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…
Tag: Fine Dining
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
London: World #97 & 1* Hedone
This cat marches to the beat of his own drum! It’s all I could think after I finished chatting to solicitor turned food blogger turned uber chef Mikael Jonsson. I’d just finished my multi course, sensory overloading tasting menu at Hedone and was still reflecting on what was most likely one of the best meals…
FoodMeUpScotty 