We finally went to our Xmas dinner tonight. It had been a topic in the office for almost two months. We probably had a look at the menu at least 5 times before today. I was amazed that after all that, people haven’t yet lost their interests in physically going there and were still quite looking forward to it.

So here we were, at Pangaea, Manuka, one of the most poshest places in ACT and one of very few suburbs I truly like. With my back leaning on a soft cushion and against a big open window, the evening’s breeze blew into the restaurant but the major colour of this place, RED, kind of helped to sweep the chill away. I chose my classic outing dress, a dark chocolate brown short sleeved dress with soft pink silk belt to make a ribbon bow around the waist, as my tonight’s clothing. Plus a black velvet little cardigan, I felt I would be warm enough to bear the coldness till the midnight.

The food was lovely. We actually had a bit of everything, like Yum-Cha, except it was a set menu instead of ordering things randomly at the spot. I especially enjoyed the calamari and grilled haloumi. But the most impressive thing was not main ingredient in each course, it was the other ingredients and dipping sauce accompanied with the main thing on the plates. Shredded shallot and cucumber in yogurt sauce, satay sauce with peanuts, tomato onion salsa and olive tapanade, babaghanoush and balsamic reduction….. they are the things that you can see how delicate the food offered by this restaurant really are and how much effort the chief had made for each small dish.

My colleagues kept pouring Spy Valley Sauvignon Blanc into my wine glass and they knew that I am the person who needed to worry about how much I should drink the least. I already felt very full in half way of the whole dinner, and with at least 3 glasses of wine, I did feel like a cup of tea as a conclusion for the day.

We walked to the car park and did a bit window shopping along the street. It was only 8:30pm. I can see the night, for many of people in there, has just started.

“Well, this is IT, our Christmas dinner that we have had waited for a year since 2006″, I told myself. We had been rewarded and recharged and tomorrow? I reckon we should be ready for the holiday, should we?

Footnote: I didn’t want my colleagues think that I was too drunk, so I didn’t really take photos for the food I had tonight, like what I normally would do when outing for a dinner, so the above photo is from Pangaea website.