NYC: World #82 & 3* Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare

This is a tale that has humble beginnings; it starts in the tiny little hamlet of Cefalù in Sicily and finishes in New York City. A dining buddy who I trust implicitly was having one of the meals of his life in a restaurant called Liska in the aforementioned little village in Southern Italy.  A…

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Cosme: World #40

There’s always a level of excitement about heading to New York; at first, it’s restrained, but as you get closer to arrival, the excitement ratchets up. For me, part of the excitement is trying to figure out which of the city’s more amazing restaurants I’ll try to get into.  It’s a task made difficult by…

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Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants # 32: Neighbourhood

Neighbourhood wasn’t really a restaurant on my must visit radar. Even after my foodie buddy Alex mentioned that she was ‘dying’ to visit, my attitude was still a little bit ‘meh’. It wasn’t until I saw that the little restaurant has made it to #32 on the recently published Asia’s 50 Best Restaurant list that…

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The Middle Eastern option: Francis

I have to tell you straight up, I’m not a connoisseur of Middle Eastern cuisine; although I’ve some Isreali friends that swear that the food in Tel Aviv is some of the best in the world. So I grabbed some friends with a bit more experience with all foods Middle Eastern and made a pilgrimage…

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Frantzéns Kitchen: deserving of a Michelin Star

I can’t help but feel that we’re missing out in Honkers… One of the biggest food revolutions in recent memory just seems to be passing us by! Of course, I’m referring to the Nordic food phenomenon that’s taken most of the world by storm and made especially famous by René Redzepi of NOMA.  Oh sure, we’ve…

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London: The 2* Claude Bosi at Bibendum

Gee, you’ve gotta have bags of confidence to set up shop in the Bibendum… Otherwise known as Michelin House, the permanent UK headquarters for the famed Michelin organisation.  You know the history, of course, a tyre company that started to tell folks about restaurants around the place…. Well, Claude Bosi is no ordinary kind of…

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London: The 1* Restaurant Story

When I travel overseas for work, I generally have a long list of restaurants to visit; but I’ve been to the UK so regularly over the last three years, the list of must-visit restaurants has diminished quite significantly. So, for my most recent trip, I limited my fine dining experiences to two establishments; one that’s…

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New Chef at the Two Starred Caprice

I’ve been having a lot of fun lately Of course, there has been the regular dining at amazing restaurants….  Always fun But there’s something special about helping someone discover the joys of international cuisine and Fine Dining. One of our gym buddies, let’s call him Matty, is relatively late to the exquisite joys of ultra-fine-dining;…

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Earthy & Raw: Beet is pretty sweet

The plethora of talented chefs hitting our shores is quite amazing. And it seems as if the minimum requirement to open a ‘hot’ new restaurant in Hong Kong is a chef with an impeccable pedigree and an eye for detail.  Instagram ready food that’s crowd-pleasing is a must, along with an atmosphere that is hip,…

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The best way to finish the year; Seasons with Lorenz Hoja

Talk about bittersweet. I’d just found out that big changes were afoot at one of my favourite Hong Kong restaurants. Head chef Oliver E was departing the restaurant that he’d helmed since it’s opening and was being replaced. Ordinarily, I’d have been heartbroken; I mean, I’d spent so much time at Seasons by Oliver E…

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It’s a great view from the Glasshouse

Sometimes, it really does pay off being a passenger. I’m normally the guy who’s picking the restaurants when dining; it’s not really a problem though, since I love making recommendations on great places to eat.  But it does mean that my dining choices are fairly limited to places I know and/or cuisine options that I’m…

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Meeting Joël Robuchon

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you’d know that I have a certain penchant for French fine dining; more so, I have an absolute love of French cuisine. There is no one who personifies French fine dining more than the legendary Joël Robuchon; a man who has transcended being a mere…

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London: Core by Clare Smyth

For whatever reason I pretend to come up with, I’ve essentially been too lazy to secure a reservation at London’s 3 Michelin Starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay. So when I heard that the restaurant’s chef patron, and one of the very rare three-star female chefs, was leaving to establish her own restaurant, I thought I’d be…

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The story of Electric Avenue and the tasty burger

I’m always on the lookout for a great burger. When you think of the Food Pyramid, then a burger has got all the bases covered; mind you, the proportion of fats and meat might be a little on the excessive side 🙂 I’d been hearing a lot about a new burger joint over at Sai…

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Germany: Leipzig is home to the 2* Falco and not much else

What the heck is in Leipzig? Well, as it turns out, Leipzig is not the most exciting of German cities; possibly due to a couple of factors…  It was almost bombed out of existence during World War II, then had the misfortune to find itself part of the East German (and therefore Soviet) side of…

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Berlin: World #48 & 2* Restaurant Tim Raue

When we were planning our European vacation, it was undertaken with the knowledge that my birthday was smack bang in the middle.  It meant that I needed to select where we’d go for my birthday dinner. Last time we were in Berlin, I had a fantastic time.  So much so, I’ve often rated it as…

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1* Takumi by Daisuke Mori: New chef & name but still amazing

 Can a restaurant really ever shake off the ghosts of the past? One of my favourite meals in Hong Kong was at the (then) 2* Wagyu Takumi, helmed by renowned Japanese chef Mitsuru Konishi (see post here).  I simply loved the exquisitely executed Japanese French fusion style of cooking, and I’m not alone, it’s a…

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Amsterdam: 1* Bridges – the unexpected – the inspired

We’d always planned to have a summer holiday that was largely based around eating and driving, driving and eating; with a quick sojourn to #ArtsTown to satisfy the girl’s #documenta14 fixation. The plan was to land in Amsterdam for a few days of timezone adjustment, then commence our driving and dining tour around Germany.  What…

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Terroir Parisien: Pretty plating but a bit inconsistent

When I heard that Yannick Allèno was opening an outlet in Hong Kong, I immediately had visions of a new gastronomic paradise hitting our fair shores. With his two Parisian Fine Diners rewarded with 3 Michelin Stars each, including his showpiece; Alléno Paris au Pavillon Ledoyen entrenched in the #Worlds50best restaurants (#31): How could I…

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Gordon Ramsey: Bread Street Kitchen and the Beef Wellington

I’m gonna get straight to the point, with little to no preamble. I had the Gordon Ramsey version of Beef Wellington from Bread Street Kitchen and it was amazing….. Right, back to normal programming…. One of my foodie buddies recently and somewhat sheepishly admitted that he’d never had a beef wellington before; then almost embarrassingly,…

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