604 Foodtography

July 18th, 2012 Media Tasting at Establishment Lounge

Establishment Lounge - #EstablishmentEATS

Rick, Janice and I arrived from a Hawkshaw Salmon tasting at C Restaurant earlier and joined Nick the Beer Guy, Nick the Designer, Dennis and May at a table for an intimate sit down dinner.

I should also mention that Dianne Chow and Alvin Lee were in attendance as well.

While walking around the restaurant taking some interior shots, we were offered samples from the Efes Beer Group, featuring…

Efes Draft (Pale Lager, 5% ABV)
Efes Dark (Double-Roasted Malt Lager, 6.5% ABV)
Efes Pilsen (German Pilsener, 5% ABV)
Mariachi (agave-flavoured fruit (?) beer, 4.2% ABV)

I recall that it was one of Jeff’s previous co-workers who was working extremely hard to get this Turkish beer into distribution in BC, but had some setbacks due to the extremely archaic liquor laws of our province. In the years since, I’ve seen more and more of this beer show up at events and tastings, so I think they’re going to do just fine. In general, I find that this entire range of beer was pretty sweet and with little to no aftertaste. In addition to that, very little carbonation and therefore you won’t feel bloated after drinking.

1st dish – Vegetarian Peanut Soup, smooth and easy to drink. Very interesting as well with the use of peanuts, but what exactly are “African” spices?

2nd dish – Black Truffle Saccottini Pasta w/ vanilla Galliano cream sauce, sweet pea puree, merlot micro-greens and fresh pancetta. If there was 1 dish I wanted a full size portion, this would be it.

3rd dish – Bison Sliders topped with port-wine cheddar cheese, cranberry onion relish & fresh beet aioli.

4th dish - Okanagan Goat Cheese & Fig Soufflé served with golden beat carpaccio & maple truffle vinaigrette. I lied, this was pretty frigging good as well.

Drinks weren’t included in this tasting, but I still wanted to try some. I got laughed at for ordering a Modern Toddy, but the craving hit even though it’s mid July. Disappointingly though, it tasted like Neo-Citron. Val had a Pimm’s Ginger, far better than my choice.

5th dish - Shrimp & Lobster Cakes almond crusted w/ chipotle sauce, miso sauce & jerk aioli.

6th dish – Lamb Merguz Frank warm croissant w/ chipotle aioli, cucumber pico de gallo, fresh honey-mint yogurt. Basically a lamb ‘hotdog’, this was unique..not sure if the combination works that well, but definitely a try if you’re adventurous.

7th dish - Malaysian Chicken Satay free range chicken infused w/ exotic Malaysian spices & served with signature peanut sauce. Tasty and pretty standard.

8th dish – Thai Tiger Prawns Served with coconut steamed rice and cucumber raita. This is normally served with rice, but for the tasting purposes and presentation they chose to just serve the prawns. Quite plump and not overcooked, this had a spicy zing to it.