HI HI HI! Do you remember me?! After more than two months of absence, I’m baaaack, at least for now.
Things were frantically busy that I was barely pulling myself together. Man, I have, like, 3 months worth of back logs… But let’s just put the boring stuff aside, and get to the yummies.

You’ve seen it, read it, done it, been there, eaten with them. Dinning with food floggers always surprises you with something impressive, creative, unique, awesome, tasty, rare to find, incredibly huge, incredibly tiny etc. And that’s one of the things I love about spending time with them – some wow factor with food.

The food bloggers’ dinner was taken place at Bistro CBD by Merivale as one of their winter promotion events, where our favourite four food bloggers take a challenge to work their ass off in the commercial kitchen and serve 70 hungry guests, to be specific, 70 *paying* guests. All of them have been known for their impressive culinary talents and skills, but I had never seen them in a professional kitchen situation – I was so thrilled to find out what they had been busy preparing their courses!

As soon as I walked into CBD hotel, I found familiar faces already enjoying their drinks. I had to miss out on so many dinning occasions with them, it was so great catching up with them!

I know this wasn’t only me who was screaming inside “OHHH MY GWAAAD, WE DONT HAVE MUCH LIGHTING INSIDE!!” – yes yes, nicely dimmed low light can be romantic and it’d set the mood and stuff, but to food bloggers, it simply means extra work with their cameras. I do not have excellent camera skills like others do, and I knew I’d be having hard time taking pictures! (Thanks god, at least I’m a professional photoshopper!)

So, please bear with my poor camera skill – these dishes looked more impressive and beautiful than how they look in my pictures. (But it turned out that iPad was a good source of light. hahaha.)

Fresh kingfish with mildness of olive oil was accompanied with tangy lime and wasabi. Sharpness of lime and wasabi and silky kingfish texture was a great combination on my tongue.

Oh loved these crispy dumplings! He explained that he used Gyoza pastry instead of traditional thick pastry to make the dumplings crispier. Juicy lamb minced was well-seasoned and I love how they tastes as is, but sourness from the garlic and yoghurt sauce worked really well and cut through the richness of the dumplings.

Billy is the pork man – he has already proven to many of us that he knows how to work with pork! Amazingly tender and succulent twice cooked pork belly was placed on the beautifully vivid red beetroot sauce along with apple gel, cubed beetroot and crumbled black pudding. I really could go for another slice of the pork belly!

Oh man, melting tender beef cheeks! I have such a week spot for tender braised meat, and Karen has done such an awesome job on this. What it looks like pureed potato is actually a cauliflower puree, which goes well with the melting goodness. And look look, I’ve got one with fat layers. Me likes!

So what’s for dessert? The title didn’t give away much clue and some of us were guessing that it would definitely involve macarons – we know she’s a determined macaronian! But we were wrong in a good way. Perfection that it was in fact. The chocolate terrine with salt flakes and lemon olive oil ice cream garnished with a tuile. I wasn’t quite sure what the ice cream was made from until explained by Linda – smooth mild taste and texture with a hint of acidity – it goes fantastic with rhubarb jam! Absolutely fantastic desserts to end the course with. I really loved the different layers of chocolate – ganache, mousse and brownie, works magically with the salt flakes.

Even from their tweets from previous nights, I can obviously tell that they have put so much effort and thoughts into the dinner this evening. All of their wonderful dishes were also accentuated with their personalities- where they came from, passion & love for food, and I enjoyed every bite of it. Kudos for Fouad, Billy, Karen and Linda for successfully satisfying 70 people with amazing dishes!

So who’s the next food bloggers to go through the pressure?

There was an announcement at the end that Bistro CBD will close its door on the evening, and will be reopening as BiStrode CBD in mid August.