It is natural (well, to me at least) to think of a particular food when I think about a country. It is, after all, one of the reasons why people visit a particular place, or even go to a particular restaurant for that matter. My wife Mary Ann, who’s worked with Cathay Pacific close to two decades, tells me that in the airline world, they often use dishes to refer to destinations. Manila flights are called adobo flights, Seoul is kimchi, Jakarta is sup buntut, etc. “That’s because that is what we would all be anticipating before landing,” she said.
So when we got an invite for a press lunch at the Intercon’s Prince Albert that said “German Gastronomic Gems,” we were naturally salivating for sausages and pig’s knuckles — I, in particular, because the mere mention of any pork dish makes my knees wobble in anticipation. The desire was so strong that I did not mind driving myself from our home in Pampanga, with our driver calling in sick the same morning of our lunch date.
As we arrived at Prince Albert, everybody was already seated at the long table. We were served immediately a wonderfully chilled German Gewurztraminer (generally known as a spicy wine, this white varietal yielded a delightfully and refreshingly light nutty palate with floral scents). It had the same welcoming and calming effect on me as an ice-cold baby cologne-scented face towel nesting on my nape, especially on a muggy day.
The first course was a lukewarm pumpkin and ginger soup with two pan-seared sea scallops, one au naturel and the other coated in black sesame seeds. Next came a salmon trout with green pea purée, ceps mushrooms and apricots with champagne Beurre Blanc. The green pea tasted a lot better than it looked. I saw my meat lover darleng who has to be forced-fed her vegetables finally getting excited when she saw her plate of veal and herb roulade. The dessert of apple strudel was flaky and nicely flavored with homemade (which, of course, meant made by the hotel chef) vanilla ice cream that was creamy and delicious. Mary Ann teased the chef that it must be real vanilla and not melamine because it did not taste of plastic at all. Prince Albert’s chef Patrick Fournes proudly shared that he imports the fresh vanilla pods from Madagascar. Vanilla, by the way, is an orchid vine bearing pod-like fruits yielding an extract used in flavoring food, perfumery, etc.
So, to shoot the million-dollar question, where’s the pork? The entire lunch was over and we did not have a taste of bratwurst and mein eisbein (my pig’s knuckles). I was tempted to waylay the hard-to-resist Prince Albert signature roast trolley as it rolled past our table. The dishes were all new to us and I imagine to those we shared lunch with. As it turned out, the dishes we had were culled from recipes of the chefs of four Intercontinental Hotels in Germany, namely: Berchtesgaden Resort near the German/Austrian Border; the Michelin-starred Hugos Restaurant of InterContinental Berlin; Caliga Restaurant of Intercon’s Dusseldorf lent; and InterContinental Köln. The dishes we had are apparently the hotels’ signature dishes so they must be what we call in Filipino their pambato.
They, and other dishes being offered during this whole October promotion, are all included in the “Intercontinental Kitchen,” a special 60th anniversary edition that contains the recipes of these dishes along with other equally outstanding ones from over 150 InterContinental hotels around the world. It is available for P2,517.
Intercontinental Manila is aptly represented with a beautifully rendered pancit palabok, topped with two large prawns no less. Lamentably, though, it does not include the recipe of my Prince Albert favorite prime rib. Oh, well. I’ll just have to wait for my next birthday where we usually celebrate it with a prime rib dinner at Prince Albert. It is simply peerless when it comes to succulent roast rib and impeccable service.
For reservations, call 793-7000.