2017 - Gazing and Grazing

Bam! Special Evening with Paco Perez

September 23rd, 2017

Bam! on its own is already worth going to but the occasional special guest chef dinners are great events. The following photos are from when Paco Perez guest chef-ed earlier this year. Paco is chef of Michelin two-starred Miramar in Llanca, Spain. The featured photo above was the first of our six courses (five savoury and one dessert). Over the sweet peas, a freeze dried consommé melts to form a thin gelatinous layer. The ingredients were fairly exotic - sea cucumber, eel and tendons -...

Chicago’s Alinea – Come on an Empty Stomach

September 23rd, 2017

Come on a very empty stomach. Some top rated restaurants fail to live up to the hype but this is not the case for Alinea. It has three Michelin stars and was voted the country's outstanding restaurant by the James Beard Foundation in 2016. Admittedly I was half worried that I wasn't going to enjoy the food as much as I should, but the presentation, breadth of tastes from dish to dish and fine but not stuffy service really surprised me as to how good this place really is. It's almost...

Les Amis is Still On Top of its Game

September 21st, 2017

Les Amis (website) remains one of Singapore's top fine dining destinations. It has been a standout for decades but I haven't eaten here in a few years and so a visit a few months back surprised me positively. The restaurant's current chef, Sebastien Lepinoy, hails from France and settles Les Amis with quality modern french cooking with a lighter touch. While Singapore's Michelin rankings may have left some surprised, I do think that Les Amis genuinely deserves its two-starred accolade. And...

Venice and the Prosecco Road

September 20th, 2017

Prosecco and Venice go hand in hand. Since Venice is just a one hour train ride from Conegliano, and the start of Italy's "Prosecco Road", it's easy enough to explore the area especially if you have a car. We drove down to Valdobbiadene, the town on the other end of the Prosecco Road, from Cortina. As we headed south, the jagged peaks of the Dolomites turn to green slopes planted with glera, the grapes that make prosecco. To find out more about this increasingly popular aperitif, we spent...

Four Days in Italy’s Dolomites

June 29th, 2017

Four days in Italy's Dolomites is not enough but it's better than none. This area is best known for its skiing in the winter. But it was great visiting in the early fall when you can walk the ski routes, and presumably nice in the summer too. I think I'll aim to come again in either late May or September when I imagine the weather will be close to perfect. The Dolomites are easily accessible from either Verona or Venice. It's a three hour drive from Verona to La Villa, where we stayed, or...