it never quite works out that way.

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