Birthdays are a big deal for me. Especially if it is of my better half. I normally like to plan well in advance and fill the special day with small bits of surprises all throughout. Food is an equally important part of it and I have 2 main requirements while plannig this aspect.
1.) The place should of course be exclusive
2.) It should be a place that we have never been to before.
Wife's birthday was yesterday and so I began planning 10 days before this. I called up the various so called chic places to find out about their menu, availability and decor ( cos I wanted a sea facing set up this time around, after all I need to capitalise on the Red Sea.) Most of the places that I called up had a restrcition in terms of the vegetarian options that they served. Some others did not have a sea view, which I was very particular about. After a lot of phone calls and discussions with freinds and colleagues, I zeroed in on Noodles located inside the Rosewood corniche hotel. The guy on the phone promised me that they had enough vegetarian options and overlooked the red sea.
It turned out to be one of the best decisions ever!
We arrived in Noodles for lunch. The place was chic and had a very welcoming entrance. There was an open kitchen on one side with lots of dim sum baskets and another marble slab which i presume they use to make the noodles ( details of the hand made noodles below.) On the other side were small pots of chinese tea in 3 different flavors with lots of small cups.We noticed that the whole restaurant was practically empty sans only a couple of tables that were occupied. But I was not overtly concerned as this was a weekday afternoon and the location of the hotel is not the best one for a quick office lunch. Since the restaurant was empty we could choose any table we wanted and we settled into a corner one overlooking the red sea. The menu was beautifully laid out with a seperate drinks menu which had various concotions, although we just settled for sparkling water.
The food menu looked exquisite and each section provided a detailed description of the food, a brief history of its origin and all details of the ingredients. I loved this. It only fired my appetite and I could harldy wait to dig my cutlery into the food.
We ordered a portion of the veg spring rolls and a portion of the veg dimsum to begin the proceedings.
The La Mian section attracted our attention and we both ordered a portion of the veg La Mian in a broth. The other option for the La Mian was the pan fried option. Now the La Mian ( details in the pic) are hand made noodles and in this place they make this at the display counter. Unfortunately we could not see the making as this was already prepared and I presume they put on a show in the weekends when the place is fairly more crowded.
The food arrived. The spring rolls were crisp and fresh and the dim sums were soft and flavorful. Wife only had a compliant that the dim sums were very small in size, which I agreed completely with. But it was so nice that we ended up ordering one more portion of the same. The sauces that accompanied were nothing great and were standard supermarket stuff. This is something that struck me as odd.
While we were finishing our appetisers, I could see the server walking towards us with 2 giant bowls. My heart almost missed a beat when I saw the size of the bowl. It was HUGE!! As you can see below, it was a rainbow of colors and looked magnificent. One bite and my tongue did a double flip inside my mouth. It was as if the flavors in the soup were married to each other and were living happily inside the bowl. It was simply brilliant. Although, to be honest, it was too much for either one of us to finish and we could finish only half of it. Our server, Rajesh, was a nice chap and had warned us of this before, but we had simply brushed away his concerns. After this, there was absouletely no way we could have any more food.
Rajesh asked us for the deserts and recomened the Banana toffee as it was their best desert. Both wife and me decided to wait a while before deciding on our desert. Whilst we were waiting, Rajesh got us 2 complimentary portions of the most exquisite mango mousse we have ever had. Soft mousse, with fresh cut pieces of fresh mangoes. After a lot of struggle we managed to tuck in a couple of bites and had to give the rest a miss. But we did this with a promise to Rajesh that we would be back soon to try the other stuff on the menu. And next time around, we want our non-vegetarian freinds around as well as the menu seems to be jumping about with all the non-veg goodness.
And thus ended a wonderful birthday lunch, one of the best we have had. Wife was happy with the place and the food and I was happy that she was happy. So my love, may you have many many more wonderful years ahead and may we enjoy more such wonderul food always!
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