Estate & After Ate

Estate: Round Three. After Ate: Round Two.

Earlier entries on Estate: Nov. 29 & Dec. 6. Earlier entry on After Ate: Jan . 5.

Some servings must be shared; case in point, Estate's ploughman's lunch, prodigiously perfect for a British footballer's appetite. Teeming with things that come in threes: a trinity of cold cuts _ salted beef, smoked salami & chicken ham _ & a trio of cheese _ blue, cheddar & brie. Plus, crusty bread, pickles, arugula & pear chutney to tame the meat-&-dairy sodium.

Foie gras on Danish toast with micro greens & pomegranate reduction. Wishful thinking: if only the pan-seared slab of liver were thicker than the slice of pastry.

Lobster salad, a RM129.90++ monster from the deep, possibly the priciest "salad" in town. Poached chunks of fresh crustacean flesh, made sweeter with seedless grapes, roma tomatoes, avocado & fresh basil, tossed in ranch dressing.

In Jamie we trust: Tellicherry black pepper (widely considered the world's best pepper, hailing from India) & Mediterranean sun-dried sea salt.

Customers can cross-order cocktails from Tate next door: Marry Hendrick (hendrick's, creme de cassis, egg white, lemon juice, raspberry, grapefruit bitters) & Kraphao Fragrancy (hendrick's, basil, lemon juice, sugar, egg white, celery bitters).

Pina Agave (don julio reposado, pineapple juice, lemon juice, agave nectar, cucumber) & Benne Agos (angostura 1919, pineapple juice, lime juice, angostura bitters, roasted sesame).

Earlier entries on Tate: June 30, 2011 & July 27, 2011.

For desserts, walk toward the light: step outside Estate & take a table at After Ate.

Postre Chaja _ a South American confection filled with mangoes, salted peanuts, fresh cream & meringue. Essentially a sponge cake that tastes OK, though somewhat less flavorful than its list of ingredients might lead us to believe.

Bombe Alaska, reinvented with flair _ pistachio parfait on a vanilla sponge base, covered with meringue, torched & sprinkled with chopped pistachios. It might seem nuts to have so much pistachios in this, but they do add a unique, toasty feel to this ensemble.

Next up: this one was presented in the shape of a plain dome _ not exactly what we expected when we ordered the Deconstructed Black Forest.

But break open the pavlova shell & it yields a treasure trove of milky-fruity sweetness, thanks to a high-fructose fusillade of chocolate sponge, Bailey's chantilly & cherry sorbet.

Buried in berries: Strawberry salad, entombed in an avalanche of raspberry rose granita, lychee sorbet, clotted cream & rose meringue. Tongue-puckering, that's how it tastes.

Estate & After Ate @ The Intermark,

Ground Floor, The Intermark, Jalan Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur.