Pair of aces

The view from the Chef's Table private dining room on the 102nd floor of the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong - the world's highest facility of its kind, the hotel says - is spectacular. So was the menu created by executive chef Peter Find for Good Eating's food and wine pairing session.

It was also cryptic. Find had prepared five courses entitled stone/turtle, mosaic/mushroom, turkey/snail, sole/foam and nougat crème/mandarine/almond ice cream. Only the last of these provided a detailed description. Fortunately, Find was on hand to explain the food he had prepared with his team.

On the panel were sommelier Nellie Ming Lee, Independent Wine Centre manager and wine maker Tersina Shieh, and myself. The wines were selected by Tin Lung Heen sommelier Benson Yan.

We began proceedings with a glass of Roederer Cristal, always a good start, before Find presented stone/turtle, a rich, slightly spicy "turtle" consommé that he described as "a classical dish with a little bit of a more modern slant". Yan said the Cristal had been selected more to prepare our palates than to match the dish, while Shieh commented that pairing soup with wine is a slightly redundant exercise in that both are liquid, and one is more likely to drink the wine before and after consuming the soup than to alternate sips.

Nobody complained about the Cristal, though, and Lee thought the combination worked. The consensus was that the Champagne and soup were delicious independently, and did not conflict, but did not necessarily enhance one another.