An Epic Dinner at Lucky House Cantonese Private Kitchen

We considered staying longer in Bangkok. But we had F1 Grand Prix gigs (Foo Fighters! Crowded House! The Wombats! The Smashing Pumpkins again!) to attend, and we had a dinner to get to. The traffic was insane, but we all made it before 7.30pm. 

Now this dinner. It's at Lucky House Cantonese Private Kitchen. Our dear friends booked it two years ago. Hahahaha. I know, it's epic. But we had just gotten out of Covid restrictions, so the waitlist was mad. None of us were bothered to push this date earlier. TWO YEARS LATER, ALL TEN OF US MADE IT TO DINNER.

J brought a ton of wine. Champagne, whites and reds. We brought a bottle of whisky that we found at Changi duty-free, and happily tried. Couldn't help it; it's the Bowmore port-cask 16 y.o in a new release. It tastes nothing like the expression I love. Ah well. We brought extra cups and a pack of ice cubes. The home can't stock that many glasses or provide ice cubes. They do have a flask of tepid water for us, and a kettle of hot pu-er-chrysanthemum tea. 

Started with a pot of good old Cantonese soup. LOVE LOVE LOVE. No salt, nothing, just splendid essence extracted out from the ingredients. It is extremely difficult to find a good pot of soup nowadays, and this is it. It's nothing fancy, just decent ingredients and an understanding of fire, heat and soup. It is everything that I want in a pot. Then it was Lucky House's signature roasted duck, the type that we rarely get it taste anymore. Roasted over charcoal fire and not done slickly like how a restaurant does. One of those lovely original flavors. 

The steamed fish of the night was a golden grunter, or ikan tebal pipi emas. With old chye poh. That was absolutely delicious. We polished everything off and left only the bones. Hurhurhur. It was quite the star.

There was a corn-fed chicken with lupcheong and yuncheong from Hong Kong, and abalone. The meat was shaped into little dollops, very cute. It was very tender, and hit a spot as far as chicken goes. We still welcomed the stir-fried vegetables — we always need fibre — choi sum with Japanese anchovies.  

Chef Sam trotted out a complimentary dish of braised mushrooms and fish stomach. I LIKE! Then it was time for carbs. The crayfish hor-fun arrived. I loved it! I could skip the crayfish. I was just there for the hor-fun. I took a piece of crayfish, but gave the rest away. I loved the fried shallots that topped it. Mmmm. I honestly wouldn't have minded a second serving, but no more hor fun. Everyone ate theirs! Kekekekeke. 

I couldn't deal with the dessert. It was some hot liquid in a bowl. Green beans with beancurd skin in soy milk or something. Good gawwd. The smell of it. I couldn't. After having two sips, I left it. This is totally not the kind of dessert I take. Not red bean soup, green bean soup, beancurd skin soup... nope. The birthday cake brought along to celebrate J and L was so much better. Teheeheheh.

After all these years, Chef Sam Wong's cooking is still excellent. I love the flavors in his food. He has done nothing to tweak his kitchen set-up or charcoal stoves. But he has refined his menu and some presentation plates. It was nice to see Sam and Lee Yee again, and their young daughter. 

It was a great night catching up with everyone at the same table. It has been a while indeed. While we do meet separately, we hadn't sat down together like this for a long time. I couldn't believe we really made this dinner date two years in advance. Everyone locked it in their calendar and re-confirmed two months ago. Heh. And showed up.