Pairing up

The most highly regarded cuisines, which would certainly include French, Cantonese, and Sichuanese, are feted for their ability to cleverly incorporate "borrowed" or "introduced" ingredients and techniques.

The embracing of chilli peppers in Sichuan province, brought from South America, would be an obvious but very good example of this phenomena. But does such dynamism in cooking upset the often delicate food and wine matching process? The panel assembled to debate this consisted of three people with very strong wine backgrounds.

Beverly Koo is a lawyer by day, but is involved with her family's vineyard in Bordeaux. Wine educator Kevin Tang has been in the wine industry for 17 years, and is a former restaurant owner. Sarah Wong works for the family business and does wine on the side, though it is quite a large side.

The venue was Shang Palace in the Kowloon Shangri-La hotel, where chef Mok Kit-keung confesses that he loves to "borrow" and was off to Taiwan the following day to investigate more of that "borrowing".

On the menu, we could easily ring several items that are outside mainstream Cantonese. Fig sauce, rack of lamb, Japanese pumpkin and foie gras are among them. In charge of finding some wine-pairing options was Ringo Lam, the hotel's sommelier, who put together an innovative, eclectic succession of labels.

First up was a funky dim sum plate comprising barbecued Japanese pork with fig sauce, steamed scallop dumpling formed into the shape of a cute, little pink rabbit, and crispy prawn with cereals, all of which Lam matched with Bruno Paillard, Première Cuvée Rosé NV Champagne.