White, eventually

I didn't post anything yesterday about going to White (the restaurant at the Hilton) last night, because I had a feeling it would jinx it (a la SkyJump last week). That was somewhat needless, since I got a text yesterday afternoon telling me we were no longer going to White, and going to the Cock and Bull instead. Somehow we had gone from a fine dining restaurant at a 5 star hotel to an English style pub, and I had no idea why. I decided to dress up somewhat anyway, but forewent the heels in protest. There were some mix ups with picking people up etc which resulted in me waiting in the pub by myself for half an hour. I also refused to run down the street after someone who had walked in and not seen me and walked out again. Meanwhile, apparently a name like "Cock and Bull" doesn't speak English pub to Chinese natives, and our organiser was shocked and left us there to go on a mission to find an actual restaurant in the area. She ended up calling us to tell us to meet her at Lone Star. I had to apologise to the bartenders, as she had also actually booked a table at the pub we were vacating. I also had to down the glass of wine I'd bought while I was waiting for everyone else. Now whilst Lone Star is an actual restaurant, it it much more family/American style, and still a long way from fine dining. When we arrived, I finally managed to find out why the White reservation was cancelled, and found out that it was just because of a well-intentioned assumption (that some of us couldn't afford to eat there). After some discussion, we all agreed that we still wanted to go there, and after a quick phone call, abandoned the second venue of the evening (the poor staff). Of course this meant that I made use of the heels I kept in the car "just in case", and I had to take one of the girls home so she could change quickly.

Once we actually got there though, the night vastly improved. I decided to forget about being grumpy, which was helped by the fabulous Pegasus Bay Riesling (2004), which I had tasted at the vineyard in January (lucky coincidence since the wine was chosen before I arrived). White is a lovely restaurant, and looks exactly like the pictures. The staff were friendly enough, very professional, although I had expected somewhat better service in general (several things weren't done correctly, and quite a few things left very late). It made me feel better about my personal level of service though! Food was great (I had a seafood ragout, which wasn't really a ragout, with tuna, salmon, scampi, mussels, cockles, tempura vegetables and hazelnut cream), and we had whiled away over 3 hours by the time we had cheese, desserts, tea, coffee and petit fours (teeny tiny meringues, yum). There was a lot of work talk, as there tends to be when you hang out with a group of work people, but at one point one of the staff came over and asked if we were talking about one of his fellow wine waiters (who I went away with up north and works at Orbit part time too). We said no (cause we were talking about a total retard at the time), and he asked us what Sky City was like to work for. I won't go into details, since every organisation has pros and cons (and it would be highly unprofessional to discuss these things on the internet, surely), but he did tell us that White was hiring if any of us were good (what sort of a comment is that? Of course we are. Well, I am.). Pity I am leaving the country ...