Penthouse by Harlan Goldstein

http://hongkongin360.com/virtualtours/penthouse/

It was one of those nights that I wanted to go perfectly.... 

My new boss was in town, visiting from London, and we'd arranged to have dinner.  Of course, I was in a new city myself...  Hong Kong being home for just over a week, I didn't really know too much about the dining scene and of course, I wanted to impress my boss!

So, instead of going for something safe, being the foodie that I am, I tracked down on of those pop up kitchens that are popular in Hong Kong at the moment.  If you don't know what they are, well, they're an interesting concept, a chef takes over a location for a while and just opens a kitchen.  Pretty simple and pretty cool.  My only problem was....pretty unprofessional.  About 45 minutes before we were to meet in Causeway Bay for dinner I got an email cancellation!

Now, I'm not going to 'name and shame' this place, but I was pretty unimpressed.  A quick call to try to find out why was pointless - the language barrier made it impossible.

Right, I'm going to admit that there were a few moments of panic.  New boss (from London), new city, 45 minutes before we're all to meet in one of the busiest areas in one of the busiest cities on earth.  What did we do?

Well, we hopped straight into a taxi for a speedy ride to Causeway Bay and then started looking for a restaurant to eat dinner.  Oh, I forgot to mention, it was a Saturday night....

I know what you're probably thinking, 'you dope!'.  Well, I was thinking that myself, but fortune favours the brave and after only my second call, I managed to snag a table for four at 7:30pm.  All we had to do was find the place and with fifteen minutes to spare, we managed to bustle our way to Penthouse by Harlan Goldstein.

Singapore Series - Marina Bay Sands

https://www.marinabaysands.com/index.html

One of the most imposing and impressive looking buildings I have ever seen has to be the Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.  I'm sure you've seen it before, but just in case you haven't, let me paint a picture for you.  Three sky scrapers side by side with an ocean liner sitting atop.  I kid you not, that's precisely what the Marina Bay Sands looks like (see image here).

Not only is the Marina Bay Sands an amazing looking building, its one of the most amazing shopping complexes I've come across as well, with all of the names you would expect in the highest of high end shopping.  While the designer names of the fashion brands were impressive, it was the names behind some of the restaurants in Marina Bay Sands that had me most excited.

I ended up spending a bit of time in the Marina Bay Sands complex on my recent visit to Singapore and was lucky enough to get into some exciting restaurants and check out some amazing food.

Singapore Series - Ocean by Cat Cora

Ocean Restaurant by Cat Cora

Who doesn't like travelling?  Even better than travelling is visiting some amazing restaurants while travelling.  Last year I had the opportunity to spend some time in New York and was able to dine at some of the most amazing restaurants in the world (see here).  Recently, I was fortunate enough to travel to Singapore, also recognised as one of the finest foodie destinations in the world.  I was travelling for work for a conference but there was plenty of time after each day had finished to explore the best restaurants that Singapore had to offer.

It had been almost twenty five years since my last visit to Singapore and as you would expect, the city was unrecognisable.  In my mind, it was still the bustling little Asian city from my youth but the reality of my folly became readily apparent on the drive from the airport to my hotel.  Singapore was massive and completely modern, with a simply stunning skyline that was centred around so many tall buildings and the incredible looking Marina Bay Sands (more on that in future posts).

I was booked into stay at Sentosa Island at the Hard Rock Hotel, which was where the conference I was attending was to be held.  In case you're wondering what the conference was about, it was for the regional qualifiers for the world contact centre awards.  I was there to present and hopefully win.

I'd left on a Saturday morning and the travelling took most of the day and by the time I'd reached the hotel, it was getting on in the evening.  What it actually meant for me was that it was dinner time and I needed to find a place to relax and have my first (of many) dinners in Singapore.  Luckily, Sentosa Island is home to quite a number of fantastic restaurants and after a little research and a quick phone call, I was booked into one of the Island's best.

Little Truffle Dining Room and Bar - A long way to drive for truffle.... but worth it

http://www.littletruffle.com.au/

We really wanted to hang out with our mates on Saturday night and have a nice dinner somewhere, but the plan was thrown askew once we found out that they would be 'baby sitting' on the Gold Coast.  TB's sister had just picked up a new puppy, a French Bulldog, and CITB had agreed to travel down to the coast and look after the little puppy for the weekend.  Not letting this deter us from hanging out and having a nice meal, we agreed to drive down to the coast for the night and have dinner locally.

I don't know too much about the Gold Coast dining scene, so I'd left the selection of restaurant up to TB, who received some advice about where to go from her sister.  We had established some ground rules for dinner though, it had to be close to the new puppy and it had to be a nice restaurant, one that we would be excited to visit.  

There are a handful of hatted restaurants on the coast and after considering and then discounting RockSalt modern dining, TB ended up booking Little Truffle dining room and bar.  I'd not heard of Little Truffle before, but after doing a little research on the interweb, I got quite excited about the choice.  You don't need to convince SC to visit any place where there is the prospect of getting some truffles, it's one her three favourite food groups (also included is duck fat and bacon).  It was on, a day trip to the Gold Coast for dinner!

New York Series - Colicchio and Sons the Tap Room

http://www.craftrestaurantsinc.com/colicchio-and-sons/

It was getting towards the end of our holiday in New York and we had ticked off all of the restaurants that I had researched and wanted to visit.  Of course this didn't mean we had visited all of the  best restaurants, it just meant that we had to get back to the drawing board and get a new list of great dining spots to visit.  We were still in our apartment in Chelsea, which opened up most of the West Side districts to continue to explore.

It was SC who had the idea of visiting Colicchio and Sons one afternoon when we were a bit stumped for a restaurant to enjoy for a dinner.  Once she mentioned the Tom Colicchio restaurant, I got pretty excited.  We are big fans of Top Chef and Colicchio is the main judge on the show, so we felt as if we knew much about the Colicchio vision about food.  It was time to put the vision to the test, so we quickly made a booking for later on that night and proceeded to make our way to the restaurant.

Colicchio and Sons is located on 10th Avenue, just behind the Chelsea Markets and was a relatively short 20 minute walk away from our apartment on the corner of West 25th and 9th.  Amazingly, after such fantastic weather for our first three weeks in Manhattan that included a heat wave, the rain had settled in, so we had to huddle under an umbrella on the way to the restaurant.  When we eventually arrived at the restaurant, we were a little wet, but the staff didn't seem to mind and welcomed us in warmly.

New York Series - Aureole

http://www.charliepalmer.com/aureole-new-york

I have said it before, there are a lot of distractions in New York.  I would wager I am not the first person to say this out loud, and I certainly won't be the last.  I had grand plans of getting to New York, visiting a heap of great restaurants and then at the end of each meal going back to the hotel and diligently typing up the post and getting it online.  Ha! Right, it didn't work out that way.

Aureole was one of the first restaurants we visited while in New York.  We had landed in Midtown and were enthralled by the size and scale of the area.  Times Square is a hive of activity for what seems like twenty four hours a day, and that's just the beginning of the great stuff happening in Midtown.  We actually walked past Aureole a few times before we decided to check it out, but it had been on my radar from the moment I noticed that it was a Michelin Starred restaurant within walking distance of our hotel.

Aureole is the first restaurant of New York legend and multi award winning chef Charlie Palmer, who heads up the Palmer Group.  Chef Palmer graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and quickly worked his way up to the world famous River Cafe in Brooklyn.  Aureole opened up in 1988 and was the foundation of a chain of amazing restaurants right across America.  Charlie Palmer has been honored by the James Beard Foundation a couple of times and has was named the best chef in New York in 1997.

New York Series - Daniel

http://danielnyc.com/

With so many options for fantastic and amazing restaurants in New York, it's sometimes hard to decide on which one to visit.  We found ourselves with only a few days left on our amazing Manhattan holiday and wanted to go out with style.  We had already been to two of the best restaurants in New York, and coincidentally the world, in Eleven Madison Park and Le Bernadin, so how could you top that?  There are six three Michelin Starred restaurants in Manhattan, so that left four for us to choose from.

The Michelin guide has two ratings, one is the well known 'star' rating, but there is also the lesser known 'comfort' level.  The highest rating for comfort is five ribbons and is considered 'Luxury in the traditional style' and there are only two restaurants with both the 3 star and 5 ribbons.  So that left our choice between Thomas Keller's 'Per Se' and Daniel Boulin's 'Daniel'.  While we really wanted to check out Per Se, at the end of a month long holiday to one of the most expensive cities in the world, and at $290 per person for food only, sanity prevailed.

Not that Daniel is inexpensive, but Daniel offers both Degustation and a la carte, which provided a much more sensible option for us.  The tasting menu kicks in at $220 per person and there is a three course prix fixe a la carte option at $116.  Even better, because we were booked in for an early start, there was an option of a three course prix fixe, with matching wines, for only $130 which is amazing value.  

New York Series - Eleven Madison Park

http://elevenmadisonpark.com/

Every now and then I have a meal that is so good, so totally amazing, that I need to set time aside to reflect before I can start to write about it.  There are very few restaurants around that deliver on the promise, sure, you might have a dinner that is almost perfect and would have been if only they'd (insert improvement here).

When planning our visit to New York, I had always planned to get along to a couple of the best restaurants in the city.  This is a little harder than is sounds.  Eleven Madison Park was one of the three or four restaurants on my hit list and the fact that it has just been named as the 5th best restaurant in the world by the San Pellegrino top 50 restaurants in the Word made it al the more appealing.  The fact that it was just named 5th best restaurant in the world also made it a tad harder to get into!  After serveral anxious weeks of trying to get in, I managed to snag a lunchtime reservation on a Friday afternoon, score!

It's an amazing feat to be named as one of the top 5 restaurants in the world, but Eleven Madison Park is used to the awards, it's been in the top 50 list for some time (number 10 in 2012) and has held three Michelin Stars for a while too!  It has always been difficult to get a booking at EMP, but moving those extra five places in the San Pellegrino list made it much more difficult to find a seat.

New York Series - Le Bernadin

http://le-bernardin.com/

Here we are in New York City, the Big Apple. NYC is one of the dining capitals of the world, so it was with great care that I searched through and listed out the restaurants that I wanted to visit.  There are no less than six 3 Michelin starred restaurants in Manhattan, along with seven 2 Michelin starred and about 50 restaurants with a single Michelin star, so I was almost overcome with the choices available to me.

The first of the mega restaurants that I was able to book into was Le Bernadin, which is arguably the best restaurant in Manhattan.  As the name suggests, Le Bernadin is a French restaurant, with the original Le Bernadin opening to humble beginnings in Paris in 1972 but quickly became a Parisian favourite, winning its first Michelin star in 1976 and its second coveted star in 1980.  Inspired by their many American customers, siblings and owners Maguy and Gilbert Le Coze decided to open a Le Bernadin in New York.  The risk paid off with Le Bernadin almost immediately winning a coveted New York Times 4 Stars, the highest accolade in NYC.

After the sudden death of Gilbert in 1994, disciple and close friend Eric Ripert took over as head chef in the kitchen and was able to maintain the very high standards that the Le Coze siblings had set.  Under Chef Ripert Le Bernadin has gone onto greater heights, earning and keeping the coveted 3 Michelin stars from 2005 and is currently ranked the 19th best restaurant in the world in the San Pellegrino worlds top 50 restaurants.