Watching World Cup @ Imbi Palace KL

After slaving myself for the whole day on Sunday until 8pm, I can finally have an enjoyable evening of good company of friends, wines, food and football! It was a much awaited clash between England and Germany after these two teams managed to get into the round of final sixteen. My cash was on Germany and thus I have to watch this game.

We had a comfortable private dining room at Imbi Palace to watch the game while having our dinner. At 8.30pm, we started with the appetizers and a bottle of blanc from Chateau Chasse-Spleen 2006. The name means "to chase away the blues" and it is the leading estate of Moulis, a small commune on the left bank of the Gironde, sandwiched in the No Man's Land between St Julien to the north and Margaux to the south. It's a very nice blanc with fruity notes and it's easy drinking.

I'm glad we started with a light white wine because the food that follows is indeed a little heavy on tastes. We had a giant clam with lots of garlic which is actually not very suitable to be paired with wine. I hate garlic and so I only ate the clam. Next, we had a soupy chicken with rice wine which is a very popular chinese dish that uses a lot of ginger and yellow glutinous rice wine and was served during post natal to get rid of the "wind". This dish is also known as Drunken Chicken since rice wine is used to cook this dish but so far, I've not gotten drunk on drinking this soup yet. Actually I don't like this dish because of the ginger but you know what? Imbi Palace does this dish exceptionally well! The secret lies in the rice wine. I finished the whole bowl! The sizzling stone grill egglant with fish paste is commendable.

Wild Boar Curry

The wild boar curry is a must order dish. It used to be a pre-order dish but now they have it permanently in the menu. It's cooked in a south indian curry way and the wild boar meat is tender and has robust curry flavours. I absolutely love this!!




Beef Slices with Beansprout

This is a very nice and light dish to go with red wines. The beef slices are medium well and served with beansprouts, chilli, spring onions and soya sauce. It was good but it's just that I was disappointed that they were not getting big fat juicy beansprouts from Ipoh.

M Chapoutier Les Varonniers & Les Granits

The Les Varroniers Crozes Ermitage 2007 is a Syrah and this is a Rhone wine.

Colour : Deep garnet.
Nose : Red fruit and blackcurrants and some hints of cocoa.
Mouth : Powerful tannins, fresh and fruity.

Then we had the Les Granits Saint Joseph 2006. This is the selection of their oldest Syrah roots in the birthplace of the Saint Joseph appellation.

Colour : Dark garnet.
Nose : Blackberries and pepper.
Mouth : Smoky, peppered notes. Very strong tannins with a long finish.

I found the 2007 a very elegant, easy drinking wine and the 2006 a much more robust and big wine.

This is a daring, different and biodynamic wine. The labels have Braille on it and Braille has been present since 1996 on all M. CHAPOUTIER labels. The trademark pays tribute to this man but also expresses the desire to reach out to and include all people with sight-impairments, lovers of good wines.. To promote eco-friendliness, wax is used instead of the usual foil wrappers.

There's no point promoting this wine as the allocation is small. The worst thing was, a friend of mine has already bought the whole allocation and therefore I need to be very nice to him to be able to drink this again! Hmmph!

I was happy to be able to catch the GER vs ENG clash as it was a fast paced game. Maybe it should be called a young men vs old men match as I can see that England is consistently playing badly at the World Cup. I pity ENG for the disallowed goal by Frank Lampard. Maybe they should have a flight to carry all the England and Italian players back to Europe! Too bad France has an early exit or else they can all fly back together.

It was a happy game of GER beats ENG 4-1 and ARG beats MEX 3-1.