Care for some Creme Brûlée?

We were looking for a restaurant that serves game meat and we ended up at this one. The chef used to serve the Japanese Ambassador to Belgium. The food was French/Belgium and spectacular food! One thing that put me off was the game birds hung outside the restaurant and the French wines, which usually give me a big headache. Best of all was the Creme Brûlée with a thick layer of caramelized sugar on top. Truly amazing. Just make sure you reserve this restaurant as it is always fully booked!

A ta Guele

Lotus Jam?

I absolutely LOVE Lotus biscuits and I came across this for breakfast at the RUBEN Hotel! Food is always great in Belgium but I liked this photo because of the color combination. Hotel is also a pleasant place to stay if you visit Antwerp.

Rubens Hotel

Mussels and more mussles

It is interesting to ask this question to a French and a Belgian. “Are French Fries from your country?” and “Is creme brûlée from your country?”. The French tell me it’s French invention and the Belgian say it’s theirs. I think I believe the Belgian answer just because they are less arrogant but anyway Mussels for sure are Belgian. This was garlic and white wine infused mussels with “Belgian Fries”, accompanied with local Brugge brewed beer. Another great way to spend Sunday.

For the Chocoholics

Belgium is famous for their chocolates and surely they taste amazing. When I got to Belgium I was shocked at how lazy people here are! I went around shopping on a Sunday in Antwerp, and absolutely nothing was opened except for restaurants. Now I see why, Belgian people are passionate about food and only food and of course cute chocolates too.

The best Lamb

QATAR AIRWAYS is famous so I thought Qatar was a country where things were happening. But I guess not! It is purely a country for transits, but if you do get a chance to visit Qatar, I would highly recommend this Lamb Restaurant where the kebab was mouth watering, lamb chops were tender, and most importantly the hummus and bread was just perfect!

Al Khaima 

The real Chinese deal at great price

So glad to be back in Asia, and no more of the kungpao chicken floating in ketchup or the rip off fusion restaurants that care more of the decor and loud music than the actual food. Since we got back to Hong Kong, we have gone to Crystal Jade 4 lunches in a row. This shows how much we love this place! If you do go there, don’t forget to try the yummy xiao long bao in the photo, and any noodle dish, as that’s what they specialize in!

Great food at great price at Crystal Jade

Customization

I’m sure everybody has read the Starbucks book of success, the key of customization with their f&b according to their specific country needs. Every morning in Miami, I went downstairs to get my Starbucks and the greek honey yoghurt and then the morning I got back to Hong Kong, I tried to do the same, but unfortunately it didn’t work like that. So today I ordered the Petites Cup, something that I had never seen in the US, just because the bite size cookies would be too small for the US market!

On a nice day in Tribeca

Today is our last day in the US before we head on a 16 hour flight to Hong Kong. Luckily the day was gorgeous, and couldn’t have been better than sitting outside in the terrace eating some juicy scallops, the size of eggs!

ROC Restaurant

The 3 waitresses

Fusion restaurants aren’t usually about the food but more about the ambience and this restaurant certainly was. There were 3 African American models at least 175cm tall serving at the restaurant, all dressed in black. It was so impressive that every time these hot chicks walked passed you, you got the shivers! The dish in the photo was the Vietnamese spring roll, pretty ordinary compared to the waitresses!

To meet the hot waitresses go to Indochine

French Onion Soup

Anyone looking at this photo would probably drool like how I was when this French onion soup sat in front of me… unfortunately I cannot remember the name of the restaurant but it was in SOHO.

BAD NAME, GOOD FOOD

My boy friend used to live in NY 10 years ago so he was showing me around SOHO, and the restaurant he thought he knew turned out to be slightly different. And then found out from the waiter that we were at an Italian restaurant and before it used to be an Indian, slightly different isn’t it!? This place serves Brunello by the glass, and has definitely become one of our favorite restaurant, but the name Aurora really doesn’t do it for an authentic Italian restaurant I think… let alone they only serve one kind of pizza, which is the one in the photo, a potato pizza with stinky cheese!

Brunello by the glass? Go to Aurora

Good Baguette, Good French

After not being admitted to a French restaurant because we were not dressed “appropriately”, we decided to find another French restaurant for lunch that were going to appreciate us more. I cannot remember the exact name of this restaurant but it was one of those restaurants where once I started eating the baguette that came in the beginning, it was so delicious that you expect the main dish you ordered to be exceptional too! Which in this case it was, and the French waitress with her cute accent made the food even more tasty.

MAKE A CASUAL VISIT TO BISTRO CASSIS

Great hummus, mediocre pita bread

So we got into New York late evening and decided to go to MacDougal street to the comedy cellar. We were so starving, we decided to grab a bite upstairs at the Olive Tree Cafe. The Chardonnay was not that great but the hummus platter was amazing! It had a spinach paste in the middle as well which gave it a twist of bitterness to the hummus, which is usually a little bland. However it was misfortunate to be served the pita bread which was stale and cold. A fresh hot pita bread would have made a lot of difference.

A BITE BEFORE COMEDY CELLAR AT OLIVE TREE CAFE

Caviar in the buffet?!

Today we decided to drive out to Key Biscane and have brunch at the Ritz-Carlton there. 2 weeks ago we had brunch at the Ritz in South Beach area and in conclusion, the food was so much better at Biscane! Here, like all the other Ritz Sunday Brunch special, has the free flowing champagne and buffet style food but what was different here was that they serve Caviar in the buffet! As we came in late, they started to clear up the food, and then the waiter realized I love Caviar, and poured the whole jar of both black and red caviar on my plate, saying with his spanglish “We bin it any way”, which didn’t really make me feel better anyway.

Definitely worth a visit to the Ritz-Carlton

The most expensive burrito

LIME is the equivalent of McDonalds for Americans but this place serves alcohol and I was really impressed with the 20 or so different spicy sauces they offered. However the burrito was no where near as good as the Californian chain, Baja Fresh.  So why does the caption mention about an expensive burrito? In the 10 minutes we were in LIME our car got towed with a fine of $205. So that was the highlight of our day today…

A guest entry, from my boy friend

Hakkasan, one of the “in” places in Miami Beach’s “to be to be seen” not
too long ago re-launched and re-celebrated Fountainbleu Hotel promised the
usual fare of this category – overpriced, with the lack of food quality
substituted with the “coolness” of the “in crowd” willing to overpay for
almost everything (one friend told me that now valet parkers are expecting
a $100 note to park your car where it can be retrieved within a time frame
that is not annoying). The place does the usual song and dance of pretend
exclusivity starting with the MD giving an annoyed look to somebody that
walks in with no reservation. But hey, if you can’t seat it – no problem,
we go somewhere else – and magically attitude changes.

Not many restaurants understand the “less is more” concept of lighting,
but this one does. Interesting spotlights light up a modest but solid
table, with comfortable chairs. The annoying ‘waiter that is too cool to
be true’ experience is quickly replaced with the realization that these
guys really know what they are talking about, and a question regarding
available wines calls for an instant appearance of the sommelier (who
lifts the competence level to unexpected heights).

The dimsum were excellent, with its authenticity at par with high end
Beijing restaurants. The creativity lies in the presentation – not in
strongarming authenticity – with interesting natural colors introduced in
the [what is it called??]. The lobster dish added a flair of western
influence while still maintaining the truthfulness to culture, but the
highlight was duck – reminding that what (wonderfully) smells like a duck,
juices like a duck, looks like a duck, is a culinary treat of the duckest
kind. The recommended wine worked its magic by framing the food, not
dominating it.

HAKKASAN OFFICIAL SITE http://www.hakkasan.com/

Life is too short for cheap wine -Tanuki

This is my boy friend’s favorite wine, the OPUS ONE 2007, which is definitely one of the most expensive wine I have ever had. Whenever we have a romantic dinner together and the restaurant offers the OPUS ONE, he orders it. He always says “life is too short for cheap wine”. Tonight we went back to the Brazilian Churasco place to enjoy the picaña and sirloin steaks. The wine has a chocolatey taste and really blended into the meat we ate.
OPUS ONE OFFICIAL SITE 

Mozarella flown in

I just got my driving license recently and decided to drive to another city called Fort Lauderdale, which is 40 minutes from South Beach. We found the same restaurant I love going called EATALY (Rossopomodoro) in Japan. We usually never order Buffalo Mozzarella as my boy friend doesn’t like it but today I had to eat this fresh mozarella flown in today from Toscana. YUM

ROSSOPOMODORO OFFICIAL SITE

The healthy option…really?

So I have been in MIAMI for 3 weeks now, and totally addicted to this. MYC; My Yoghurt Cafe is located in the quaint streets of Espanola way, just off Lincoln. It’s a self service ice cream parlor and they weigh your ice cream, so my trick is, don’t put heavy toppings like fruits, they will charge the same amount as the frozen yoghurt! I think this is such genius food, as they portray themselves as this healthy dessert and obviously the ice cream that I ate had so much topping and ice cream that it would have probably been more unhealthy than a small tub of haagen-daaz considering how BIG the tub at MYC is!

If you want to pretend to be healthy go there! http://myyogurtcafe.com/

Craving for that red meat…

As much as  LOVE meat, I try to be pescadorian and eat healthy, but today is the exception. When you have your “more meat please” card turned over on your table, the meat just keeps coming to you from your latino servers. There were fillet mignons, supreme fillet steak, garlic cochinas, every Brazilian meat you can think of on the big skewer. As I’m Japanese, I love everything almost raw, and the waiter was nice enough to go get some rare meat, cook it for 15 seconds each and serve it. It was so fresh, that eating it almost raw was like eating sashimi. I guess I’m trying to fish for some points I didn’t like about the restaurant, but honestly it was just perfect, even the creme brulee.

When you decide to spoil yourself with meat, meat and only meat… http://www.fogodechao.com/index.php?id=172