Another Chaîne Dinner

Tonight was the first dinner of the Chaîne des Rôtisseurs, the gourmet club that I joined several years ago, of 2009 here in Beijing. The venue this time around was the Swisôtel, which is conveniently located just a short walk away from our apartment. The theme of the dinner was "Swiss Passion" (something I might have considered an oxymoron previously). In fact the meal was really very good, though I'm not sure that it was really particularly Swiss (nor especially passionate).

Now that we have been to a good number of these dinners, we know a lot more people who attend them than we used to, and are greeted with enthusiasm by our fellow members, most of whom, though by no means all, are in the hotel business. A very large number of them have become patients of our hospital as a result of having met J2, so in fact it's quite a good marketing venture. And the fact that we get to eat great food and drink great wine (and wear our fancy black tie outfits while doing so) is just icing on the cake.

The meal is not really particularly worth describing, really, since the words are not up to the task of describing the meal. But the courses were interesting, and in particular two of them--a course of lobster bisque early in the meal, and a dessert course that comprised a dome of chocolate onto which they poured a small amount of hot chocolate sauce, melting the dome and causing it to break, revealing a tuile, some ice cream, and a raspberry-laden sauce underneath--were standouts.

The wines at the dinner were all Swiss, other than a champagne at the beginning and a rosé champagne at the end, and it's safe to say that there's a reason why there is no Swiss wine section in any wine shop outside of Switzerland, though the first wine, a sweet wine that they served with a course comprising three takes on the theme of foie gras, was excellent.

But the best part of the meal was not actually part of the food or wine. The best part was a surprise that they kept quiet about until the very end. Prior to the dinner, we were all asked to submit our Chinese names to the hosts, for reasons that they said would become clear at the dinner. I expected to see some sort of an engraved place setting or something, since they often give door prizes at these dinners, but there was nothing there when we arrived. But when they served the coffee at the end, the servers came round with lovely boxes, each containing an engrossed version of the night's menu, along with a Chinese name chop bearing the seal of the Chaîne and with our Chinese names. It was easily the nicest gift of any Chaîne dinner I have attended.

The dinner proceeded at a very leisurely pace, so even though it began at 7pm we were not done until 12:30am (and even then the meal was not quite finished, as they were just putting out the little sweets to accompany the coffee course when we decided we could not take anymore). But it was a very fun evening, and we'll look forward to the next one, at a location to be determined in June.