u/Stump007

I’m registered for diploma without really doing much research.

I am a hobbyist, absolutely not in the wine business.

I did L2 which i got merit without really opening the textbook. Then got L3 also with distinction, I mostly just listened in class and did some braisncrape 3 days before the exam to complete stuff I didn’t tknow at all like grapes or regions I frankly never heard of. Both were in person lessons.

So I ended not feeling like a real “wine connoisseur “ and just no brain opted in Diploma. My bad, I did zero research and now may regret.

1 - Ineffective online setup: Turns out Online class aren’t really classes. The few zoom calls are in impossible hours for my region.

2 - Lonely and boring : There’s no student interaction online at all. Managed to create a chat group with half a dozen people in my city. But everyone has different Ds on the pipeline and frankly group tasting are meaningless without a WSET faculty IMO

3 - unreasonable homework expectations: online homework is ludicrous , expectations on all the wine to procure and taste is frankly stupid in terms of logistics and cost unless you’re a sommelier ofc

4 - Unclear schedule : Lessons just breeze by, in fact I didn’t even know D2 started until the last email was sent

5 - No respect for our time: you get 4 mails by week with shitload of text and fluff which is obviously AI generated.

6 - lots lots lots of hidden costs: I naively thought the registration was costly but buy one cry once. Turns out you need to pay $$$ each time you take an exam. Some of them you can’t even split. For example, I passed D4 tasting but failed D4 theory so I need to do the whole thing over again and pay full price. It is quite frustrating.

In the end I only tried the D4 exam and now I have very low motivation to just swipe the card again and again to continue.

My main beef really is the online class which is just a big joke.

My options are

A: cut my losses and leave it there

B: try to find a way to motivate myself to get back in (maybe register the wine with jimmy thing or something)?

C: wait if maybe one day they start providing in person lessons in my city and do it then (they started with D4 only, it was over a weekend and it was pretty good)

Keen to hear any constructive advice from people who tried L4!

Took advantage of a short trip to Taipei to try out Nobuo.

I posted about Eika here recently and thought it maybe interesting to also share my experience at Nobuo given they are both op and coming Japanese/Taiwanese influenced places.

Please note my wife and I have lived extensively in Japan, Taiwan and France - but everyone can have a different sensitivity to the food so it is a personal opinion here.

In short, it felt Nobuo is a solid 1* but not a lot more than that during our visit. Everything was good and well executed but not much to remember particularly.

Reservation: not too hard, there were a few slots within our window about 2 weeks ahead, albeit on weekday.

Atmosphere: quite classic fine dining setting. Kitchen is fully open to the dining room similarly to Eika. Likely in reference to Taiwan street restaurants.

Service: ok. A bit rushed and mechanical, like typical waiter spitting out a well rehearsed speech. Not very personable. We got service in mandarin but best get it in English as these are the only tables the chef gave explanation/spoke to.
Meal started quite late, 40min after the set time - likely because they wanted to wait for patrons who were (extremely) late…

Food:

Started with a sashimi, which was ok, but nothing particular other than having to eat it with a fork and knife. Not the strongest way to start a course. No wine from the pairing served yet.

White asparagus with yolk gel and abalone, over the same sauce as the sashimi. Abalone was excellent as well as the yolk gel, unfortunately it is impossible to tell if you didn’t decompose the dish to eat the parts separately: the asparagus was overpowering the subtle flavors of the abalone and the gel. It would have been excellent if not for this lack of balance.

Scallop, smoked. Unclear what the contribution of the goji berries was, didn’t understand the dish but it was good.

Scallop mousse - basically a quenelle made of scallops which was interesting and quite good.

Prawn - probably the strongest dish of the course the fennel/celery did enhance the dish despite the fact I usually hate these. Served over a sweet and sour whey based sauce. Excellent.

Tai fish with spring onion sauce, good

Wagyu (add on for 600 NT) - surprised and confused by the hotaru ika on top, it did bring some brine flavor, kind of like adding oyster on top of steak, but confused. The steak itself was good and especially the onion sauce accompanying it was excellent.

Quail (wife dish with no add on) - probably a better pic than the steak. Very well executed. Served with a sweet and sour sauce and paired with cherries, the drawback is at this stage it is getting a bit tiring to eat sweet and sour stuff.

Curry - the rice was really excellent. The curry itself was very sweet with flavor of toffee/chocolate. Felt almost like a caramel sauce. Not really our cup of tea.

Apricot with mozzarella and strawberries sauce - like a caprese basically, a bit confusing.

Black beans crème brûlée - good!

Mignardise: cannelé (anecdotal), egg cake with a runny yolk like vanilla custard (excellent), melon daifuku (ok)

Drinks: took the 5 wine pairing, not much to write home about, it was fairly generic except maybe for the Taiwanese wines and the sake.

Overall it was a good, solid one star experience, essentially mostly french with Japanese / Taiwanese ingredients. Almost half the price of Eika, but not comparable places. That said if I really had to compare, Eika is clearly a league above in terms of concept, atmosphere and overall execution.

All in all recommend Nobuo for a straight to the point classic one star experience with a north East Asian twist.

Diploma Advice - give up or double down?