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travel: flemish fling…
~ All of the international flights from the Americas dumped into Aéroport Paris–Charles de Gaulle within minutes of each other, as they usually do, when I arrived in the early morning a few months...
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travel: farms, fields and fjords along the way….
~ Chef Christopher Haatuft pulled off the winding road that traces the craggy Norwegian coast near Askøy. The gloomy sky hung low as we got out of the car and started down a marshy trail that...
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travel: sui generis…
~ At its highest, the Bergen Rail Line climbs 1,300 meters above sea level, making it the highest elevated rail line in Europe. Running over 480 meters (300 miles), the line anchors at both ends on...
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travel: kimonos and kaiseki…
~ My only complaint about my visit to Kyoto is that it was too short. The imperial capital of Japan for over a millennia (the capital was moved to Edo – modern-day Tokyo – in the second half of the...
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review: gion, geishas, and luxury… (ifuki)
~ Kyoto’s ancient Gion district is famous for its geishas. Full of theaters, where geishas perform, the Gion also offers some of Kyoto’s best, and judging by the hoards of tourists who visit, worst...
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travel: kansas city… (2014)
~ Evidently, the gestation for Midwestern maturity is slow. Two years ago, I took an honest (some might characterize it as critical) look at the eating culture of my hometown of Kansas City....
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12 days: on the sixth day of christmas: mcfadden… (2014)
~ There are two guest chefs on the roster for this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood whose restaurants I have not visited. One of them is Joshua McFadden, chef of Ava...
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12 days: on the seventh day of christmas: martinez… (2014)
~ Besides Joshua McFadden, who cooked on the sixth night, Virgilio Martinez is the only other chef on this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas roster whose restaurant I had never visited. Martinez is chef...
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12 days: on the eighth day of christmas: achatz… (2014)
~ Of this year’s twelve dinners, I was most anxious about the eighth one: the night that Grant Achatz cooked. Early in alinea’s life, I was one of the very few, if not alone, in my criticism of that...
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12 days: the ninth day of christmas: lee… (2014)
~ Corey Lee, chef of the 3 Michelin-starred Benu, showed up looking like a sifu, and knocked my socks off with ham and black truffles wrapped in cabbage and glazed in a thick, gelatinous stew of fish...
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12 days: on the tenth day of christmas: holmboe bang… (2014)
~ It had been raining every day for two weeks. California was finally finding some much-needed relief from a severe, two-year drought. So, when a rare window of blue sky opened up one morning,...
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12 days: on the eleventh day of christmas: mattos… (2014)
~ It has been quite an international Twelve Days of Christmas. In fact, judging by past rosters, this was, perhaps, the most culturally diverse line-up at The Restaurant at Meadowood yet. Kobe...
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12 days: on the twelfth day of christmas: kostow… (2014)
~ And finally, the twelfth night. The last day of the Twelve Days of Christmas is fraught with mixed emotions. For the staff, there are nerves about the menu, which, year-after-year, seems to spring...
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travel: leapfrogging…
~ Another year is gone, and I’ve barely written about it. This is especially sad to me, since so many wonderful things happened. Every year, I pause at calendar’s end to record and remember the...
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best dishes of 2014…
~ Ten years. This post marks a decade since I first started compiling a list of my 25 favorite dishes of the year. What began simply as an annual bookmark to help me remember the good food I had has...
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best desserts of 2014…
~ My parents, who immigrated to the United States over forty years ago, said that, when they first arrived on these shores, they had no concept of “dessert.” In Taiwan, where they had spent most of...
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the best of 2014: the restaurant edition…
~ The sheer splendor with which my year in dining unfolded made the task of identifying my ten favorite restaurant meals from 2014 an especially difficult one. However, forcing myself to narrow that...
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collaboration: friends of lysverket…
~ Bente Getz has returned to her family’s farm, situated high on a steep rake that rises almost vertically from the fjords of Samnanger, Norway. She left her homeland as a young woman to travel the...
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kansas city: save the date… (harvesters chefs classic 2015)
~ This is my fifth year serving on the planning committee for the Chefs Classic, a charity dinner hosted annually at The American Restaurant that raises money for Harvesters, a food bank that serves...
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friends of lysverket: people meeting people…
~ A leading voice in the international black metal movement. A high-end furniture designer from Copenhagen. A Scotsman who dives for a living off the North Sea coast above the Arctic Circle. An...
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