Chocolate with olive oil, a preposterous suggestion of the strangest bedfellows. But it worked, in a ganache handled deftly by Chef Jean Louis Leon, that ended a dinner of seven “chocolate on the salty side” dishes launched in all Movenpick hotels worldwide.
This wasn’t the first time he slipped something surreptitiously from his sleeves. Several weeks prior to this dinner to preview the global campaign that ends November 20th, he was also introduced to the press in a dinner that did not include a written menu. “It’s a surprise!,” he interjects in a thick French accent that automatically brings you to venerable kitchens and thick sauces and glorious wine with every meal.
True enough, at that first dinner, he sprinkled real gold flecks on the starter, a melange of squid tossed with tapenade, prawns in avocado oil and citrus dressing, beet-cured salmon in mustard dill sauce, and a interesting squid ink sponge that was in fact served as simply “your seafood platter”. He then let out half a coconut shell, hastily husked to show texture, and filled it with pork cooked in his version of Bicol Express, a spicy dish from the Southern Tagalog region, with young coconut jelly, seared onions, dried shrimp, and topped with a soft boiled egg that run all over in a beautiful mess when broken with a spoon.
For #MovenpickChocolate night, however, my runaway favorite was the lamb shank, slow roasted with pistachio and a hazelnut chocolate pesto, in a successful pairing of two rich flavors that did not cancel each other out, or lobby for your palate’s attention.
And yet the pretty one has to be mentioned…a tarte tatin or upside down pie done in the French tradition from tomatoes, with a white lemon chocolate that brought out the flavors of the goat’s cheese, pine nuts, and coffee beans. It crumbled nicely in the mouth, and left a refreshing hint of herb right before the meatier offerings it preceded.
It’s surprises like these that make the trip to meet these new plates worth the journey.
