Ode to Celebration

It’s this time of the year for a little celebration and this year it was at Tate Dining Room. We haven’t been back for a while so I figure this is the perfect excuse to check out some of the new dishes by Chef Vicky Lau and her fine team at this venue known for its fancy décor and elegant vibe. 

Ode to Seaweed

Complications due to COVID restrictions meant our February booking at Tate Dining Room got pushed not once but twice, first to April and then to June. We were supposed to try their "Ode to Seaweed" menu when the menu was first launched and turned out we were there on the last weekend before they moved onto the next theme for the summer. 

Ode to Soy

A table at Tate Dining Room has been hard to come by especially for their popular weekend lunch menu with the theme of focusing on a single ingredient at a time. We called two months ago and managed to get the booking on the last week for the Ode to Soy Sauce menu just as we began our Easter super long weekend. 

Ode to Eggs (and Wines)

It seems perfectly appropriate that Chef Vicky of TATE Dining Room chose egg to be the main theme for her restaurant’s inaugural weekend lunch menu. After all this is the perennial staple ingredient for morning meals and symbolic of a new beginning too. I always think the cozy dining room of TATE Dining Room at Hollywood Road during day time with natural lights beaming in from the windows, so when I heard Chef Vicky finally launched the weekend lunch menu (available twice every month), we booked the table at the first day of service in early March to check it out.

New Level of Fine in Fine Dining

I felt like this is only the first time I could properly sit down and check out the food at Bibo, with Chef Nicholas Chew settling in his new post after moving on from the much-acclaimed, now-defunct Serge a la Phoque almost a year ago. That plus it's only my first time coming for the dinner tasting menu, with my previous visits during day time on weekends for the simpler brunch.

The Re-invented Tate

I cannot believe it's only my first time sitting down at Chef Vicky Lau's restaurant at its current venue for her full tasting menu when I visited a couple of weeks ago (previously I was there for one of those "four-hands" meal thing - and that's late last year already). I am always impressed by Chef Vicky's spot-on techniques and aesthetic presentation in her beautifully designed dining room up on Hollywood Road, and I think over the years, she has begun to develop a consistent theme of taking on ingredients more common in Asian cuisine with her interpretation to create something unique.

Brunching at Bibo

Past weekend we went to Bibo to check out their new brunch menu. We haven’t been here for so long that we must have missed a few chapters of this restaurant’s history with a few chefs came and went before. And now Chef Nicholas Chew (formerly of Serge a la Phoque) is at the helm for almost a year already and brought more changes to its menu as he settled, and loving the food at Serge a la Phoque before it’s moved to London 2 years ago, we were curious how this would fare.

Two in a Row

I haven’t made my way back to Tate Dining Room for years, and not since chef-owner Vicky Lau moved her restaurant to the current location on Hollywood Road in 2016. But when I finally did, I went not once but twice in the same week earlier this month.

Lunch in a Paris Chateau

Saint James Paris didn't look like anything we would normally find in the middle of a city - a chateau in the secluded 16th Arrondissement, built in the late 19th Century by a wealthy widow in memory of her late husband, and at one time served as a student residence and even an airfield for hot-air balloon. Now it has become an exclusive members club, a Relais & Chateaux hotel and a Michelin-starred restaurant.  

During the day, the bar and restaurant are accessible only by club members and hotel guests for breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea, but we took advantage of the reciprocal benefit of our new club membership at home to make arrangement for lunch there on a Monday afternoon as guest members.

Down the Memory Lane - Re-visiting Hotel de Mikuni

Over the last decade or so we were blessed with many trips to Japan, through cities and villages north and south, and trips that brought us wonderful food memories, from a simple bowl of tonkotsu ramen inside a street-side yatai to the most delicate, eye-opening kaiseki dinner at Michelin-starred restaurant. And this time during our recent Japan trip a few weeks ago, we decided to go back the memory lane to re-visit the very restaurant that started all these, beginning on a cold, rainy Valentine's Day 12 years ago - our first and only real food trip.

Artsy Brunch at Bibo

We somehow missed our big group meet-up at the relatively new restaurant Bibo a couple months ago, so we decided to make it up by checking it out on our own on the very last day of January.

Milano Supper at Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia

We had our first "proper" meal of the trip at Il Luogo di Aimo e Nadia in a quiet suburb neighborhood in western part of Milan. When I was planning for the trip I was a bit put off by its remote location, but the restaurant being only one of the two Michelin 2-starred restaurants in town (the other being Cracco in downtown) and a Relais & Chateaux newcomer, I was curious to try.

Meal Under the Weather - Antica Corona Reale

Both of us were a bit under the weather when we arrived at Antica Corona Reale for dinner, partly because we were caught off-guard by the much cooler weather in Barolo earlier during the day, and partly because of the long drive (about an hour and half each way) from our villa to this restaurant, which seems to be in the middle of nowhere right next to a major thoroughfare near the village of Cervere southwest of Alba.

One off the bucket list - Tokushima's Kokin Aoyagi

A few years ago, I came across a book written by Chef Hirohisa Koyama about the fundamentals of Japanese cuisine. It was eye-opening and I learned so much more in terms of appreciating Japanese cooking in a fuller spectrum. Since then I have always wanted to visit Chef Koyama's restaurant in Tokushima myself - so we have put this top of our agenda as we travelled through the four prefectures of Shikoku, including Tokushima being our first stop, in our recent Japan trip.