FoodMeUpScotty

Flashback: My first Aulis 1* visit!

There are moments in your life that fall very clearly into before and after category. You know the ones I mean; I’m fairly sure you’ve had a few of your own. My birthday dinner on August 18th, 2022 was one of those moments. A restaurant. A night. A menu I’ll never forget. So much so that the very…

Korean Fine Dining Hits Brisbane!

I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone that South Korea is hot right now; I’ve been watching a lot of Korean TV lately, which is somehow hilarious, heartfelt and slickly produced all at once. I mean, who hasn’t loved Squid Game or Physical 100… Such wildly gripping drama. You may also have noticed that Korean…

Is 3 Hatted Sixpenny “Anniversary Worth?”

There’s a quiet little ritual the Girl and I have held onto for nearly three decades now. Every year, when our anniversary rolls around, we do something a little special. It always revolves around food, of course it does, and usually involves tracking down the very best restaurant we can find. When we lived in…

Deer Duck Bistro: Worthy of 2 Hats?

Memory can be a funny thing when it comes to restaurants. Before we left Brisbane for Hong Kong, Deer Duck Bistro was one of those places we visited a few times and always left thinking, yeah, that was pretty good. It had this quirky charm, eclectic without being chaotic, and it sat quietly in that space…

Michelin Stars vs Chef Hats: A Foodie Tale of Two Cities

Since being back in Australia, one of the more common questions I get is some variation of: “So what’s the difference between Michelin Stars and Chef Hats?” Usually followed quickly by, “Do you think Australian restaurants would get Michelin stars?” After a decade in Hong Kong, a city where you can get a bowl of noodles worthy of…

To Blog or Not To Blog

At some point I lost my spark. It felt like my creativity, and more so, my desire to write just left me. Looking back, my last post was July 2021: Let’s put that into context. It was 4 years, 4 months and 22 days since I last posted. To be fair, a lot was going…

Flashback: World #32 Nerua Spain

Life gets pretty hectic at times, and while I tried to keep this blog up to date regularly, I missed posting about some amazing restaurants. So I’ve created the Flashback Series; short sharp updates about some of the best restaurants I’ve been to and never wrote about… Hope you enjoy I’m starting with a restaurant…

Jean May: The new Frenchie in Wanchai

I’ve been a little obsessed with two things of late. Firstly, I’ve been trying like crazy to get back into Jean May for a second visit. The second obsession has been duck. Did you know that it’s almost impossible to get a decent duck breast through any of the home delivery services? Believe me, I’ve…

LPM Restaurant & Bar: Stay for the dessert!

Gone are the days where I could just pop into a fine dining restaurant for a casual meal for the fun of it. Firstly, the big corporate salary is a thing of the past; but mainly, while running and owning fitness centres, it’s important not to indulge too often and stock on the weight! The…

Cornerstone: Big flavours extreme value

Oh hey! Long time no see… Can you believe it’s been 953 days since I last put pen to paper to talk about food? There’s been so much that’s happened in the last two and a half years and I’ve been a little busy and distracted. Well, I suddenly find myself with a bit of…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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;…

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,…