What everybody likes about Christmas besides seeing all relatives again is getting presents!! This year in addition to my presents my sweet love (Delphine De Pauw, but I guess you already figured out that one 🙂 )invited me for a date to end 2015 in a good way. The only thing I knew is the fact we were going out for dinner, who was looking after our little baby girl or where this dinner would take place stayed a surprise until the last minute… the only thing she would tell me was that I mentioned that it was a restaurant on my to do list 🙂 (which basically didn’t help me as my list is very long 😦 ) Belieeeeeeeve me when I say I tried to find it out, but my wife’s lips were sealed 🙂 ). After lots of days of impatient waiting on our way to the restaurant my wife revealed we were having our last supper of 2015 at restaurant Cuichine. Cuichine stands for Cuisine Chinese or better a restaurant serving ‘modern’ Chinese cuisine. Not the typical ‘all you can eat’ place where quantity is mostly more important than quality and they have enormous menu (as that is the first image that pops up in my head when I think of a Chinese restaurant). I think at least 10 years (I think even longer, I was still living with my parents if I remember it well) since my last Chinese restaurant visit.  What primates at Cuichine is quality of the products they use, cooking using modern techniques, but still respecting some traditions but still adding a modern touch.

Although I love dim sum, I decided to take the Peking duck as a starter (as that is told to be one of their signature dishes). My wife on the other hand did take the Dim Sums.

I can hear you think “those are pretty classic dishes”… which is correct, but they did also have a few other dishes on the menu for starters… but the heart or taste buds in this case want what they want 🙂 But can assure you that besides the dim sum and Peking duck all dishes are prepared using modern cooking techniques and presented in a more modern way.

For the mean course I was tempted in taking the onglet ‘black bean’.  My wife had set her senses on the Canadian lobster prepared with ginger, oyster sauce and fresh herbs :-). Just like with our starters sharing was not part of the night (of food that is)we just liked our chosen dishes too much to share them. (usually when somebody asks you to share it is mostly because they don’t like it! Otherwise you just want to keep it all for yourself or does that say a lot about me 🙂 ) I was surprised of the quality of the ‘onglet’, as it is a piece of meat tends to get very tough if prepared wrong (like eating a shoe sole). But in this case the meat was prepared to perfection!!  By the looks of my wife’s plate I think she liked it as there was not too much left besides the shell from the lobster 🙂

The biggest surprise for me was the wine list (which is also not like in you ‘regular’ Chinese restaurant’) as they have a very nice selection from wines, beers etc.. (Also some nice Madeira) from all over the world including BIO wines… I knew the person responsible for the wines (probably the owner) knows his wines and definitely enjoys them from the moment their wine suggestion of the moment was the red FP wine from my dear friends Filipa Pato and William Wouters 🙂 . Found out that not only me, but also the Peking duck seemed to be a Baga friend 🙂 :-).

Normally I’m not really in to taking a chocolate dessert, but a quick sin before the new year resolutions seemed to be in place 🙂 .

To make a long story short it was the perfect restaurant to have our last 2015 supper and hope to enjoy more of their cuisine in the near future. A special thank to my sweet wife for inviting me and can’t wait for our next romantic dinner together 🙂

Restaurant Cuichine

Website: http://www.cuichine.be/

Address: Draakstraat 13, 2018 Antwerp -Belgium

Phone n°: +3232899245