The Marquee Meal

By all accounts dining at Gaggan is the marquee event of our Bangkok weekend trip – to the extent the rest of our itinerary was planned around it. Barring a few Michelin stars (which was widely tipped to be forthcoming when the first Michelin Guide Bangkok releases later this year), Chef Gaggan Anand's namesake restaurant has all the accolades that other restauranteurs can only dream of - Asia's Best for 3 years in a row (2015-2017 and counting), number 7 on this year's World's Best Restaurant list, and being featured in the famous Chef's Table series by Netflix, just to name a few. So we were super excited to score a table at Gaggan with rather short notice and came to the restaurant with very high expectation.

The Number 4

Just as we returned from a weekend away in Singapore where we had a memorable pop-up meal from one of the World's 50 Best Restaurants, we received an email promoting yet another dinner event, this time in Hong Kong at Landmark Mandarin Oriental featuring the top restaurant in Latin America.

I got to be honest here - before the event, I have not heard of Chef Virgilio Martinez nor his restaurant Central in Lima, Peru. True it's voted top on the Latin America's 50 Best Restaurant and is number 4 in this year's world ranking, something that should be in my radar naturally you would expect, but I guess Lima just sounded too far away for me to pay any serious attention to. But that's exactly why I was particularly interested in this dinner event, because otherwise it may be hard to try his food in the foreseeable future.