Restaurants

Vaudeville’s May Menu

24 April 2010

We have an delicious new line-up for the new Vaudeville menu, which runs until the end of May. Based upon the track record to date, the overwhelming favourite is going to be the meat option. We really can’t blame diners for following the herd on this one. Namibian free-range beef is one of the prize [...]

Read the full article →

The Ghosts of Meals Past

1 April 2010

I’ve been mulling my Vaudeville kitchen experiences for quite a while, trying to reach a point of semi-objectively drawing some conclusions. During ‘service’, kitchens can be very stressful places. There’s enough on one’s mind getting the food on the menu out, without also having to deal with last-minute likes, dislikes, intolerances or allergies. When there [...]

Read the full article →

Angelic Red Snapper

12 January 2010

I am usually loath to describe something as “the best” experience ever. Speed or distance travelled, weight and other such things can easily be supported by empirical measurement, but experiences are too subjective. Similarly, there is no such thing as “the best” wine, because scoring of wine is inherently flawed. Having said all of that, [...]

Read the full article →

Jean-Georges in da house

30 October 2009

Jean-Georges Vongerichten was the subject of a recent Fortune magazine article, prompted by the writer’s apparent fascination at his attempt to “create an haute cuisine chain with the reach of McDonald’s”. All of this assumes the traditional model, of the master chef plying his trade in one kitchen only, and discounts the possibility that his [...]

Read the full article →

In Daniel’s Den

25 October 2009

Henry David Thoreau “went to the woods”, he said, “to suck the marrow out of life”. While he was describing a more bucolic environment, getting the most out of three days and four nights in New York does require a similar level of gusto in grasping hold of each waking moment. In our case, that [...]

Read the full article →

Al Fresco in Hong Kong

8 September 2009

Wooloo Mooloo, on the roof of The Hennessy (256 Hennesy Road, Wanchai) is a rare outdoor venue in Hong Kong. From this vantage point one has views towards Kowloon, as well as of Happy Valley racecourse. The stemware is all plastic – imagine the effect of a wine glass dropped from 32 storeys – which [...]

Read the full article →

Massaging the Wheels of Commerce

7 September 2009

I, almost literally, had to sing for my supper at Ming Kee restaurant (Lun Fat Street, off Johnston Road in Wanchai), where I was a guest of my Hong Kong customer. He was hosting a customer from China and asked me to talk through two Bordeaux wines he was pitching. The restaurant is very local, [...]

Read the full article →

A ‘Grand’ Meal

21 July 2009

It will be interesting to see how the recession plays out in the immediate future of design. My guess is that frugality – perhaps not as austere as that espoused by my grandmother, who lived through not only the Great Depression, but also the Second World War – will trump ostentation. Even for those who [...]

Read the full article →

Travails of ‘travaille du vin’

12 May 2009

It takes a special kind of person to set up a wine import business. In the beginning, volumes are generally low, margins are small, all the prospective customers want to taste before buying (not the best way to deplete inventory), and in the interim one still needs to pay overheads. Savings may well have been [...]

Read the full article →

Restaurant Kanda

17 April 2009

(3-6-34 Motoazabu, Minato-ku, Tokyo. Telephone: 03-5786-0150) We were in a side street off a succession of side streets that could only claim vague proximity to the very swish Roppongi Hills precinct, but to all intents and purposes we were parked outside a nondescript apartment block. One might not unreasonably have doubted the presence of any [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →