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Valentine’s Day, lesser known as the Feast of Saint Valentine, has come to have a range of traditions associated with it.
From the roses to the chocolates, this annual celebration of amore has taken on a spirit of its own, with mortifying barbershop quartets serenading recipients on behalf of romantics and an unofficial Single’s Day being held the day before Valentine’s Day. It has also expanded in certain cultures to be an all-encompassing celebration of love beyond just the romantic.
To celebrate all forms of the day, we decided to sample one of the finer traditions of a courtly Valentine’s Day – the dinner menu set for the romantic day at the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay’s CUT by Wolfgang Puck.
As we entered and walked up the admired CUT’s famous crystal-spired chandelier, we were greeted by the assistant restaurant director Yussouf Kiamil who introduced us to the set menus we would be sampling.
To accommodate all palates, the culinary team at CUT has created a vegetarian and non-vegetarian set menu for guests and we sampled a couple of items from each.
While Executive Sous-Chef James Martin got started on our appetiser, Yussouf set us up with a couple of his favourite mocktails – Double Happiness and the Cracklin’ Rosie (BD4.3 each).
As I enjoyed the raspberry, lychee and cranberry flavours of the Cracklin’ Rosie, our first item from the vegetarian menu wafted over to our table – the Italian Burrata. If you are uninitiated in the beautiful banquet of buratta like me, it is a fresh Italian cow milk cheese, with a firm but soft mozzarella exterior and a wonderful velvety cream interior. Served with a few asphodel sprigs, Verjus grapes, a handful of blood orange slices and chopped hazelnuts, each bite is a sensual experience that definitely must be eaten slowly to be appreciated.
In fact, that is the theme for the entire menu as it has been engineered gastronomically to be full of diverse flavourful bites. The next item – the Pan Seared Scottish Scallops - our first from the nonvegetarian menu – kept up the bite-sized theme and the surprises coming.
With this one, I got a chance to experience carbonara foam for the first time. I had seen it on Chef’s Table but in real life, it’s bewildering yet alluring. It has the taste of excellent parmesan but the texture of cotton candy, if that makes sense. Its ‘partners-in-dine’, which included perfectly seared scallops and candied squash seeds atop a smear of butternut squash, brought this celestial seafood heist together.
Next up, from the vegetarian menu, the Roasted Cauliflower, served with smoked brown butter, burnt cauliflower puree, Romanesco and sliced almonds, despite its simplicity was beautiful in presentation and succulent in flavours. The highlight was watching Chef James surgically put the dish together, using his medical tweezers to pick picture-perfect petals of a viola flower as a topping for the dish.
And our final entrée for the afternoon was the Australian Wagyu Tenderloin, which was served with a braised ox cheek, roasted baby onions and parsnip, with just enough Aged Beef Jus to really get the flavours mingling and getting to know each other.
Every bite burst with flavour, and the lovely surprise with the dish is that you get two distinct tastes and texture profiles. The braised ox-cheek with abundant wagyu fat has a melting point lower than the human body temperature, ensuring that it melts in your mouth like beefy butter and the tenderloin has a slightly firmer but still succulent profile.
And while we were recovering from the state of enchanted euphoria, we were served our dessert – Pistachio & Raspberry Heart, with a side of raspberry sorbet. While it looks unassuming at first, as you cut into the pistachio sponge topped with pistachio mousse, it bursts with a layer of raspberry jam, that when paired with the sorbet, quickly found its way as close to our hearts as possible en route to our bellies.
And with that, we wrapped up the afternoon walking away with a familiar feeling – the Valentine’s menu, like their culinary experience, is a cut above the rest.
Head over to CUT by Wolfgang Puck at the Four Seasons Hotel Bahrain Bay on Valentine’s and enjoy the set menu for BD55net per person inclusive of a welcome drink. For details and bookings, call 17115044.
Scan the QR Code below to sample the experience.
