Kevin & Leeann - Food & Travel

Scandinavia: Noma, Aarø & Co (Dec 2010)

2011-02-11T03:10:00.000-08:00

Denmark: Noma

After a series of fortunate events, we finally got ourselves a table at what might be our most anticipated meal as yet - at Noma in Denmark. Described as 'modern Scandinavian' cuisine by most and fast becoming one of the most talked about places since the "impossible to get a reservation at, El Bulli", we managed to get a table on the last seating of the year, taking a lunch time table just before Christmas.

As unlikely as it sounds, Scandinavia is a haven for foodies. While I have issues with Michelin guides outside of France and Europe in general, it is worthy to point out that Scandinavia has about two dozen Michelin starred restaurants, in a region which - face it, is not known for what one would normally perceive as high quality of produce and ingredients found in the far right scale of gastronomy. Nonetheless, abundance of good seafood, organic vegetables and a wide variety of game meats, one might be in for a surprise.

Rene Redzepi, the chef at Noma worked for a while at both El Bulli, as well as French Laundry and spent most of his cooking career at Kong Hans Haelder - an institution in Danish cuisine. His (and Noma's) philosophy is that the restaurant "...rendition of Nordic gourmet cuisine with an innovative gastronomic take on traditional cooking methods, fine Nordic produce and the legacy of our shared food heritage."

The restaurant's website also notes:

"noma is not about olive oil, foie gras, sun-dried tomatoes and black olives. On the contrary, we’ve been busy exploring the Nordic regions discovering outstanding foods and bringing them back to Denmark: Icelandic skyr curd, halibut, Greenland musk ox, berries and water."

This philosophy has somehow worked and pushed Noma to the top of the San Pellegrino Top 50 list, ahead of the eponymous El Bulli.. for the first time in as long as I can remember!

Situated in the heart of Copenhagen, the taxi dropped us off at the end of a nondescript warehouse at the edge of the Copenhagen harbour...

Kevin opted for the 12-course set menu with a 7-course wine pairing while Leeann took the 7-course set menu..

The stream of amuse bouches began with a dish called "moss and cep".. a cruncy snack which set the tone for what was to follow:

Amuse bouche of sea buckthorn leather with pickled hip roses: Sea buckthorn, while the name suggests otherwise is a plant found mostly in Asian highlands or in Europe, and in this case, it was made into a Japanese-esque side - not our favourite..

Amuse of cookies with lardo and currant: Yes, you read that right! Lardo, also known as cured pork fat served within a cookie tin with just 2 cookies... A play on gluttony??

One of our favourite amuses: Fried fresh organic leek with a touch of garlic. Extremely fresh and sweet, the idea is to eat just the roots of it...

Amuse of rye bread, chicken skin, lovage (a parsley like plant), and smoked cheese.

Amuse of pickled and smoked quails egg. Beautifully smoked and then encased within the fake eggshell, this was a dish reminiscent of an Etxebarri dish that Kevin had..

Amuse of organic radish, turnip and carrot on a bed of soil and herbs. Not real soil of course! Radishes were the freshest we had eaten.

Amuse of toast, herbs, smoked cod roe and vinegar. This was like eating a club sandwich.. a bit strange and difficult to it all in your mouth with it crumbling apart..

A "Grilled Hazelnut Salad" was our first course of the night. The green paste is a rich vegetable puree with lightly grilled hazelnuts.. This was paired with a 2009 Remy Gresser Pinot Blanc from Andlau in Alsace.

Leeann's "Cucumber and dill"

Kevin's second course of "Dried Scallops and Grains" on a bed of watercress and squid ink. Drying the scallops gave it a kind of jerky texture which was balanced by the watercress and squid ink sauce.

Kevin's "Chestnut and löjrom", which is a Swedish caviar (bleak roe) sauteed with some thinly cut chestnuts with cress and bits of walnuts. This was served with a 2009 Pierre Frick Riesling from Pfaffenheim.

One of the highlights of the day: "Langoustine and sol". North Atlantic langoustines on the right, with dollops of oyster cream with parsley and seawater.. Complete flavours of the sea combined into this dish.. Served with a 2009 Laurent Barth Vieilles Vignes Riesling from Bennwhir.

The kitchen hard at work:

Leeann's potatoes with milk skin:

Another highlight of the day: "Oyster and Ocean": Norwegian oysters" cooked in its shell... they should've served more of this one!

Leeann was underwhelmed by these sauteed onions though:

"Cauliflower and pine".. an interesting way of cooking the cauliflower.. but not terribly exciting to be honest. Served with 2009 Roland Schmitt's Altenbourg de Bergbieten Pinot Gris

Celeriac and black truffle.. portion was too big for what it was. Served with a 2007 Josmeyer Pinot Auxerrois 'H' from Wintzenheim

Now this was a dish to come back for. "The Hen and the Egg".. Not completely sure why it is called that, but this is one of those "make your own" dishes. Presented with several local vegetables and a cube of garlic salted butter.

Then with some hay oil and a timer..

an egg is fried..

Other ingredients added in.. and you get a very simple, but stunningly scrumptious egg with veg and onion flakes.. So simple, but the flavours were all there! Served with a 2003 Henri Bonneau Chateauneuf-du-Pape from Vaucluse.

This was followed by Leeann's Beef Cheek and Cabbage Stems to give Leeann's 7 course meal a bit of protein which had been lacking up to this point...

Kevin's Wild Duck and Apple with malted and browned butter. Use of local ingredients from the region and cooked pretty well. Duck was perfectly pink in the middle.

"Pear Tree"..

A dessert of Jerusalem Artichokes and Marjoram with Apple and Malt as the base sauce. Served with a 2008 Dirler-Cade Cuvee Vieilles Vignes Pinot Blan from Bergholtz.

Leeann's Snowman with Elderflowers and Lingonberries.

A view from our seat towards the harbour.

After three hours at Noma and what seemed like 15-20 dishes each, we would have to say that our first thoughts after the meal were mixed. Leeann had asked for a number of substitutions away from game meat and it seemed like they just put together a bunch of vegetables and sauteed them as replacement dishes. Overall, there were definitely some hits and misses, perhaps a few more misses on this occasion. While the restaurant's philosophy of local ingredients and great cooking techniques can't be ignored, our thoughts are that too much emphasis is placed on the local vegetables and not enough protein was used in such a long and elaborate menu.With that said, the langoustine was great, the hen and the egg was superb and the oyster was stunning.. see the trend?

In addition to that, the wines were ok, not great. The emphasis on wines being biodynamic and from Alsace is good and all, but to charge over US$150 for 7 glasses of relatively cheap wine doesn't seem to do this justice. The Chateauneuf-du-Pape was a pleasant surprise, but the rest were... forgettable.

Was it worth it? Noma offers a different take on modern cuisine, and while it is a great restaurant to get new sensations and try out new flavours, the quality of the food and service was lower than what we would expect for a San Pellegrino #1 ranked restaurant. We both agreed that this was a place that you go to really sample different flavours... and we'd say that you should try to add a few other restaurants or sights to see on an itinerary to make it worthwhile going out to Denmark.

Kevin had the 12-course Noma Nasaaq menu for 1395DKK and a 7-wine pairing for 895DKK, Leeann had the 7-course set lunch menu for 1095DKK and. So lunch for 2 set us back a good US$700 including taxes.

www.noma.dk

Denmark: A|O|C

We were perhaps a bit ambitious to try out another restaurant on the same day, but with little time and restaurants closing up for the end of the year, we took the dive and ended up at A|O|C Aarø & Co, a 1-Michelin star restaurant in Copenhagen situated in an underground wine cellar.

Located in another nondescript location inside a shady looking entrance, we were taken down to a well lit basement with about 10 tables. The kitchen is helmed by Ronny Emborg, who trained and worked at El Bulli and Mugaritz amongst other restaurants and was awarded Chef of the Year in Denmark in 2007 with a menu not dissimilar to that of Noma, but being a bit more grounded.

The menus are offered in coloured envelopes and served as set menus. As we were jetlagged and still recovering from the massive lunch, Leeann opted for the 4-course dinner while Kevin took the 7-course:

Amuse bouche:

"Oyster water"

The restaurant was getting pretty empty with Christmas around the corner

I think this was burnt bread with smoked cheese.

Beetroot with razor clams. This was an interesting dish, although the beetroot slightly detracts from the sea flavours of the fresh razor clams... The sauce pairing was a nice blend of horseradish and dill though:

Venison carpaccio. Rich red in colour. It was almost like eating frozen slices of beef..

Duck breast with leeks:

Assortment of cheeses:

Icecream which looks like a rock:

Possibly the highlight of the meal was this blueberry ice shell with blueberries inside of it. Silky texture with a nice refreshing finishing touch to the meal.

We were dead tired by the end of it, with our heads sinking lower to the table with every minute, so copious notes were not taken unfortunately. Although with that said, the meal had much better variation than Noma (or perhaps it was just the shortness of the meal) but food wise, Noma still carries the edge.

Dinner for 2 put us back approximately US$250 with a glass of wine.

www.aaro-co.dk

Dubai (April 2010)

2010-04-25T23:36:00.000-07:00

Dubai - Sun, Sand and Heat

Dubai was one of those places that we had wanted to go for years but never really found a good reason to fly all the way there because of our preconception that it was just a plot of land in the desert with big tall buildings and massive shopping malls and not a lot else.

We finally took the leap of faith and booked our tickets out there for the Easter long weekend as the hotel we wanted to stay at in Oman was full and the flights to Turkey were too long. But like many of the flights out from Singapore, the timing of the flight wasn't the greatest and we ended up arriving into Dubai at around 3am (having departed just past midnight) via a 7.5 hour flight.

The taxi ride from the airport gave us the first idea of what Dubai was like, throwing out a $40 taxi fare for the 8 minute cab ride to the Intercontinental - reason being that we were taking the "night fare" according to the meter in the taxi. Everything was smooth enough, with the taxi ride reminding me of scenes in Collateral when Tom Cruise is riding in the back of Jamie Foxx's taxi in the middle of the night - quite surreal!

After a quick check-in we grabbed some zzz's before a day of exploration

Day 1:

A view from the hotel lift lobby on our floor towards the main city:

The Intercontinental hotel lobby:

As we headed towards the Atlantis, we passed by the iconic Burj-al-Arab. We had wanted to go and see what all the hype was about, but paying US$120 for afternoon tea seemed a bit ridiculous:

While Arabic food contains many elements from Asian and African cuisine, we could not help but to try out one of our favourite restaurants: Nobu. Located at the Atlantis Palm Resort, we had high expectations of food in Dubai in general given the perceived wealth in the region and our initial impressions of the decor were pretty decent:

Quite similar to that of the Tokyo restaurant. I wish we could say the same about the quality of the food though:

Traditionally one one of our favourite dishes served by Nobu: the new style yellowtail sashimi with jalepenos. Flavourwise was a bit off and the fish was a bit too chewy:

A tuna tartare with caviar was too sweet:

New style wagyu beef sashimi. We have had this dish every time we have gone to a Nobu restaurant, and while the flavours were OK in this case, the beef wasn't very marbled at all... truly disappointing.

Snow crab with creamy spicy sauce. Sounds great on the menu, but it just tasted just a massive clump of mayonnaise with a bit of a spicy tang to it. So much so that we couldn't really taste the crab:

Spicy prawns with a bed of enoki mushrooms. We hadn't had this dish in the past but it was one of the better ones of the lot.

Nobu sashimi tacos. Leeann found this one to be almost inedible with its strong flavours and overwhelming use of fruits and barely any fish.

And finally, a slight adaptation of the chocolate souffle with green tea icecream sees the green tea icecream replaced with what was supposed to be a beer icecream. Couldn't really taste much, but part of the reason why the original is so good is that green tea complements chocolate so well. Beer, not so much.

We went for lunch and there were only about 5 tables out of 100 which were occupied but yet the food was just disappointing. The only thing worth reporting was that the service was not bad - though not to Nobu standards. Overall, the US$280 bill (with very few drinks) was underwhelming and taught us a valuable lesson; Never opt for a Japanese or a Seafood restaurant in a country where seafood is not one of the main produces.

Nobu is at the Atlantis Palm Jumeirah and is another example of big named restaurants capitalising on past fame. If you are going to check out a Nobu, we would recommend Tokyo and London branches.

A view of the Atlantis Palm resort:

The monorail station:

After the lunch, we headed back towards the main city, catching another glimpse of the Burj on the way:

The monorail which takes you back from the Atlantis Palm towards the skyline of mega-skyscrapers:

A glimpse of the houses built on the man made palm island. Conceptually the idea is excellent, but I think there is just something lacking about the location and the surroundings to justify the US$1mm+ price tags:

Never ending construction:

We headed back to our hotel to check out the neighbouring Festival City, a newish development about 15 minutes away from the city center (towards the airport) which was established as a second 'city center', along the Dubai Creek with full facilities:

Leeann getting inspired to imitate the teacup while investigating the Bistro Madeleine's menu:

A common sight in Dubai:

The boardwalk of Festival City, lined with restaurants and shops - this made for a nice walk:

We took a brief rest and then headed out to do some Dune Bashing. One of the coolest activities in Dubai, it involves driving about 45 minutes out of Dubai city into the desert, deflating the pressure in the tires of our 4x4 and then driving as fast as possible over sand dunes. This is coupled with some dune buggy and camel rides as a half day adventure:

Our friendly camel:

Who turned out not to be so friendly afterall. It was almost frightening when the camel goes from a vertical standing position to a sitting one. Furthermore, that seat was definitely NOTE comfortable for the backside.

Heading downhill in a rigged out offroader was some serious stomach churning madness:

The view from our car - definitely not a place you want to get lost in:

Our driver showing off his driving skills:

We spotted another tour group making their rounds as we were heading back:

Our man putting air back in the tires as we headed back to civilisation:

The next day, we got up to a bright and early start, heading for the 'new' icon of Dubai, the Burj Khalifa. A few weeks before we were going on this trip, the world's tallest building had suffered a massive power/electrical failure which led to the closure of the entire building for weeks, but fortunately for us, they had JUST reopened the day we got there! Expecting long queues, we got there nice and early, and to our surprise it wasn't all that bad waiting!

The building has 160 habitable floors plus 46 floors in the ceiling and took only 5 years to build. Chicago based Skidmore, Owings and Merrill were contracted as the architect and the project carried a US$1.5bn price tag to complete.

The drive along the main highway to the Burj Khalifa:

In all its glory:

Walking down the hallways and exhibits on the way to the elevator reminded us of another movie, Gattaca. Ultra futuristic with sublime background music and flashing TV screens all over the place, the designers for the Khalifa clearly had the future in mind.

But because of the design of the building, the elevators remain in the core of the tower, and therefore have no views of the outside as you go up and down. It would have been cool to get a perspective of moving vertically in the fastest elevator in the world (42km/h)

A view from the top:

The Dubai branch of New York's Magnolia Bakery in the shopping complex just underneath the Burj Khalifa:

Some random guys were just standing there getting shot at by paintballs... fun....

As we were leaving, some exterior shots of 828m beast which also houses the new Armani Hotel, residential units, office units and retail, the building also holds the world records for:
- The highest swimming pool in a building (76th floor)
- The highest occupied floor (160th floor)
- The highest observation deck (124th floor)
- The highest mosque (158th floor)

Driving around, we saw a lot of what Dubai is known for:

Lunch took us to the Wafi Mall, an Egyptian/Moroccon inspired mall with pyramidal architecture and influences from Africa, where we stumbled upon Wafi Gourmet, a deli style eatery serving Lebanese and other middle eastern cuisine:

Some kebabs:

Underneath is a massive Souk (market) complex:

The Egyptian influence from the outside:

A view of our hotel as we headed back to get ready for dinner:

The skyline as sun sets:

One of the futuristic train stations being built, which connects the airport area to the main downtown area:

More construction:

Apartment and office complexes near the Marina:

And finally, dinner took us to Gary Rhodes' "Rhodes Mezzanine" restaurant at the Grosvenor House:

First of all, apologies for these photos as the restaurant is a bit dark and we didn't bring a flash.

A few foie gras on top of ginger biscuits was our amuse bouche. Interesting flavours with an almost melt-in-your-mouth sensation which was a bit odd for foie gras, and to be honest, I think one per person is sufficient:

We don't fully remember what this one was:

This was quite an interesting dish. A white tomato capuccino to finish of the amuse bouches. Acid from the tomato could be tasted through a creamy, perfectly temperate soup - very interesting indeed.

Then Leeann had the seared scallop with truffle and parmesan cheese:

Followed by poached Brill on top of english spinach and moules marinieres:

Kevin opted for the langoustine as the starter:

A truffle risotto:

Braised beef with morels and oysters

And a tenderloin of aged beef:

Overall the food was not too bad again. Gary Rhodes has established his name in London as an innovative chef and bringing back some classic British dishes. Rhodes Mezzanine decided to go with a quirky Phillip Starck type of setting but with food which falls slightly short of being quirky and feels a bit uninspired.

But with that said, it was still a hell of a lot better than the Nobu experience and the restaurant has just about enough going on to satisfy the Dubai crowd...

Back in the lobby of the Intercontinental:

Then we went to scope out the evening scene at Festival Walk:

The day we left, we stopped by for a quick look at the traditional gold souk markets in the old part of town:

And finally, the big tall doorman at the Intercontinental:

So we finally ended up going to Dubai and we think that this trip is best left for a 2-3 day stopover trip to somewhere else in Europe or the Middle East. Any longer and you will run out of things to do (unless you have kids). You will definitely get your fair share of big tall buildings, massive mall complexes, kid friendly entertainment and 'luxury items', but at the end of the day, we weren't wowed by anything there - just content that we finally made it out to the desert =).

We highly recommend the Intercontinental for its rooms, but not the location as it is a little outside of town and the taxi fares do add up if you keep going back and forth. We also suggest not going to any of the fine dining establishments unless you really want to try it out like us. We try to do so only to gauge a comparison to what we know and have tried before in a different country.

Spain - Round 2: Gothic Madness

2010-03-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Spain - Round 2: All the non-Food

To help segregate the non-food pics (generally anyway), the Spain blog was split into 2 bits - here's the second bit!

The first day we arrived in Spain, we made a bee-line for St Josep La Bocqueria market:

Walking through the streets of Barcelona:

Standing in the Placa de Sant Jaume:

I think this was near the Museo Picasso in El Born

Inside the Museo Picasso

Just off the square by Santa Maria del Mar:

The 'other' Arc de Trionf:

The roof bar of our hotel, "ME Barcelona". The first day we landed in Spain, we opted to take it easy and stay in Barcelona to recover from the jet lag which we had. Hotel ME Barcelona sits along the Avenida Diagonal towards the East side of Barcelona in a quieter area of town. The same architect who designed the French National Library, Dominique Perrault, ME was a pretty chic and modern hotel without being outrageously expensive. Rooms were finished to a slightly lesser quality than other top notch hotels, but overall a very decent stay and only about 10 minutes by cab to most of the main attractions.

Hotel lobby:

On the second day, we headed to El Celler de Can Roca restaurant in Girona. The restaurant moved here from its old location (about 100m away) into what is a perfect blend of Japanese post-modern architecture and subtle earth tones of 'La Torre'. About an hour and a half drive from central Barcelona, getting to the restaurant was part of the fun!:

The next day, we took a road trip to Axpe/Atxondo, in the middle of basque country between San Sebastian and Bilbao for lunch:

The old converted farm house which houses the epicly epic Etxebarri restaurant:

The surrounding countryside in Axpe... We're in Riojas territory here!...

The main church courtyard:

Road signs in Euskara - the basque language..one of the more mysterious languages in the world with no currently known language roots.

After lunch, we headed further West and found ourselves in Bilbao for non other than Frank Gehry's Guggenheim Bilbao.. too bad there was no sunset that day or it may have been a truly spectacular sight!

Just outside the Bilbao Guggenheim:

Leeann standing next to Jeff Koons' "Puppy"... doesn't really look much like a puppy close up to be honest.

Public transport Bilbao style

While we were in San Sebastian, we stayed at the Astoria 7 Hotel, a Hollywood themed hotel which was both modern and very well priced, situated near the main roundabout of the city... we got to stay in Mel Gibson's room:

The lobby restaurant

Breakfast of Jamon Iberico and sunny side up eggs - magnificent...

Alfred Hitchcock

The "Library":

Walking towards the Parte Vieja part of town of San Sebastian were the endings of a street parade..

Leeann looking for something in Parte Vieja

The Santa Maria del Coro Church:

Streets of Parte Vieja:

Along the riverbanks outside the Hotel Maria Cristina. Opposite is the Kursaal and the Gros District of San Sebastian is to the right:

The Kursaal up close:

The Hotel Maria Cristina along the banks:

Kevin Looking a bit fat:

Cathedral Catedral del Buen Pastor near to our hotel

One of the old streets as you walk from the Cathedral Catedral del Buen Pastor

The area near the town hall of San Sebastian.

After a quick 2 night trip to San Sebastian, it was time to head back to Barcelona for a couple more days of sightseeing. We landed back into Barcelona 2 nights before we were to leave and decided to stay at the Ritz Carlton Hotel Arts by the Marina to the South of the city. The hotel would have been much nicer if it weren't overrun with hundreds of tourists attending the world GSM conference (or something like that) making the lobby more like a madhouse. Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Hotel Arts sits in the ultra-modern category and with the service to match.

The views from the hotel are stunning though. The first night we got put into a normal deluxe harbour view room but for some reason they upgraded us to the club floor for the second night which wasn't so bad.

A walk along the marina:

The Hotel Arts is the tall building on the right and the Gran Casino is the Guggenheim looking thing at the bottom left

The first evening we got back late so we headed out to Maremagnum to have a stroll around the main marina area just South of La Ramblas and the El Born area.

On the way back to the hotel:

Above the casino:

Lobby of the Hotel Arts:

The next day was back to the market again to buy some food to take back home!

Our trip to Barcelona was mainly to have a look at some of Antoni Gaudi's art nouveau architecture. Often considered as one of the most prominent names of gothic architecture in Spain, he actually came about much later in the gothic era and eventually developed his own "gaudi" style. He was considered to be a bit too 'flashy' at first and only when Eusebi Guell, the industrialist, in the 19th century and thus this led to the Parc Guell one of his later works to be built in the early 1900s.

The main entrance... reminded us a bit of a gingerbread house:

One of the creepy tunnel facades built into the Park:

The park was originally built as part of a residential site, but over the course of the 14 years it took to build it, the residential site never really got fully materialised. The Doric columns underneath the main terrace:

The main terrace:

A view off the main terrace:

Bird's nests built into the secondary terrace walls:

The house at the top of Parc Guell:

From the Parc Guell, we headed back into the main part of Barcelona to see the most impressive piece of architecture that we have seen for a long time. La Sagrada Familia began construction in 1882 as one of Gaudi's most ambitious construction which he worked on for the final 15 years of his life. As of now, the church remains incomplete due to the intricacies of the design and the scale of the construction, and the expected completion date is now set at 2026.. almost 150 years after the first stone was laid.

Although a bit unsightly, the cranes have been part of Sagrada photos for as long as I can remember and to me seems as though it is almost a part of the church...

One of the carvings by the front entrance of the church:

The interior windows:

A view of the facade:

The massiveness of the interior structure:

Pure gothic madness on the main entrance door:

More intricacies found above one of the windows:

One of the secondary halls:

Moving on from La Sagrada Familia is one of Gaudi's smaller works, the Casa Mila:

Stopping by to check out the fresh produce:

Picking up some goodies!

And then heading back to the hotel:

A view from the room towards the fountain and main roundabout:

Looking out towards the harbour.. The casino is the bottom right:

As if the city didn't offer enough architecture, Barcelona's El Prat airport is... although a totally retarded design in terms of immigration followed by a complete lack of any shops.... had an ultra post-modern approach to architectural design, which is of no surprise considering that Ricardo Bofill was the architect. He also did JPM's HQ in Chicago, Shiseido Building in Tokyo and the Cartier HQ in paris..

This is what we mean by RETARDED. Once you go through the 1st security check, international flights are diverted left towards gate areas "D" and "E". Fair enough. But all the shops and food you see down below are in gate areas A-C, an area which you can't get through as there are different immigration counters for D & E, a fact which was only pointed out to us once we had cleared customs....so no last minute food shopping. how sad..

We had a lot of worries about safety and pickpockets hyped up by our friends prior to going. Perhaps we were fortunate on this trip to not have encountered any and to be able to see some of the most impressive sights in the world and taste some of the best food we have had for while.

A couple days in Barcelona is well recommended but we would also suggest checking out the Basque country because honestly we didn't spend anywhere near enough time in that region and we are usually pretty brisk in our travels!

Anyway, the details:

Hotel ME Barcelona http://www.me-barcelona.com/
Hotel Arts (Ritz Carlton) Barcelona http://www.hotelartsbarcelona.com/
Astoria7 Hotel San Sebastian http://www.astoria7hotel.com/

We rented our cars through Hertz and it was cheap and painless. Just make sure you get a GPS unit which works!

Spain - Round 1: Food (El Celler de Can Roca, Asador Etxebarri, Tapac 24, Alona Berri, Cal Pep)

2010-03-05T05:59:00.000-08:00

We went to Spain this year with one sole purpose - to eat as much good food as we could in the little time that we had. After a rather unsuccessful attempt at getting a table at El Bulli for the 5th year running, we attempted to overcompensate by making reservations at as many of the other good restaurants there were in Spain - this included the Roca brothers' El Celler de Can Roca, Andoni Anduriz's Mugaritz, Etxebarri and of course, hit as many tapas/pintxos bars we could possibly stomach. The end result is that although we only went to a handful of the places we wanted to go, the experience at Etxebarri is a pretty close contender for the best meal ever so far..

Arriving into a freezing cold Barcelona in the early morning hours, we checked into the Hotel ME Barcelona, a modern hotel overlooking Avenida Diagonal towards the East of the city.

Without wasting any time, we headed out for an mid-morning brunch session - and at 11am, there were only few choices, so we headed to Carles Abellan's tapas creation, Tapac24. A disciple of the El Bulli faction, Abellan left El Bulli in 1990 and went on to set up his chic Comerc24 restaurant and eventually went on to open up his equally chic tapas bar in Barcelona.

Tapac24

Unfortunately, their hot tapas aren't served until a little later in the day, which was utterly disappointing.... Nonetheless, we started off the day with some bocadillos of the awesome kind: Iberico ham sandwich:

Blood sausage chorizo sandwich:

Tapac24's famous bikini sandwich: Jamon Iberico, hot melted Manchego cheese and truffles

Interior of Tapac24:

Tapac24, 269 carrer Diputacio, Barcelona http://www.comerc24.com/tapac24

La Bocqueria

We headed down towards La Ramblas, famous for its hoardes of pick pockets to La Boqueria, the local fresh food market:

Fruits, preserves and olive oils:

Fresh fish:

Soon after getting to the market, we sighted a few interesting food bars dotted around the outskirts of the market, and with Leeann big on the shellfish, we stopped at Kiosko Universal:

Fresh razor clams cooked in garlic oil:

Almejas aka clams also cooked in garlic oil:

It could not have been colder that day... zero degree temperatures seated outdoors... things we do for food...

Ibericus: a shop known for selling only 1 thing.... jamon iberico...

Kevin deciding what to buy:

Jamon Iberico, is like the king of all cured hams. Unlike parma ham, Iberico comes from the Iberian black pig (Kurobuta to those in Japan) and is cured for up to 36 months. The highest grade Iberico is the Bellotta type, which are fed acorns only, giving it a nutty and smooth texture like no other.. This ranks near the top of our food lists..

A bit like its little brother the Jamon Serrano, Iberico just has a more oily texture, with awesome flavours to go..

After picking up a pack to eat at the hotel, we got hungry again and headed to the roof of the Avenida Diagonal shopping center for some Iberico with fried eggs and french fries...

Some Pulpo Gallego (Octopus on top of potatos with paprika sprinkles)

Leeann's asparagus, devoured far too quickly for the camera to come out..

El Celler de Can Roca

One of the restaurants we were visiting this time around is the much talked about El Celler de Can Roca. Run by 3 brothers, Joan (head chef), Josep (Sommelier) and Jordi (desserts), the restaurant lies about an hour North East of Barcelona by car in the town of Girona. While there is nothing particularly exciting about the town itself, with the exception of being rather hard to navigate with its zig zags and small streets, Can Roca is getting quite a bit of attention as being one of the more innovative and pioneering restaurants in the world, recently receiving its 3rd Michelin star.

After go around and around the same round-about several times and getting some tourist-grins from the traffic police as we asked for directions, we got to Can Roca about 5 minutes past our 1pm reservations to an almost entirely empty restaurant. While the spaniards are known for their late meals, the sight of the restaurant lights turned off and barely a wait staff in sight was somewhat odd and disconcerting but we went with the flow and were sat on the street end of the ultra-modern zen styled restaurant (built a few years ago to replace the original site).

As we had an 8pm flight that evening to San Sebastian, our plan was for lunch to last up until about 3:30-4pm before our 1.5 hour drive back to El Prat Airport, so fingers crossed we were good on time!

Can Roca serves both a set menu as well as an ala carte menu, but with all the innovation on their menu, we went with the 130 Euro "Feast menu" to sample all their signature dishes where Leeann making a few minor substitutions to a few dishes.

Starting off caramelized olives hanging from a tree:

Anchovy bone chips (on the bottom left) which were excellent and parmesan tulip chips (upper middle):

What a gem: grapefruit shell filled with bacardi (??). The popping of the shell with the explosion of citrus and alcohol were stunningly stunning.

Boletus edulis brioche. What we believe to be a gnocchi like ball of truffle with a hot brothy soup... complex, elegant and clean.

On the left: Campari bombon, on the right: foie gras nougat (brilliant)

Crustaceans veloute with cauliflower toffee and tangerine. The plate was piping hot but the food was just luke warm, not sure if that was what was intended in case the sea urchin gets overcooked.. Leeann enjoyed this one:

Lightly grilled king prawns at the top (complete with all its gooey innards, yummy!) and king prawn sand - which is basically some sort of deconstructed prawn in the form of.... the bottom of the ocean! ..

Kevin's favourite dish: Smoked herring caviar potato omelette. A dumpling like shell encasing salty herring caviar in a milky consomme... sensational. Could eat this all day...

Artichoke cream on top of foie gras cream with salted eel and bits of orange and potato chip.. Talk about innovative combination. Great dish..!

Cod pot-au-feu. Lightly seared cod fillet, cooked to perfection with 5 different sauces to pair. Served from bottom up: Fennel, bergamot (yes, you didn't read wrong), orange, pine nut and olive. We're not huge fans of fennel, but the contrast and progression of flavours was wonderful.

Some mixed reactions here. Some salty cod (baccalau) served with a few gnocchi, cabbage and brandade terrine (which is basically a puree of salty cod with olive oil and milk). Leeann thought this was a bit too salty for her tastes but Kevin was positively surprised by this one.

Leeann's replacement for her lamb. One of Can Roca's signature dishes, the lobster.. again, she found this one a touch too salty.

Steak tartare with mustard ice cream and souffle potatoes. Fascinating combination of ingredients and flavours which included spiced tomato, caper compote, pickles, lemon, hazelnut praline and a meat bearnaise sauce Topped with Oloroso-sherry raisin, chives, Sichuan pepper, Pimenton de La Vera (D.O.), smoked paprika and curry.. still not sure what to make of it though. Truly interesting though.

Kevin's goose a la royale with peach compote and foie gras. Moist goose meat with an earthy and lovely gamey flavour

Leeann's iberian pork belly.

Hats off to this dessert concocted by Jordi Roca. Ranking up there with some of the best desserts we have ever had (honestly), the charcoal smoked clear shell (with charcoal smoke inside it) on top of a frozen mandarin orange cream + fruits was sublime.

This was the vanilla, caramel, liquorice, dried and caramelised black olives with a Tahitian-vanilla condensed ice cream... flavours of this were a bit too odd for us though.

'Terre' by Hermes. Deconstructed perfumery. Take a bottle of perfume and try to recreate the flavours and texture of it in a dessert - this is pretty much what it was..Leeann thought this is what a bar of fragrant soap would taste like, but Kevin thought the deconstruction really did work

Comparing it to the real thing...

Assorted chocolates to end the meal with

The man himself, Joan Roca:

The laboratory..errr kitchen where all the magic took place in.

Main reception:

Towards the rear wine cellar area

A photo of the front entrance as we departed..

Placing 5th on San Pellegrino's 50 Best in the World for 2009, Can Roca definitely is pushing new boundaries with its food. There were a couple of small misses with the meal, and some dishes were a touch on the saltier side, but overall the restaurant definitely sits up there with the top restaurants we have ever eaten at.

Service was top notch with all the wait staff well versed in the food (in both English and in Catalan), an immaculately timed delivery of dishes and well executed serving. At 130 Euros per person, it isn't the cheapest of places, but it is well worth the money with the dozen or so courses we received over the 3.5 hour lunch. Even the 1 hour drive from Barcelona to the town of Girona is a pretty painless journey - although we would not recommend it to those rushing off to catch an evening flight the same day.

El Celler de Can Roca, 48 Can Suyer, Girona. http://www.cellercanroca.com

San Sebastian

From El Celler de Can Roca, we made a beeline through the traffic of Barcelona to catch the evening flight out to the coastal town of San Sebastian, the capital city of Gipuzkoa province in the Basque country bordering France and the Pyrenees. Known for its international film festival and jazz festivals every year, San Sebastian also takes the cake for food. Boasting the most number of Michelin stars per capita in the world, 3 out of Spain's seven 3 Michelin star restaurants are in Sen Sebastian; Akelare, Arzak and Martin Berasategui. Unfortunately, with Akelare closed in February, Arzak getting a few negative reviews recently and being unable to get a reservation at Berasategui, we opted for Etxebarri and Mugaritz as close alternatives.

But before that, our wait at the airport got us a bit hungry, so a few more pintxos to start the evening. Three pintxos plus a glass of red wine, total cost, 5 euros....

Leeann studying our routing

Asador Etxebarri, Axpe

The next day started with us picking up the rental car at the Centro Diagonal shopping center in the middle of San Sebastian and then making our way a little over 1 hour to the tiny, tiny, tiny... did i say TINY village of Axpe, which sits about 65km to the South West of San Sebastian and about 35km to the South East of Bilbao. Set in a converted farmhouse originally built over 100 years ago, the chef and proprietor Victor Arguinzoniz opened Etxebarri at its current location in 1989 and has been part of the team creating one of the most exciting dining experiences that we have come across in a long long time, if not ever.

Asadors traditionally refer to 'grill houses' or restaurants which pride themselves in serving up a good grill.

Etxebarri is no different in the sense that fresh ingredients are grilled over homemade charcoals (a different type for different dishes mind you!) and served as simple but yet unique dishes - unique in all respects.

Arriving 5 minutes prior to our 1pm sitting, the restaurant was barely open for business with us being the first diners of the day. While none of the wait staff speak any English at all, we asked if Lennox Hastie, the half Brisbanian, half British chef and protege of Victor was around at all. A few minutes later, he came out to greet us and explain a bit about the menu.

Lennox came to Etxebarri a little over 4 years ago for an initial 6 month stint, but he has stuck around to help add an international perspective to a restaurant which still has many of its traditional ways etched into the wait staff. As a result, the little restaurant has made its way into the little red book with a star and sits at number 39 on the San Pellegrino list.

A view from the window where we sat:

Homemade pumpkin soup to start with:

A unique creation of smoked butter. Normally I would consider a blob of butter served like this to be a phenomenal no-no, but this was a remarkable and adventurous dish with a blob of salted butter, lightly smoked with one of their variations of charcoal, and sprinkled with bits of truffle and bread crumbs...

Lightly grilled oyster served on a bed of seaweed and what we believe to be Oyster cream sauce...

Highlight of the meal: Grilled Oscietra caviar... pure bliss...

Instead of peaking and then coming into a trough, the grilled clams served with slightly smoked grapefruit in its own broth was equally breathtaking...

A dish not commonly found in Western cuisine.. grilled sea cucumber served with fava beans. Crunchy and with just a perfect balance of saltiness and oil...

Another highlight. Grilled duck egg yolk underneath Perigord truffles.. with its proximity to the French Aquitaine area, the sourcing of Perigord truffles could not have been more favourable. A strong oaky wood flavour combined with the egg and potato mash underneath was beautifully earthy.

Yet ANOTHER highlight. Smoked Iberian pig chorizo..... this was so, so good!

Now for some more proteins. Grilled bacalau (salted cod).. normally, bacalau is a dry and too salty for my liking but somehow, the pimiento pepper and butter (??) sauce sitting underneath the cod just helped to give this such a good balance:

Just when you thought that the dishes would be winding to a close, a massive punch in the form of a full slab of slightly aged Galician beef. An awesome dichotomy of a grilled outer surface combined with a blue rare steak underneath.. flavoured with nothing more than a few sprinkles of sea salt - out of this world... if only they had served this when we were a bit more hungry! We were pretty stuffed by then.

This first dessert was also a brilliant part of the repertoire. Smoked milk ice-cream with wild fruit infusion. What I can only describe as slightly smokey frozen yoghurt on top of succulently sweet berries made this such a simple but amazing dessert. The fact that it was ice cold to balance the heaviness of the past few courses definitely helped this along..

This formed the slightly mediocre finish to a brilliant meal. The pain perdu (a variant of the french toast) was too custardy for me at this point in the meal and the cinnamon icecream would normally be a great closing flavour but there just wasn't enough of the cinnamon flavour on this one..

I know that once in a while we cite restaurants as being on the top of our lists of places we have eaten, but in all honesty, Etxebarri's food is so simple but yet so astoundingly delicious without any of the bing and bang of typical 'fine dining' establishments that Kevin is tempted to say that this ranks in the top 1 or 2 meals ever, so far. Fair enough we are a bit bummed out that reservations at a certain restaurant in Roses continues to be elusive, but we have done some reading and it seems that we aren't the only people to feel the same about Etxebarri being in the best one or two meals out there.

Fair enough, the service is indeed of still has room for a bit of improvement, but at the end of the day the food is the most important. The fact that it sits in a beautiful setting in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE just makes the trip to Axpe a bit more special.

I would not hesitate to recommend this restaurant to any and everyone out there. The food here is just brilliant.

Asador Etxebarri, middle of nowhere, Axpe-Marzana, Atxondo, middle of nowherehttp://www.asadoretxebarri.com

We would recommend going there for lunch as it is a bit of a drive out there and you wouldn't want to miss the scenery on the way there and while you are there.

Back in San Sebastian

Unfortunately, Leeann hadn't been feeling all that well and we ended up not going to Andoni Aduriz's Mugaritz restaurant on the outskirts of Donostia-San Sebastian....

Being in the land of Pintxos bars and tapas, with the San Sebastian area said to be the center of the best pintxos in the whole of Spain, we had to spend some time bar hopping. We headed to the Northern part of San Sebastian to the old part of town, the Parte Vieja:

Stopping first at Bar Martinez to have a few slabs of Jamon Iberico, some scallop (??) salad on top of a typical piece of baguette and then some mullet roe in brine water... mmmmmm! Glass of house red wine to go with it too of course!

Eat first and then ask what it is later!

Although Bar Martinez was not on our list of places to go, San Sebastian's hundreds of pintxos bars all offer ridiculously simple and delicious tapas. Bar Martinez, 31 Calle de Agosto

Alona Berri

Within the tapas scene, few places can boast as many awards as Alona Berri. One of the more 'upscale' pintxos bars along with several other ones in the Gros area to the East of Parte Vieja.

Innovative and great tasting tapas is what, with a selection of tapas combinations which I would never have dreamed of combining (half of which we couldn't even remember what they were!)

Starting from the bottom left, a seafood combination of clams, shrimp and trout (??) cooked in a light garlic butter consomme... The next 3 on the right included anchovy over foie gras, a spoon-full of a whole bunch of things that noone seems to remember, except that is was bloody tasty! And of course, a customary glass of txacoli, the local cider/wine...

The chef and proprietor, Jose Ramon Elizondo explaining to one of his guests what was on offer for the day:

Leeann eyeing the food:

The menu:

Alona Berri, 24 Calle Bermingham, San Sebastian http://www.alonaberri.com

After lunch it was time to head to San Sebastian airport for our one hour flight back to Barcelona... it was sad to be leaving San Sebastian.... on the way to the airport we found ourselves a couple of packs of 'interesting' flavours of Ruffles!

Maremagnum

Normally we wouldn't hang out a shopping center, but we arrived at our hotel in the early evening and Sunday's are known to be a bit quiet in Barcelona so we took a 5 minute cab ride out to Maremagnum, a new shopping center along the harbour and found ourselves at one of the restaurants along the harbour walk for some seafood cooked in garlic butter:

An extremely savoury seafood paella:

The next day, we wandered in and around the stretch of Passeig de Garcia in search for more tapas for our final day in Barcelona, finding ourselves at Divinus, a tapas bar / restaurant with a huge selection of tapas:

The standard Jamon Iberico, one with a chunk of pepper on top:

A favourite local pasttime: patates bravas: chunks of potato served with a slightly spicy mayo sauce:

Iberico with 2 quail eggs: awesome:

More razor clams for Leeann:

Fairly reasonably priced and although there were some hits, there were some mediocre dishes too.

Divinus Barcelona, 28 Paseo de Garcia http://www.restaurantedivinus.com

Cal Pep

We've heard so many stories of Cal Pep, the 12-seat tapas bar sitting just off the Pla de Palau near Barceloneta run by Josep Manubens Figueres with its sensational queues and its simple yet immaculate cooking. With a 7:30pm opening time, we made it to the front gate at around 7pm to find it closed and noone standing around waiting like people had said.. disappointed, we took a quick stroll to get away from the cold and the rain and 10 minutes later, a small group of Germans had camped out in front of the steel shutter and we kind of got the feeling that the crowds would be showing up any minute.

Surely enough, by around 7:20, the queue had gone around the block and by the time the opened up the doors for us to get our seats, the 2nd seating of people were lined up orderly against the back wall and another dozen or so people stood outside waiting.

Deep fried artichokes, crispy and fragrant - very unique!

This was sensational... clams just lightly cooked in garlic without being too oily or salty...

Egg and potato omlette, a dish which had been recommended by others, but we found it to be a bit.... dull to be honest..

It was interested to see the waitstaff bustling around the back and Josep hacking away with his cough while smothering tomato onto the bread... a bit off-putting but it seems to be quite a regular sight as noone else really cared. The wait staff spoke only a little bit of English and with no menus to be found, we relied mostly on recommendations from people who had gone before and just to point... like these cockles sitting by the back shelf lightly tossed in garlic chilli oil... delicious!:

Tuna tartare.. a bit of a big portion:

Leeann's new look as we stepped out into the rain.

Probably the most expensive of all the tapas bars we went to, but it lived up to the expectations and the hype. The 2 of us spent about 65euros with a couple of glasses of wine and half a dozen dishes.. but we were stuffed! There is a restaurant seating area in the back, but it seemed much more fun to eat at the bar!

Cal Pep, 8 Placa de les Olles http://www.calpep.com

It would have been great if Akelarre was open, if we had made it to Mugaritz, Martin Berastagui, Arzak and Zuberoia if we had more time, but that is going to have to wait till our next trip! Perhaps combined with a trip to Rioja territory and WE STILL CAN'T GET A TABLE AT EL BULLI!

It was hard to cram so many good places to eat in such a good period of time, but even though we were there for only a few days, there is little dispute that Spain is a place for food. Of all the countries we have been to in the past, on Japan has any comparison in terms of ingredients, cooking and presentation as the Spaniards. Comerc24, Alkimia, Sant Pau, ABaC, Can Fabes, Cinc Sentits, Sauc.... the list goes on.. there are seriously very few countries that have us this excited about eating! Go to Spain and eat!!!!!!!!!!!!

New Zealand (Jan 10)

2010-01-13T19:51:00.000-08:00

We departed Sydney on the morning of New Years Day and headed for our quick 3 hour flight to Wellington, New Zealand where we would be driving across pretty much the entire length of the North Island all the way up to Auckland. We would start off in Wellington, drive up to wine country in Hawkes Bay (Napier, Hastings and Havelock North, then continue up to Taupo and Rotorua, followed by Auckland all the way up in the North.

We arrived mid-afternoon to a completely dead Wellington. As it was New Years Day, everything bar Borders Bookshop and a couple of restaurants was closed. So we headed up to the Wellington Botanical Gardens via the cable car and had a quick peek before taking a walk around the harbour. Before we knew it, dinner had arrived and we decided on an early night considering there was nothing open....

The next morning, we headed off on the so-called "State Highway 2", which I can only say is definitely NOT a highway. About 20km in, the road started climbing up in the Rimutaka Ranges, one of the few mountain ranges in New Zealand and with the thin, narrow roads cut into the side of the mountains, this made for an epic (and somewhat dangerous) drive through hairpin turns and steep overhanging cliffs. A rainstorm had somehow founds it way into the ranges at the moment we were driving through, so it was a bit scary!

We've driven through some mountainous regions in Japan, but this takes the cake for the scary factor.

300km and 4 hours later, we found ourselves at our first destination, Cape Kidnappers. Popular with the Kiwis, this is a camper caravan's haven:

The cliffs looking out from Cape Kidnappers...

Our main reason for visiting Cape Kidnappers was actually to have a look at "The Farm", a resort owned by Tiger's Julian Robertson and occupying the land above the cliffs that you see above.. Known for its world class golf course and surreal cabins, we couldn't resist to have a look. http://www.capekidnappers.com/

The view from the entrance of The Farm.

After going through some security gates and driving for 8km up into the cliffs, we arrived at the main lobby area. Some of the 2-bedroom cabins overlooking the coast:

Looking down towards the golf course and the edge of the cliffs. While we were there, someone landed in a black helicopter with their golf clubs... now that is arriving in style!

The main reception area:

More views of the golf course.. too bad I didn't bring the telephoto lens for this one.

Leeann roaming around the grounds..

After half an hour of getting excited about a resort we were not staying at, we made a move to finish up the last 20km of driving to our hotel in Napier, the Crown Hotel... view from the room:

I've been using the word understated a few times recently, but the exterior of the hotel epitomises understatement, however the rooms itself were definitely not! Superb hotel (far better than the Swissotel Sydney), and with some good views of the bay...

More of the bay..

Leeann found herself some of the famous fresh fruit icecream nearby..

That evening was the meal which we had been most excited about.. With Hawkes Bay known for its numerous vineyards and wineries, we decided to take it a step higher and found one with a well known restaurant called Terroir, located inside the Craggy Range vineyard about 15km South of Napier in Havelock North:

Sitting towards the end of all the vineyards along Te Mata in Havelock North, it is hard to miss Craggy Range with its imposing front gates and long driveway into the parking area:

Stunning views of the surrounding mountains:

As dusk started to set in:

The main buildings of Craggy Range. The left on which looks like a big vat is the Terroir Restaurant and the right one is the wine facilities (which can only be visited with an appointment).

They even have their own mini-lake:

You can't make wine without Grapes!

The interior of the restaurant:

Not that it makes a difference, but their 2006 Pinot Noir:

The restaurant wine cellar:

As a single vineyard, they had a host of amazing wines to choose from:

Leeann's provencal fish soup, a deep, rich seafood bomb with a touch of Pernod and saffron:

A thing of beauty: lightly peppered venison carpaccio with pomegranate, macadamia nuts, juniper cream and some baby cress. Paired with their 2007 'Block 14' Syrah. Venison was stunningly fresh and the flavours were immaculate. The wine comes from Gimblett Gravels and has a nice peppery, and a subtle floral tone to it.

Split vision drunkenness!

A bit of normality:

Dusk is really setting in now:

This is Leeann's beef fillet with potato and truffle gratin, some bernaise sauce and a Merlot wine jus:

The star of the day for Kevin was the roasted rabbit leg served with pancetta, endives and onions. This was paired with a 2006 Craggy Range Pinot Noir, a deep red toned pinot with a great spicyness to it and rounded fruit flavours:

Leeann's favourite Pavlova's:

Kevin could not resist the awesomeness that is this Kaimai crumbly blue cheese served with quince jam. An intensely matured blue cheese paired with a 2007 Craggy Range Pinot Noir from Martinborough, stunning...

Meal for 2 with 3 glasses of wine cost just under US$140, even with the 15% holiday surcharge. We would recommend this restaurant and vineyard in a heartbeat and if you go, definitely order game meat as the wines go extremely well with their fresh produce. To top it off, the surrounding landscape and natural beauty is absolutely stunning. http://www.craggyrange.com/

After our extremely good meal the night before at Terroir, we headed downstairs from our hotel to Milk and Honey, a popular brunch spot for locals, famed for their decently sized fryups and waffles:

Leeann got scared of the three slabs of waffles just presented to her:

The Crown Hotel where we stayed:

Continuing on our road trip took us along the Thermal Highway of New Zealand towards Taupo and the Rotorua region (think Lord of the Rings):

Another famous export from NZ, honey...

After a couple hours of driving North, we arrived in Rotorua and headed first to the blueberry vineyard... yes, you read correctly, blueberry wine!...

Leeann prowling around in the blueberry restaurant.

Samples of blueberry wine (sorry for the blurry photos, we were excited to sample some)

The sheep outside:

Some fresh blueberry icecream:

We then headed back to Rotorua, but not before stopping to try another NZ invention, the Zorb. If you're as old as we are and you've watched Jackie Chan's old movie called the "A-Plan", there is a scene where he rolls down a hill in a giant inflatable ball... this is it!

Kevin rolling and rolling and rolling...

Next door to that was the cable car and mini-kart ride:

Leeann is ready to race!

Kart downhill, chairlift back up!

A view of Rotorua from above:

For dinner, we headed down Tutanekai Street nearby our hotel in search for some food!

Leeann's seared scallop salad:

Followed by her steamed mussels:

Kevin's monstrous rack of lamb:

More Pavlova for Leeann:

The next morning we were supposed to take a helicopter trip out to an active volcano (White Island)... unfortunately, the weather was really not that good, so reluctantly the trip was scrapped. Instead, we went over to Te Puia, a geyser/volcanic mudpit area in Rotorua:

Te Puia is also known for its display of Maori culture:

After exhausting most of the major sights in Rotorua, we completed our drive to Auckland and headed for our hotel at Lighter Quay:

The hotel lobby:

Leeann is eating something....

The city of sails as Auckland is better known as... there really are a lot of boats and yachts!

Hotel lobby:

We took a drive out Mission Bay to have a look:

A view of Auckland city from Mission Bay:

More of the docks outside our hotel:

A super yacht hoisted up for display at Lighter Basin:

Kevin looking fat after eating for a week non-stop:

We opted for an early dinner since we were getting hungry and made our way to the Harbourside Grill & Restaurant which is in the Auckland Ferry Building (Above).

Kevin's appetizer of a half-boiled egg served with Serrano ham:

Bird watching:

Leeann's crayfish:

Kevin's pasta marinara

Auckland doesn't have too much to offer in terms of sights, but they do have a lot of food!

The next lunch we went to the Soul Restaurant along Lighter Basin where Leeann dug into her asparagus and Kevin had a seafood bouillabaisse :

MORE Pavlova for Leeann:

We drove up to Mount Eden after lunch for a view of the city:

And with a late night flight, we thought we could have one last vineyard experience by having a few drinks at the Villa Maria Estate.... unfortunately, as with all things down under, it was closed by 6pm! How unfortunate

It was too bad we only got to see a glimpse of the North Island, and as we had expected although NZ is generally a quiet and more chilled out place than most countries we had been, the food, wine and scenery are excellent here. Would we come back? Yes, but most likely to go and see South Island...

Sydney (Dec 2009) - Pier Restaurant, Quay Restaurant

2010-01-13T18:28:00.000-08:00

After a week in Tokyo where Kevin was consumed by what can only be presumed to be the Swine flu, we ventured to Australia.

Having spent so long in South East Asia already, it was a bit strange how we had not visited Sydney before and so we were looking forward to some nice weather and good food as well as a view of Sydney Harbour's famed NYE fireworks.

We arrived early on the morning of the 29th, eager to catch a few hours of sleep after spending 8 hours on an overnight flight with far too many crying children and their rather ineffective parents. But before that, dealing with Australia immigration and customs was a right pain in the arse. Out of all the countries in the world, why does Sydney have to be so over the top with security? We had a much smoother exit going to both London and NY recently.

Nonetheless, we accepted that we live in a world where air travel has become more about pain and less about convenience.

We had decided on convenience by staying smack in the city center at the Swissotel Sydney along Market Street just neighbouring Sydney Tower:

A quick walk took us to Darling Harbour:

Followed by a one stop on the subway to Circular Quay - where Sydney Harbour, Sydney Bridge, the Opera House and what seemed to be all the tourists in the world had congregated.

The venue for our pre-NYE dinner the next day at the Quay Restaurant (more on that later)

On our first night there, we had a reservation at Pier Restaurant, an understated seafood oriented restaurant sitting on one end of Rose Bay, one of the myriad of bays surrounding the Greater Sydney area. One of the ways to get there was to take the 15 minute ferry ride from Circular Quay to Rose Bay:

The understated exterior of the Pier Restaurant just before dinner time:

One of the many post-modern apartment complexes in the Rose Bay area:

Our amuse bouche, kingfish tartare with capers, a touch of lemon? in a cone - clean, fresh fish with a nice balance of saltiness and acid:

A view from our table as the sun began to set:

Appetizer for Leeann consisted of spanner crab raviolis in seafood consomme

For Kevin it was a yellow fin tuna tartare with oscietra caviar, oyster cream and soy & mirin jelly. Conceptually very interesting, but the portion was a bit too big and there was perhaps a bit too much jelly in there making it a bit mushy.

Kevin's main course was another interesting combination. Roasted barramundi served with Serrano ham, witlof (which is basically an endive leaf), dutch carrots and a touch of bitter orange. The fish was roasted perfectly and the combination with the ham was just right:

Leeann opted for the slow roasted lobster with white asparagus, kale and lobster jus - Leeann was well into this dish!

Pier is known also for their desserts. Leeann's multi-layer mango construction with cereal called "migas". Bread crumbs, grains, a Sauternes custard topped with a mango egg and passionfruit icecream. Creativity and execution on top form here:

This was a wonder for Kevin. A deconstructed blueberry cheesecake icecream made with goats curd powder, chestnut crumble, white chocolate yoghurt and blueberries. Simply magical.

Pier was opened only in 2005 but has quickly gained a reputation for being one of the top restaurants in the world taking 3 stars in Australian Gourmet Traveller 2010. With Greg Doyle running the kitchen and Katrina Kanetani the pastry chef responsible for creating the awesome desserts, we would highly recommend this restaurant to anyone going to Sydney.

A view as we were leaving:

A meal for 2 with 1 glass of wine cost about USD250.

The next day, we met up with Kevin's uncle, aunt and cousin for lunch:

Then we headed to the railway station to have a quick look:

The Christmas spirit in Australia:

We decided to hop on the Sydney Light Rail bound for Lilyfield to have a look at the Sydney Fish Market.

A derelict shipyard off Sydney Fish Market:

Peter Doyle's Seafood Market:

Our oyster shucker:

Leeann's grilled abalones and scallop:

Some uni (sea urchin) which tasted a bit off (note to all, do not have the 'fresh' uni in Australia)

Oyster selection at Sydney Fish Market:

The rather disappointing Chinatown in Sydney:

The Rocks, the area just off the Sydney Bridge at Circular Quay which highlights some of the more historical facets of Sydney:

That evening we found ourselves at another one of Sydney's more prominent restaurants - Quay Restaurant. Run by Peter Gilmore, the restaurant took the Restaurant of the Year Awards in a few of the Australian publications for both 2009 and 2010 so we had high hopes. And although December 30 was not actually NYE yet, they had a special menu for AUD210 per person for an 8 course set menu and some pretty decent views of Sydney Harbour and the Opera House:

An amuse bouche of tuna tartare with oyster foam and pearls. Nice balance of flavours:

One of the Quay Restaurant's signature dishes, the Sea Pearls. Starting from the 12 o'clock position: tuna sashimi with oscietra caviar, octopus, mud crab, abalone and sea scallop. Presentation wise great, the abalone tasted great, but I think it was more novelty than flavours:

Mud crab congee with palm hearts. A Chinese touch to this rice porridge made it quite an interesting dish. Deep, powerful flavours made this quite a decent dish.

Pork belly with braised abalone, tofu and mushrooms. A moderate variation of some classic Cantonese dishes, this was not a bad course, although the roasted pork belly was a tad on the chewy side.

View of the Opera House from the restaurant:

Kevin's gently poached partridge breast was probably one of the highlights of the night. Served on top of a black pudding and walnut mash and some truffle custard and palm of hearts, the slight poaching of the partridge kept the gamey-ness of the meat and made the meat seem almost raw. This was beautiful:

As Leeann wasn't too big of a game bird fan, the partridge was replaced with fresh picked peas. It looked a bit uninspired, but the peas were gorgeous!

This was followed by a slow cooked lamb loin, and although we were in lamb territory, this dish was nothing particularly special, but it wasn't bad either.

Leeann's choice of white asparagus served under a pinenut truffle mash - refreshing and simple:

A view of the restaurant from the outside:

Going back to the food, our first dessert was a white peach granita served with peach icecream. Very peachy flavour as one would expect, quite an interesting combination.

Some petit fours:

Kevin's favourite of the evening was the eight textures of chocolate. Not as chocolatey as one would think, and a decent finish to the meal.

We had high hopes for this meal, and while the food was decent, it was a bit disappointing given the NYE type price and execution of the dishes. We would give props to the nice twist on contemporary Australian cooking and perhaps the combination of the set menu just wasn't put together with as much thought as there should have been. The location at Sydney Harbour was superb and we couldn't have asked for better seats. Service was very good, although as the restaurant got more packed (we had a 7pm seating), the wait staff's attention became increasingly divided also.

Our experience at the Pier Restaurant was better and the food was also much better value there. But with that said, we would still recommend going to the Quay Restaurant on a normal day where the food vs value ratio might be more worthwhile. Meal for 2 with 2 glasses of wine was approximately USD380.

The view of the Rocks as we were leaving the restaurant:

Sydney Harbour Bridge from the Rocks area:

Overseas Passenger Terminal, where the Quay Restaurant is at:

Circular Quay piers:

Martin Place:

The next day was the last day of 2009 and we decided to take a risk and head over to Bills, Bill Granger's cafe restaurant which also happens to have a branch in Kamakura, Japan. Located in Darlinghurst - an area slightly to the East of downtown Sydney, this brunch pad is known to have a bit of a queue on weekends. We went early (around noon) and was told it was going to be a 45 minute wait with about 3 parties in front of us. We normally don't wait, but having come this far, we decided to go for it... 30 minutes later, the maitre d' comes out and tells everyone that the kitchen can't handle any more diners and it would ANOTHER 2 hours before we would see any food being served, so we had no choice but to find something else! How sad..

So instead, we headed over to Rockpool Bar and Grill where Kevin had their famed Wagyu burger and Leeann had a mince Wagyu bolognese. Oh, and a very nicely done margarita to go with it the burger too!

From there, it was only a 5 minute walk over to St. Mary's Cathedral:

As we were heading into mid-afternoon, we decided to go and check out prime spots to see the fireworks at midnight. Not too far from the Cathedral was the Sydney Domain/Botanical Gardens, and with 3pm just around the corner, this was the scene at one of the viewpoints:

Talk about ridiculous. We decided it was better to try out luck nearer the time at Circular Quay.

But before that, we headed back to Darling Harbour for the 9pm mini-fireworks session... which was not bad, but nothing spectacular either.

We headed back to the hotel to do some packing and to sort out our next morning's early flight out to Wellington, New Zealand and with 20 minutes to go before 2010 kicked in, we headed on foot with the hoards of other revelers down towards the Sydney Harbour and managed to find a semi-decent vantage point along King Street:

We had heard many stories about Sydney's fireworks being the best in the world and although we weren't necessarily standing in the best location, we'd have to say it was quite spectacular.. and if we were to do it again, it would be wise to consider getting a yacht and sitting out in the harbour with some wine and chilling for the afternoon!

Sydney reminded us a bit of Toronto and a bit of Chicago and while there were forgettable experiences (namely with customs, people in the service industry, unfriendly people, stores closing at 6pm, and everything being crazy expensive.... the city does have a few good things going for it. The food was generally above par, the city is easy to get around (even by foot) and the weather is pretty gorgeous. The other low point was the Swissotel Sydney though. We've stayed in more than a few Swissotels and the chain is generally considered to be fairly decent based on our experiences, but this one was weak on service, cheap on amenities and everything seemed a bit disfunctional... and to charge close to USD500 a night for that was just short of daylight robbery. Normally we are quite open to cities and cultures, but Sydney was mildly disappointing overall.
But with that said, we were only there for 2.5 days and we didn't really venture out to the suburbs of Sydney... so we may have missed out a bit there. Perhaps next time?

Seoul (May 2009)

2009-05-05T08:08:00.000-07:00

We arrived in Seoul on the morning of Apr 30th after an unkind 5 hour 45 minute overnight flight from Singapore which allowed for about 1 hour of sleep before being abruptedly woken up for breakfast.

Aside from having to do some work that day, we were looking forward to getting some local experience and food even though it was Kevin's 6th time visiting. Michelle was kind enough to take us around with the first stop being Noryangjin fish market (노량진수산시장) to have a fresh experience at a wet market.

Unlike Tsukiji market in Tokyo, if you go to Noryangjin market, you can eat everything they have for sale at the stalls. You pick and choose all the fresh fish, seafood and odds and ends - buying them as you would at any wet market; but from there you can pick any one of the restaurants tucked away in the basement or corners and ask them to prepare the food for your right then and there - simply superb.

20 minutes of being hassled left right and center by the vendors, we had gotten ourselves some live blue crab, a few abalones, some conch, 3 octopus and a what we think was a red snapper(??) whole.

We brought the items to Hae Dal (해달식당), a medium size restaurant in the basement of the market, where all our food was prepared.

First up was a huge plate of sashimi from the fish which was swimming around just a few minutes ago. Thick chunky slices dipped in Gochujang is how the Korean's like it:

Then came the prize of the day; San-nakji (live octopus) still writhing around with all its tentacles cut off:
Fresh abalone grilled plain with a touch of butter:

Huge conch also quick grilled:

The remains of our snapper turned into a mind blowing spicy fish soup.. Add in a couple blocks of ramen, and you have a winner!

Something we missed out on... rice stuffed crab shell:

We are indeed happy about dinner:

After the fish market waiting for the taxi:

Pierre Gagnaire a Seoul has been the talk of the town since it opened up last year - unfortunately it has not been about there being good food or great service. But rather, prices on the high side and things not really happening there. We went at around 10pm on a Friday night to check out the bar, and aside from the stunning views towards Namsan tower, it was like sitting in a library:

So we headed for a cozy little wine bar instead:

The wine was great, cheese was so so, but the place was brilliant. Small, rustic and Catalan seem like the right words to describe it..

Next day (May 1) was the so-called labourers day in Korea, an 'unofficial' holiday for labourers, which meant no work! Having come to Korea so many times and ventured no further than Seoul itself, Michelle and Hyemi took us out to Yangpyeong (양평), a county in Geonggi about an hour to the East of Seoul. Surrounded by the mountains of Yongmunsan and Jungmisan, Yangpyeong is completely not what you would expect of a countryside county. Stunning landscapes, lakes, art galleries, farms and unique restaurants are abundant along the 2 rivers which flow along the main roads.

Unfortunately, given that it was still a semi-holiday, the roads out of Seoul were jammed to the hilt, so after picking up Hyemi, it still took us a good hour and a half to get to our lunch spot. On the way, a few interesting sights:

Cow knee soup:

Some weird scientology type advertising on the back of a car:

The sight of Yangpyeong was obvious once we saw the tomatoes:

Our chauffeur:

At around 1pm, we got to our restaurant Sandang (which means a cottage in the mountains) a well known restaurant run by resident chef Im Ji Ho and serving dishes created from ingredients from the wild, including the nearby mountains. As it was pretty full when we got to the restaurant, we got a good half and hour to have tea upstairs and to chill a bit:

As we're driving into the restaurant:

The restaurant:

The ladies looking out at the fermented pots:

Kevin taking a rest before lunch:

All the pots of goodness!

First course - I think it was some kind of barley soup:

Huge cuts of sashimi:

Some kind of radish cake:

Pumpkin sticks with sweet potato balls:

Grilled pork with fermented shrimp paste:

Fresh salad:

A few items I couldn't quite identify:

Mini deep fried crabs with yuzu:
Definitely not a usual meal for either of us, but we were happy that it was a fresh taste on Korean food.

Seaweed oyster soup:

Regarded as an expensive dish:

Chilling out after lunch:

One of the unusual things about Yangpyeong is the large abundance of art galleries in the area - with one of them being the strangely named "Dr. Park Gallery". Founded by a medical doctor and designed by Seung Hyo Sang (승효상). The gallery sits on the edge of Hangang River and was currently showcasing Hwang Seon-Tae perceptual art - something quite different.

Dr. Park Gallery:

Do you like Kevin's half mohawk:

This is one called "Ich bin nicht da, trotzdem denke ich", which if my German is not that rusty translates to "I am not here, nevertheless I think":

Most of the art is in the form of 3-dimensional photograph prints encased in frosted glass and then sandblasted to give it depth.

We headed back to Seoul after an hour or so there and headed for some pre-dinner dessert at Meal Top - at the top of Hyundai Department store in Kangnam. Some red bean mochi ice:

As we were completely stuffed, we headed down to the river for a brief stop:

Before heading to have some Korean barbeque, with some of the finest grade beef one can get in Seoul:

Deungshim - the equivalent of Kobe beef:

Some delicious beef blood soup, Sun Ji Hae Jang Gook (선지해장국):

The next day, more interesting food at "Korean Folk Dishes House" a restaurant almost directly next to the Blue House (president's HQ), where they serve home-style beef dumpling soup stew - Soo Jae Bi (수제비), a spicy Hae Mool Pa Jeon (해물파전), some potato pancake Gam Ja Jeon (감자전), and Kevin's favourite - Makgoli's little brother Dong Dong Joo (동동주):

Superb.
After lunch, we continued on our art fueled stay in Seoul with a trip to the Samsung Leeum Gallery, a stunningly designed building in its own right housing some of the finest art in the world. We saw a number of impressive pieces including a couple of Rothko's and Hirst's "Lullaby Spring" - which I can only presume is on loan to the gallery. As ridiculous as some of his art is, seeing the installation in person was interesting.

The Guggenheim inspired stairwell:

Louise Bourgeois' infamous spider:

Back at the hotel, Leeann with the lady in a hanbok:

Leeann with the weird alien dolls in Avenuel:

Along the Changgyecheon (청계천) walk:

What used to be the old sewage repository for Seoul was converted a few years ago into a waterway feature with lighting and pieces:

There happen to have been some demonstrations going on right near our hotel, so we encountered some police resistance.

How appropriate:

Our final day in Seoul started with a visit to Changyeonggung, a palace to the North East of the city with its own expansive garden, ponds and a beautiful greenhouse:

Then with Michelle at the Lotte Department store finished off our meals for this trip.

Kevin's raw beef bi bim bap:

And then it was time to go:

Bo Innovation, Hong Kong (Feb 14, 09)

2009-04-05T07:49:00.001-07:00

We don't normally write individually about restaurants we visit, but we thought it was worth highlighting our recent experience at Bo Innovation in Hong Kong - a very much talked about molecular gastronomy restaurant. We already have quite a fair amount of general Hong Kong photos on this blog to cover the rest of our trip and secondly, our experiences here gave us something to write about - especially as our criticisms of non-European Michelin guides has been made clear a few times in the past..

Without wanting to make this post a rant about the inconsistency in the Michelin guides lately, you know something is wrong when you see restaurants like Yung Kee getting a Michelin star. Let us assume for a moment that there is some validity to the London or Paris guides (something which is more often agreed than not it seems), and noting that two Michelin stars signifies that a restaurant has "Excellent cooking" and is "Worth a Detour". Having two stars also suggests that a restaurant is at the same calibre as that of Le Gavroche in London or Michel Rostang in Paris - two establishments which are legendary in their own right and have had consistently good reviews.

Now, take Bo Innovation, a restaurant which is sometimes to be the El Bulli of Asia by bringing molecular gastronomy to Hong Kong and made even more interesting a tattoo sporting, sunglass wielding engineer turned chef Alvin Leung. The restaurant unfortunately falls flat for us; and to compare it to the aforementioned restaurants from the perspective of food, service, value or experience would be quite ridiculous. One could also argue that it is impossible to compare guides across different countries, but since Michelin uses the same definitions to rate their restaurants, I do not see why it would be wrong to make such a comparison.

We opted for the chef's table, and was presented with a 10+ course tasting menu at a little over US200 per person. The 1st appetiser was a dollop of liquid nitrogen frozen cotton candy puff which was a little different and a little unexpected...

The 2nd appetiser, was some kind of combination of oyster, caviar and some duck (??) chip which was supposed to be shared amongst the three of us - all on 1 plate mind.... didn't taste too bad, but it seemed a little strange that the 3 of us were eating from 1 plate at this point. Anyway, since we weren't entirely sure of what the idea was, we played along...

Next up, a duo of duck. A duck tartare and what I remember to be duck breast and foie gras. The foie gras was done pretty good, but the tartare was quite plain and uninteresting. We don't remember what the jelly was..

Probably the best dish of all the courses, was the deconstructed Xiao Long Bao. The egg yolk surrounded by thin membrane (a technique which all molecular gastronomists have been incorporating) and a black vinegar chip which was simple yet innovative. This was also served alongside the in house specialty "Lap Mei Fan", a deconstructed version of the Chinese dish, which while admitedly different, was uninteresting as a dish and made us wonder why people have been so excited about this dish.

Some dumplings/dim sum followed next:

A quick seared Wagyu beef:

Both of the above were as uninspiring as the Lap Mei Fan, but things got a little better with the mushroom truffle soup and then the truffle cheung fun, both of which seemed to have more thought put in the most of the previous dishes.

The 1st dessert chocolate cake was so-so, but the sampler pastry plate which came after was a bit of a shambles to be honest. Themeless, odd-tasting, uninspiring and plain - it seemed like it was a last minute plug to our course.

The ladies got a hot cinnamon tea and Kevin got a single malt whisky and a cigar to end our thoroughly boring meal.

By the end of it, the table next to us was also frustrated at the small 'sharing' size plates and even though the restaurant was indeed fully booked for the evening, I couldn't help but to share the frustration and disappointment.

Obviously no guide is perfect nor complete and perhaps the large crowds for Valentine's day meant that things were just not optimal, but one would have expected a restaurant with 2 Michelin stars to pull through regardless of the circumstances. To complete this rant, while there are substantially more restaurants in Tokyo than Hong Kong to consider, the world of molecular gastronomy in Asia is distinct - with very few restaurants in this realm. If Michelin chose Bo Innovation because of its innovative style, then I can't help to ask why there is no sign of Tapas Molecular Bar (Tokyo) - a restaurant which in our opinion is light years ahead in terms of food, location, experience, all at an exceptional value.

After voicing our discontent with the meal to the restaurant, the communications manager of Bo Innovation did offer to compensate us for part of the meal and she was very nice about it - but unfortunately that was the positive note about our meal here.

This blog post may strike as being a little harsh and is actually intended to be more of a challenge to the folks at the Michelin guide. Naturally, our disclaimer is that we merely write about our own experiences at this restaurant (and others) - I am sure that many hundred or thousands of other patrons have enjoyed their food at Bo. Furthermore, the remaining 364 days of the year may be at a far higher standard than the one day that we were there, so do take the review with a pinch of salt.

Meal for 3 with 2 glasses of wine at US$700.
http://www.boinnovation.com

Kansai, Chugoku, Hokuriku (Dec 2008 - Jan 2009) - Part 1

2009-02-22T22:29:00.000-08:00

Osaka, Fukui, Kanazawa, Noto-Hanto, Shirakawa-Go, Gokayama, Gero Onsen

This also marks our first trip without going through Tokyo, driving a total of 1,300km over 2 weeks and taking us to no fewer than 7 UNESCO world heritage sights, driving to remote areas of Japan and eating a ton of excellent food!

Landing in Kansai Airport meant that we wasted no time in getting by way of JR Thunderbird to our starting base of Fukui (福井), the main city of Fukui prefecture sitting at the core of the Hokuriku region - about 2 hours Northeast of Kyoto and Lake Biwa.

The huge amounts of snowfall seen on the train-ride helped to boost anticipation for what was to come, and although we had not planned to do any sightseeing in Fukui, we were looking forward to the days ahead! Arriving just around dinner time got us hungry and we jumped at the sight of some decent fast food on our first night in town:

But aside from the quick bite and early night rest, there was little for us in this city, so the next morning we made for an early start for Kanazawa (金沢) - a 1.5 hour drive North, heading straight for the food market:

And we stumbled upon this restaurant with a huge queue outside, so being bumbling fools, we decided to join the 1.5 hour wait:

Damn was it worth it!

After lunch, we headed for the Kenroku-en Gardens, noted as one of the three most beautiful gardens in the country:

Followed by a trip to Kanazawa Castle, smack in the middle of the city:

We balanced all the history and culture with a trip to the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art designed by Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. Unfortunately it was closed, but the outside:

Dinner brought us for one of the nicest surprises we've had at a restaurant called Sasa-gawa by Wada (モード和食) - an eclectic meal of an almost molecular gastronomy nature combining Japanese ingredients and cooking with French elements - all for just $35 for a 12 course meal:

Day 3 was our trip was one of the most anticipated ones as we head straight North towards the Noto Peninsula, one the largest peninsulas in Japan. Known for its jagged coastlines and earthquake prone land, one of the more interesting stops is the Chirihama / Nagisa Driveway, an 8km stretch of beach which you can drive along:

From Chirihama Driveway, we headed for the Nanao and the Noto-jima Aquarium.

Where we got some quick lunch:

Followed by the glass museum:

Before heading over to Wakura Onsen and making it for our 3pm check-in at Tadaya Ryokan, one of the oldest ryokans in Japan with a 120 year history - hosting guests as prominent as the Dalai Lama and the King of Bhutan. Overlooking Nanao Bay in the Sea of Japan, the whole ryokan is built as a low-rise hiraya structure at the tip of Wakura Onsen:

Being so close to the sea gives some excellent access to some of the finest seafood!

And of course, we had to try the local Noto beef, tataki style:

It was sad to leave this place:

But fortunately, the next few more places made up more than half of the trip in terms of anticipation. Heading into the Japanese alps, our next stop was Gokayama (五箇山), a village an hour or so South of Toyama city along the Shogawa river, and one of the most beautiful places one can go. Known for huts built over 300 years ago in the Gasshoo Zukuri (合掌造り) style in which people can still stay in to this date. Coupled with Shirakawa-go (白川郷), another UNESCO village about 1 hour further South from Gokayama, make up the "Historic Villages" in the region:

Gokayama:

Shirakawa-Go:

I guess we can't really complain about this but one of the problems with sites being declared as a UNESCO World Heritage site is that there are WAY TOO MANY TOURISTS! Gokayama was much better, most likely because of its remoteness in Toyama, but Shirakawa-Go sits smack in between Takayama and Kanazawa and only a couple hours from Nagoya and was plagued with tourists from all walks of life.

Thankfully, the huts were covered in snow, giving it an almost surreal feel to it - a must see place if we were to recommend.

From here, we headed to Takayama, opting for some of the lesser travelled paths:

Kansai, Chugoku, Hokuriku (Dec 2008 - Jan 2009) - Part 2

2009-02-22T05:37:00.000-08:00

Takayama, Gero-Onsen, Nagoya, Nara, Hiroshima, Miyajima, Okayama

Takayama is often cited in Japanese tourism guides as a castle and shrine city, and although there are its fair share of both attractions, the actual city is quite small and the sights took us less than half a day to cover. Nonetheless, the Hida-Takayama area is well known for its breed of wagyu beef, which we couldn't help but to try as soon after we checked in as possible:

A night view of the famous Nakabashi bridge:

A view from the bridge the next morning:

And then the next morning, along the old streets of Takayama (San-machi Suji):

The morning market:

Hida Kokubunji temple, one of the oldest surviving shrines in Japan (746A.D.)

Before taking us to lunch at this great place along Yasukawa-dori which included raw Hida Takayama beef and Hida beef wrapped in miso:

Next stop was Gero-Onsen (下呂温泉) in Gifu Prefecture (岐阜), one of the 3 famous onsen towns (along with Arima and Kusatsu), opting to stay at Armeria, a ryokan hotel which was aged and overrun with more tourists, but compared to most of the other places in the city, seemed to be in pretty good shape.

From Gero-Onsen, it was another 2.5 hour drive back to the civilisation that is Nagoya for New Years Eve.

Passing Nagoya castle on the way:

And visiting Atsuta shrine before the NYE crowd came:

As we drove around Nagoya city at night:

Lunch in Nara the next day:

Before setting off to see the shrines known collectively as the "Historic Monuments of Nara":

The crowds were still strong going up to Kasuga Shrine:

Leeann's encounter with a deer:

A view of Nara city from the top of Sangatsu-do hall:

Vendors still serving NYE food along the streets:

Heijo Palace at night:

And then we found this gem of a cafe nearby serving all the best things - natto, crab, ikura, oysters, etc.... all for very little!:

Back to Todaiji the next day:

From here, we hopped on the shinkansen, bound for Hiroshima, passing Himeji castle on the way..

Once there, it was a quick 15 minute ride on the tram to our hotel:

With the afternoon well under way, we dropped our bags off and headed off to Miyajima shrine, the famous torii which sits in the middle of the sea. This meant that we had to take an hour train across Hiroshima to Miyajima port - followed by a 15 minute ferry ride to Miyajima Island where they are famous for oysters!

The 2nd photo shows an oyster (kaki) rice roll.

Some grilled meat:

and some more oysters:

The famed torii:

And the Itsukushima Shrine:

More food in the form of an Okonomiyaki pancake:

And yet more oysters for Leeann:

and more:

The biggest rice scoop ever:

And then at dinner, we had nothing but... you guessed it.. more oysters (even the salad dressing was oyster based)!

Back near the hotel, some interesting lights and sights:

The next day, we headed off to the A-bomb memorial - sometimes called the Peace Memorial. The significance of this dome is that the first bomb exploded a mere 160meters above this dome but a large part of the dome remain intact.

Before walking a couple of km to Hiroshima Castle:

And an alarming number of vending machines along the way:

Before heading off to Okayama by train and visiting Okayama Castle and the Koraku-en Gardens:

Koraku-en Garden panorama:

We then picked up our car and headed for lunch in Himeji to try out their famous Oden:

Before taking a quick peek inside Himeji Castle:

Having visited so many shrines, temples and castles over the past few days, we were looking forward to relaxing in some onsens... Arima Onsen was next on our list!

Kansai, Chugoku, Hokuriku (Dec 2008 - Jan 2009) - Part 3

2009-02-22T01:54:00.000-08:00

Kobe, Arima Onsen, Osaka

Our final stretch of this trip took us the supposed two hour or so drive from Okayama to Kobe.

A photo of Akashi Kaikyou (明石海峡大橋) bridge when we were stuck in traffic on the outskirts of Kobe:

After spending almost 4 hours driving, we got to Kobe just before dinner time and after a quick check-in, we headed straight out to the Sanno-Miya and Motomachi shopping streets:

One of the largest Chinatowns in Japan:

After a quick walk around, we went to eat the only thing worth craving for in Kobe.... the beef. We went to Kissho Kobe Steak Dining:

Dessert brought us to green tea mousse with tapiocas:

After dinner, we headed up to Mount Rokko (931m), about 30 minutes up from central Kobe for a beautiful panoramic view of Kobe and Osaka at night:

After an hour freezing ourselves up there, we headed back down to the city and checked out Kobe Tower and Harborland:

Next morning, we headed across the Akashi Kaikyou bridge to Awaji Island (淡路島), an island along the series of bridges connecting Honshu to Shikoku, paying an almost scandalous toll of US30 (one way) to get across.

Awaji Island was the epicenter for the great Kobe earthquake in 1995, and ranks one of the most beautiful places we've been to. Beautiful wide roads, cool summer-like breezes and stunning views of Kobe made this an awesome place.

Tadao Ando's most famous presence in Awaji Island is the Yumebutai complex; a mixed used art site overlooking the sea:

The sunclock:

Lunch at the restaurant there:

Kevin's delicious ox-tongue:

The central oval at Yumebutai:

More of Yumebutai:

We then headed over to the famed Arima Onsen (有馬温泉), a famous 8th century onsen town situated on the other side of Mount Rokko to our ryokan, Taketoritei Maruyama (http://www.taketoritei.com/en/), a superb ryokan sitting at the top of Arima Onsen:

Great service, great rooms, great views, great food and small but lovely onsens made this a great experience! One of our favourite ryokans so far.

Arima Onsen is famous for its iron and salt content and dark brown water:

And their foot baths:

Arima town:

Dinner at the ryokan:

Next day we headed to Osaka and stopped by one of Osakan's favourite establishments, Kani Doraku where we were served nothing but crab!

Dessert:

Restaurant street:

Osaka castle:

In and about Osaka:

Dinner at a blowfish (fugu) called Zuboraya (づぼらや) restaurant (another restaurant along the famed Dotobori street):

Where we were served nothing but blowfish - sashimi, grilled, boiled, deep-fried. While the experience was 'interesting', neither of us thought the blowfish was better than any other fish - and to quash a common myth, there is definitely no tingling on the tongue when you eat blowfish!

Kevin ended dinner not being completely full, so off to get more ramen at another famous establishment Gin-Ryu:

And to top it off, a delicious crepe blueberry crepe at Crepe Ojisan:

Traveling through the Hokuriku and Kansai regions gave us a more 'historic' and cultural trip through Japan than we are usually experience - touching almost all the UNESCO world heritage sights in the region and stopping by a number of famous onsens towns, sights, views and of course - trying out all the best cuisine that Japan has to offer.

Some people would argue that our itinerary may have been a little bit rushed, but for us, it felt like a perfect combination of culture, food and sights. We learned a lot about the history behind some of the castles and shrines which form some of the roots of modern day Japan. We also saw some of the most spectacular sights found anywhere on the planet and, last but not least, we sampled lots of what Japan is known for... food!

This has been the 4th time in 3 years we've come to Japan and it has been great fun as always. We are still hoping to cover Okinawa/Fukuoka and Tohoku in the near future! And as usual, don't hesitate to give us a shout if you want names and contact details of any of the places we went to!

Hokkaido & Tokyo - Part 1

2008-11-22T23:35:00.000-08:00

Hokkaido - Shiretoko - Lake Akan

We started our Fall 2008 trip with an overnight stopover in Tokyo en-route to our first trip to Hokkaido. Staying close to Ginza this time around gave us some time to explore a bit more of the side streets and check out a Spanish tapas bar which Leeann had discovered in her readings.

Tapas of Jamon Iberico, cheese, oven baked mushrooms and Spanish wine were served along a small table top bar overlooking the kitchen - absolutely brilliant!

After stuffing our faces with some good food, we headed back to our hotel in Hamamatsucho for an early night.

Haneda Airport (Tokyo) to Memanbetsu Airport (Sapporo)

The advantage of flying from Haneda is that it only takes 20 minutes to get there from Hamamatsucho, which meant that the 8am-ish flight wasn't too horrendous! The quick 1.5 hour flight got us to the most Northern Eastern airport in Japan and put us smack in the middle of Hokkaido.

But we still had some ways to go. Memanbetsu (女満別) Airport sits near the Northern coast of Hokkaido, about 500km Northeast of Sapporo, not too far from Abashiri city and Ozora city. We arrived mid-morning to a beautiful fall day and picked up our rental car from Mazda as usual and headed straight towards one of the main highlights of our trip, the Shiretoko Peninsula - which marks the most Northeasternly point of Japan and is just across the Sea of Okhotsk from Russia. Driving North through Abashiri city and then East on Route 243, Route 244 and then 334 brought us to some of the coolest coastal drives so far.

We encountered seemingly endless roads, remote rest stops and almost no cars on the 2.5 hour drive before stopping first at Oshinkoshin Waterfall, an interesting, but by no means spectacular waterfall somewhere along the coast between Shari town and Utoro.

Food on the way:

The rest station:

With our hotel check-in time still some hours away, we headed further into the Shiretoko Peninsula towards Utoro high pass, the Five Lakes and Shiretoko National Park:

At a little past 3pm, we arrived at the Shiretoko Grand Hotel Kitakobushi, a rather large scale Ryokan hotel situated in Utoro town. We got a beautiful room overlooking the Sea of Okhotsk and the bay:

Some drift ice in the hotel lobby:

Our kaiseki dinner where we could choose what fresh seafood we wanted was served in the hotel restaurant:

Awesome breakfast of natto, eggs, ikura, sausages, miso soup:

Next day we headed first to Lake Masshu (摩周湖), a body of the water once had the honour of having the deepest transparency (at 136ft deep) in the 1930s.

We then stopped for lunch:

Driving West towards Lake Akan on route 241, we reached our hotel Tsuruga a little after 2pm.

Volcanic mud pits:

Lake Akan:

Sweet potatoes in the lobby of our hotel:

Dinner at Tsuruga:

Marimo:

Ainu Village at night:

Such an awesome breakfast the next day! More natto delight:

Leaving Lake Akan the next day, we headed towards Sounkyou Onsen (層雲峡温泉) in Daisetsuzan National Park, stopping first at the Edel Kase cheese factory:

Arriving at Sounkyou Onsen 'village',

we stopped to get a quick bowl of ramen:

A little on the touristy side, Sounkyo's main attractions combine a number of resort hotels, waterfalls and a ropeway which leads to Asahidake Onsen on the other side of the mountains. Aside from the ropeway, it was not particularly interesting.

The two main waterfalls Ginga-no-taki and Ryusei-no-taki are a quick 5 minute drive from the main village:

The ropeway took us up to 1,744m above sea level to the fifth station. Amazingly, it was covered with snow and fog:

It was unfortunate we were underdressed, or else a trip to the seventh station further up would have been warranted.

Extremely cold! But the views were awesome

Chairlift to the seventh station:

Kevin's new friend:

On the way down:

Arriving at our hotel, the Choyotei:

They originally gave us the wrong room (as we had decided to try out the newer western-style rooms), but the actual western style room was extremely modern and very cool!

Not a bad stop before we continued to Asahikawa and Biei/Furano the next day!

Hokkaido & Tokyo - Part 2

2008-11-22T19:39:00.000-08:00

Hokkaido - Sounkyou Onsen - Biei - Furano - Sapporo

From here on out, it would be a gradual journey back to civilisation as our next day took us first through the city of Asahikawa - famous for its ramen, and then to the beauty of Biei and Furano before the long stretch down to Sapporo. In the interest of time, we decided to skip Asahikawa and head straight for Biei and its infamous trees.

Solitary trees sitting amongst vast fields mark the surroundings of Biei with names such as Tree of Philosophy, Tree of Christmas and the Trees of Mother and Child provided some beautiful views and inspiration, especially as the skies had cleared and the sun was smiling at us among the backdrop of the Hokkaido alps in the distance.

Continuing through the winding roads brought us to rollercoaster road, marking what seemed to be the invisible bridge between Biei and Furano.

But before long, hunger set in and we took a quick stop at a rest station for lunch:

Unfortunately, as we were well into the fall, the massive lavender fields were hard to come by with the exception for a few places including the famous Farm Tomita - which was next on our list of stops and we were able to get a view of the much talked about lavender fields.

Followed by possibly the juiciest and sweetest honeydew melon right outside the farm:

And then lavender flavoured icecream:

Next stop, the Furano grape factory:

Furano cheese, pizza and icecream factories:

Some squid ink camembert cheese

Then we were faced with some rather slow traffic into Sapporo for a good hour or two, taking a good 4 hours to get from Furano to our destination in the heart of Sapporo:

[sapporo]

As we got into Sapporo on the late side, our first stop was to grab some grub and there was no better place with a wider selection than at the JR Sapporo Station. There were no fewer than 5 department stores across 9 floors and at least 100 restaurants covering more or less all cuisines.

After a quick bite of Japanese style pasta, we took a 20 minute drive up the pitch black roads to the top of Sapporo observatory near the Southwest part of Sapporo. At an altitude of 531m, the observation deck was freezing cold by 9pm but commanded superb views across the entire city.

Next morning took us on a stop-and-drive around the main city, stopping at a couple of the main sights:

Odori Park:

The old clock tower building:

The Sapporo TV station tower:

The Sapporo Art Park at Moerenuma Koen:

Designed by famous sculptor Isamu Noguchi, a truly immense place with some inspirational tructures and constructions, including a Louvre-esque Pyramid gallery, Tetra Mound and a number of huge hill structures which from up-close may be insignificant, but provides a whole new perspective when you take a moment and stand back

Soon after walking around the park, we began to get excited about our upcoming dinner plans in Otaru and about an hour later, we started on our hour drive to the sea-side city to the Northwest of Sapporo. Facing Ishikari bay, Otaru is known for its European influenced architecture, canal running through the city and seafood.

The rain picked up again but our high expectations of the city kept the rain from spoiling the day.

Although it was a unique city, Otaru wasn't too uneventful of a place and the main canal running through the city was a tad on the uninspiring side. Perhaps the season was right or the lights were not all on, it just didn't have the 'whoomph' factor that we had hoped for.

HOWEVER, dinner was a different story. Known for its infamous uni and ikura rice bowls along Sushi-dori, a street with restaurants serving nothing but sushi and sashimi, the uni bowl which Leeann had an the uni/ikura combination that Kevin had was simply astonishing to say the least.

The drive back to Sapporo was much less painful as the rain had kept most people away from the roads and it was getting to late night in Sapporo.

The next morning we had a 3pm flight to catch back to Tokyo, which left plenty of time for another uni packed brunch at Sapporo's Nijo Market - a mini-Tsukiji fish market which although seemingly unobtrusive, contained a couple a specialty uni restaurants. Leeann opted for a 'premium' uni set, which included a rare salt-water breed of sea urchin which may leave a lot of stomachs wretching with its slimy an gooey texture and fishy taste - but for us it was pure heaven!

2 nights in Sapporo was actually more than enough time to see most of the major sights and to experience the culture in the capital city. Odori Park was cramped, the city itself was small, sights were not super inspiring and there was little that was little that we could not have found in Tokyo or other cities for that matter.

On the way to the airport, we stopped at the Sapporo Museum of Contemporary Art, hoping to catch a glimpse of the neoteny exhibition there, but was disappointed to find that it was closed at the time.

We headed to Shin-Chitose Airport, our final destination for our Hokkaido-leg, barely making our check-in deadline of one hour, thanks to the complicated road system and the ridiculously located gas station (in the middle of nowhere). Fortunately, as with all domestic flights within Japan, it was a quick 5 minute check-in through to departure gate!

phew!

We arrived back to Haneda Airport in Tokyo shortly after 5pm and headed to our hotel in our usual Shiodome area and by then we had developed another craving for some curry rice at C&C Curry House underneath Yuurakucho station.

Before talking a stroll around the Marunouchi area to check out some of the new shops and restaurants... US$200 honeydew melons, $150 Kyoho Grapes are a relatively common sight in Japan these days, but this time around, we came across something rather interesting:

The $200 mushroom:

Matsutake Mushroom

Lunch the next day brought us to Shabu-zen, a famous Shibuya establishment famous for its special beef tenderloin and Omi beef shabu-shabu. A great lunch deal with some super quality tenderloin at only $10:

Dinner at Gonpachi was a superb experience. Sitting about 15 minutes walk from Roppongi station in the heart of Nishi-Azabu, this famous izakaya has a yelling kitchen staff to match the equally noisy diners. Although almost none of the chefs were Japanese, they created a superb atmosphere which we would go back to time and time again.

Dishes included asari in consomme, mixed tuna tartare wrap, whole large clams grilled in garlic and toro/foie gras skewers.

Make sure you make reservations as this place fills up lightning fast and you aren't going to get a table without booking!

After dinner we met up with some of Michelle's friends nearby and headed out to a quality British style pub someone along Roppongi-dori(??) and they somehow managed to clear a table for the 10 of us on a Friday night - not bad!

The next day marked our penultimate day in Tokyo this time around and we met up with Aki-san for an lunch at [] in Ginza.

Walking past the newly opened H&M in Tokyo:

Post-lunch dessert right next to the Tokyo International Forum about halfway between Marunouchi and Yurakucho station. Buzzing with people on a nice Saturday afternoon, we had a couple of cakes at one of the nearby cafes.

The highlight of our trip brought us to the brand new Cirque du Soleil Tokyo. After having previously watched Quidam (one of the traveling Cirque shows), we were both very excited about. Some people have said to me "Isn't it just a circus?" Well, the acrobatic part is definitely very circus-y, but when you bring in the superb choreography, spectacular lighting and effects as well as phenomenal music, this is way more than 'just a circus'. Tokyo built an all-purpose theatre in Tokyo's Disneyland for the new resident show ZED and we managed to get tickets for the 2nd day of showing well in advance through a super-friendly ZED customer service center.

From the start of the show, Zed did not fail to be equally as impressive as Quidam. Dramatic draping, huge lighting show and a A great experience which got a long standing ovation and it was pretty clear that we weren't the only ones thoroughly enjoyed it.

After dinner, we headed back to our hotel for our last night in Japan.

Japan (Dec 2007) - Part 1

2008-01-06T20:29:00.000-08:00

Part 1: Intro, Zarai, Tsukiji, Seryna, Kobe Misono

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For our 2nd trip to Japan, we intended to try out more of the

Japan

's culinary offerings and to seek out more of the cultural and nature side of the things. Of course we were going to eat as much food as possible – hopefully of the more eclectic kind, but we hoped to also go to some of the lesser known places in Japan. As you may know from our previous posts, we love food (especially beef and seafood, so apologies if there is a mildly disturbing infatuation with restaurants and plates of food).

The Stats: On this 14-day trip, we covered over 1,200km by railway, through 4 cities, staying at 6 hotels, eating 2 different breeds of Wagyu beef, trying 4 different types of crab, super-ham, super-vinegar, lots of patisseries, 1 of the 3 'scenic sights of Japan', encountered 4 UNESCO world heritage sites, visited 6 temples, had over 30 meals and saw some of the best scenery on this side of the planet.

Our planned routing was as follows:

- 1 week in Tokyo
- 1 night driving around Ise
- 2 nights in Kyoto
- 1 night in Amanohashidate
- 3 nights back in Tokyo

Given our longer trip and longer write up, we've picked out a few of the more interesting places we went to, ate or saw which you can click and skip to if you're too lazy to read the whole thing:

- Driving in Ise-shi
- Trip to Amanohashidate
- Kyoto Arashiyama
- Kobe Beef Cutlet
- 100 Year Old Balsamic Vinegar
- Jamón Ibérico 1 2
- L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon
- Nobu
- Meiji Shrine NYE

Dec 17: Arriving in Tokyo

Our friend Aki was kind enough to take us out to dinner on our first night in town. After a quick check-in at the hotel we headed to Yurakucho 有楽 (the station next to Ginza) and met Aki-san, where she took us to Zarai (坐来) http://www.zarai.co.jp/ a superb restaurant where her brother works which specialises in cuisine from Oita.

Oita (大分) prefecture is the capital of Kyushu island and is known for its hotsprings, fruits and horse sashimi. We were presented with a set menu featuring an 8 course dinner beginning with a delicious combination of fugu (ふぐ) (puffer fish) skin salad with saba sushi and these tasty chips made of something we can't remember.

Next up was a daikon seaweed salad followed by a sashimi platter:

The crispy ebi (海老) (prawn) croquette encrusted with fried noodle:

The food kept coming with an Oita beef tataki and cheese claypot vegetable:

Perhaps the best part of the meal was the dessert - an o-cha pudding which tasted exactly like tea we were drinking:

Outrageously rich and creamy but yet so fragrant! (Apologies for the over exposure).

The meal was excellent! A great way to start our trip this year!

Dec 18: Tsukiji, Tokyo Midtown, Seryna

Months ago, we had already decided on a trip to Tsukiji again this year to try one of the other sushi restaurants lining the ‘main’ sushi alley. To try and reduce the stress of waking up at 4:30 in the morning, we booked our first night at the Park Hotel in Shiodome again – which helped, but waking up at that time really isn’t our thing..

Nonetheless, a quick 5 minutes cab ride from the hotel got us to the market and this year, we gave Daiwa Sushi's neighbour - Sushi Dai(寿司大) a try. Even at around 5am, we had to queue for a good half an hour to get a table (and we were already 2^nd in line!).

Chef at work:Learning from her experience last year, Leeann opted for ala carte samplings of some ootoro (fatty tuna belly) and some uni (sea urchin) while Kevin went all out with the Omakase set meal again with 11 pieces of sushi covering the usual suspects.

As expected, everything was fresh as can be. The horse mackerel and tiger prawn was notably delicious:

Later that morning, we checked out and headed to our new hotel near Roppongi where we had planned our next 6 days at. Excited about the opening of Tokyo Midtown - a new shopping mall near Roppongi Hills housing the new Ritz Carlton and the Johns Hopkins medical center, Leeann made a dash for it as soon as we checked in for a quick peek at what was on offer there:

The ABC Cooking Studio. It is like a California Fitness for cooking - all these Japanese ladies can buy a booklet of coupons for a 2-3 hour cooking sessions:

Leeann sees food:

Next, we moved quickly to the food hall hungry for some lunch. Kevin found some deep fried oysters from Akkeshi (厚岸) (a region in the south of Hokkaido) and Leeann found a Tako (octopus) cucumber salad to satisfy our first lunch in Japan for the year:

A string of Dean and Delucas (a famous deli/market/cafe in NY) have opened up around Tokyo and we were curious as to what they had, and I am going to take a stab and say that their NY branches don’t have this kind of stuff:A bottle of an individually numbered 100-year old balsamic vinegar for JPY53,500 (about USD500) - amazing:

The only true 'balsamic vinegar' comes from Modena or Reggio in Italy and once it has reached 12 years it is already deemed to be of 'silver' grade and 25 years+ gets a gold imagine the flavour of a 100 year bottle. I would love to get my hands on one of those bottles..

and tonnes of Iberico ham (more about that later too)... !!!:

Most of our afternoon was spend exploring the area:

Last year, we went to Mon Cher Ton Ton - a great teppanyaki restaurant at the top of the Sumitomo Bank building in Shinjuku. This time around, we checked out their sister restaurant - a sukiyaki/nabemono restaurant called Seryna, about 10 minutes walk from our hotel in Roppongi. We visited the original branch opened in the 60s and both ordered the “Special Seryna Dinner B” which had some beef shabu shabu and crab.

Starting off with our appetizer - a cold uni (sea urchin) chawanmushi:

Half a boiled Kegani (けがに) (horsehair) crab from the Pacific Ocean:

Baked stuffed crab shell:

The main event of the evening, Kobe beef shabu-shabu:

The AMAZING udon made from the soup of the shabu shabu:

Dec 19: Ippudo, Maisen

For lunch, we headed to Ippudo (一風堂) (http://www.ippudo.com/), a famous ramen shop hailing from Fukuoka (福岡) known for an extremely rich and flavourful Tonkotsu (pork based) ramen. There were 4 main choices: light soup and a richer soup (each with a more meaty variant as well as an 'original' flavour).

The menu:Leeann's light soup:

Kevin's richer soup:

Dinner took us to Maisen (まい泉) http://members.aol.com/maisenpr/ is a restaurant known for its tonkatsu (deep friend pork cutlet) made from kurobuta pigs (black-haired pigs).

These pigs come from Kagoshima (鹿儿岛) and are considered the Kobe beef of pigs:

An amuse bouche:

The starters were delicious - lots of strange parts of fish and pigs:

Leeann's steamed pork dish:

Kevin's kurobuta tonkatsu set:

Dec 20: Kimura, Sunfruits, Mochicream, Muji, Kobe Misono

We met up with Aki-san for lunch near her office in Ginza at a place which I believe is called Kimura. A popular lunch restaurant which has a pretty good deal - with sashimi sets going for about US$9!

After lunch we came across this fruit juice place called Sun Fruits http://www.sunfruits.co.jp/ ...a juice parlour in Mitsukoshi. Their Blueberry juice was to die for... They put nothing but blueberries and blended it to make this:

Nearby was Mochi Cream http://www.mochicream.com/ where Leeann found some green-tea mochis:

Leeann and peko:

Icecream with truffles in Yuurakucho right next to a newly opened Krispy Kreme:

The Muji flagship store in Yuurakucho. 2 Floors of Muji everything (including a Muji restaurant):We went to check out what was new in Roppongi Hills this year:

Our love for Kobe beef brought us to a restaurant called Kobe Misono, a unique restaurant tucked away near a side street in Toranomon (虎ノ門) / Shimbashi (新橋) which we stumbled upon through reading a copy of Brutus. It was a little hard to find (especially as they seem to have moved down the street), and perhaps it was because of this fact that there was only 1 other occupied table on the 1^st floor:

Nonetheless, we went in. Their Japanese only menu consists solely of Bifukatsu (Kobe beef katsu), deep fried (no more fried food after this!) melt-in-your-mouth piece of heaven. The set menu we both ordered started with a Kobe beef sashimi salad:

Followed by this piece of heaven:

Highly, highly recommended for anyone who loves wagyu beef as much as we do…

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