Monday, June 09, 2008

Deja Vu

After having tapas at the Pullman Wine Pub, we were ready to have dinner at Deja Vu, the fine dining restaurant of the Pullman Hotel. There is a 1 starred Michelin chef from the Champagne region; Mr. Sylvain Royes, is now the executive chef of the hotel. It was a 3 course menu for 1,200 baht net. Though, this was a 3 course meal, my friends and I ordered different dishes on purpose so that we can try all the dishes that were being offered

The first dish was amuse bouche of snail cappuccino. A nice beginning of a small glass cup with a tasty & creamy sauce with snails.










The second dish was wild mushroom fricasse with soft boiled egg and mixed herbs. This is normally one of my favourite dishes. The wild mushroom fricasse was tasty but the egg was boiled too long. The nice thing about this dish is when you break the egg, you watch the egg yolk slowly running out and you blend the egg yolk with the creamy sauce. What a shame I did not have this experience this time.


The third dish was duck fois gras terrine with champagne jelly. This must have been THE worst fois gras we have ever eaten in our lives. The fois gras had no taste, what-so-ever. It was a very strange experience. I would have understood if this was fresh fois gras, that the excuse would have been that the fois gras came from a bad supplier. But, this was a terrine. Meaning, it should have had flavours exploding in our mouths. Something terribly went wrong here.










The bread was horrific. I hate restaurants that serve bad bread. No excuse to do so. Then they might as well not serve it at all. We could tell that the bread was frozen and taken out to be baked. Even this, I would not mind; but this bread, when you tried to break off a piece, the whole crust of the bread just crumbled (a sign of frozen bread) and the interiour of the bread was dry. To make things worse, they served bad olive oil to accompany the bad bread. The olive oil had no taste. I could not believe that a 1 starred Michelin chef would allow this. Unless, it was the hotel being cheap on their food products. We could not take the olive oil anymore so we asked for butter. You won't believe it; cheap and bad butter.


The fourth dish was lobster stew bisque with champagne wine. Now this dish was very good. Rich flavour of lobster, good texture and they were very generous with the lobster meat.










The fifth dish was perch pike pan seared with onion confit. The fish was fresh but overcooked. Again, no excuse for a 1 starred Michelin chef. Even if the chef did not personally cook my fish, he either should be training his staff better or either be watching & guiding his staff better on how to not over cook fish.


The sixth dish was roasted duck tornedos with mash potato and fois gras. The duck was of good quality and cooked just right. The flavours were good. The only weird thing was the mashed potatoes. A very strange consistency because they were mixed with some kind of jelly.










The seventh dish was a provencal cheese platter. The presentation was very nice. The only problem is that most of the cheeses were made from cow milk. If you say 'provencal'; it should be made from goat milk. So, someone did not know what provencal meant when they made the cheese platter. Too make things worse, the cheeses were dry and tasteless.















The ninth dish were the desserts. We were stuffed from this point. But, I forced my friends to taste their desserts so they can tell me what they thought about the desserts. One of the desserts was a chocolate millefeuille. The millefeuillele was put together well; but I did not like the chocolate flavoured millefeuille. It was too strong, so that it actually was too bitter. The other dessert was a souffle. The presentation was very nice, we broke the top and the inside was gooey, the way it should be.










Over all, the dinner was just OK. For some reason, I was expecting more in terms of quality. But, I cannot blame the chef entirely. It could have also been the hotel being cheap holding back with the finest ingredients for what the chef could use.

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