Paris - Pierre Gagnaire

http://www.pierre-gagnaire.com/en#/

When I was planning my trip to Paris, I had many possible restaurants that I could have visited.  Paris is one of those destinations that every foodie dreams about, where nouveau and haute cuisine mix willingly with the most traditional of dining.  

While my trip to the French capital was centred around my trip to Guy Savoy (see post here), I was also equally excited to be visiting fellow Three Michelin star and #16 on the La Liste (the top 1,000 restaurants globally).  I was so excited about the visit, that as soon as I'd confirmed my reservation at the well known restaurant at 6 rue Balzac, just of the Champs Elysees, I made a beeline to check out the Two Michelin starred Pierre Hong Kong (see post here).

Known as an innovator, Pierre Gagnaire has been known to 'tear at the conventions of French cooking by introducing jarring juxtapositions of flavours, tastes, textures and ingredients'.  As a food blogger, I love the concept of pushing the boundaries of flavour, I love that there are chef's that are willing to test themselves and innovate and dare to dream of a different culinary landscape.

Unfortunately, dining at Pierre Gagnaire in Paris turned out to be much more of a nightmare than a dream!

Let me start by saying that like the famous French chef's predilection for juxtaposition of food, our dining experience was indeed a juxtaposition, but just not in the way that the chef intended.

Paris - Guy Savoy

https://www.guysavoy.com/en/

It might sound a little indulgent but my recent short break to Paris was completely planned around visiting one restaurant - Guy Savoy.

Well, it's not unusual for a food blogger to plan their holidays around food, after all, I was chasing another Hong Kong food blogger around Paris for the week I was there (we'll meet up sometime Bianca!).  While it might seem natural for me to visit Paris, given my favourite cuisine is French, I'd actually been targeting another of the world's top restaurants, Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana, clearly the best Italian restaurant globally.  Boy is that place hard to get into, I couldn't even score a reservation three months out!

Thankfully, my second choice was available and I was able to secure a mid week sitting for Restaurant Guy Savoy, which in 2015 was voted as the number four restaurant in the world by La Liste.  If you're not aware of La Liste, it's France's alternative to the San Pellegrino top 50 restaurants and is sponsored by the French Government and takes a slightly more analytical view to ranking restaurants.  Using more than 200 food guides, review sites, gourmet blogs and major news publications on 48 countries, the list compiles a weighted aggregate score and then ranks the top 1,000 'Most Outstanding Restaurants'

Needless to say, I was pretty excited.

I won't bore you with details about how we got to Paris, but I will take a moment to reflect on how beautiful a city the heart of Paris is, simply breathtaking.  The buildings haven't changed in hundreds of years, and it's easy to imagine a time before motor vehicles, where horse and carriage were the only mode of transportation around the large and sprawling city.

Restaurant Guy Savoy is located in such a majestic building on the left bank of the River Seine, with nary a sign in sight confirming that our taxi had dropped us off at the right spot.  It wasn't until we were a little closer that we noticed the discreet sign letting us know we'd arrived at our destination.  Walking up a marble staircase, we came across a gilded door that was the entrance to culinary heaven.  

Robuchon au Dome - Macau's finest?

http://www.grandlisboahotel.com/dining-Robuchon_au_Dome-en

Riding up the lift to the 39th floor at the Grand Lisboa in Macau, I was able to reflect back on the journey that had us about to visit one of the world's great restaurants.

We were heading to Macau for the very specific purpose of seeing Russell Peters live in concert, perhaps one of the funniest comedians on the planet at the moment.  Our second trip to Macau in twelve months, we didn't need to do the sight seeing thing, our plan was to laugh, relax and lounge by the pool of our hotel.  Of course there was never any doubt that we'd be hitting up the best restaurant Macau had to offer.

With a string of accolades that very few restaurants can match, we chose the very refined three Michelin starred Robuchon au Dome.  Michelin stars are just the beginning for one of Robuchon's top restaurants!  Ranked number six restaurant in the world by Elite Traveller's top 100 restaurants; thirty five on the San Pellegrino's top 50 Asian restaurants and the second highest ranked Joel Robuchon restaurant in the La Liste top 1000 restaurants, the French fine diner's a must on any serious foodies list of restaurants to visit.

The trip to Macau hadn't started off as I'd have planned.  Meeting the girl at the Macau ferry, her first question me was 'where's your camera?'.  D'oh, I'd forgotten my camera for what I'd hoped would be a meal for the ages.  What would I do?  Well, I seriously contemplated buying a new camera, just for the meal.  I mean seriously contemplated it.  That was, until I saw that the camera I had my eye on was twice the listed price in HK.  

Luckily the iPhone 6+ camera has improved significantly - while not ideal, it would have to do.

L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon Hong Kong - the tasting menu

http://www.robuchon.hk/about_us

Right, just about everyone who loves French cuisine knows who Joel Robuchon is, so I'm not going to bore you with too much detail, suffice to say....  He's good.

If you want the full low down, you can check out more detail at some of my other posts - here.

I've been on a bit of a Joel fixation of late, mainly because of his incredible mashed potato, which it must be said is the best I've ever had.  So, as indulgent as it sounds, we booked into the three Michelin starred L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon just so I could have some more of that fantastic mash.

We've been to the Hong Kong outlet for L'Atelier before, and to be honest, I'd been just a little bit disappointed with the meal (see post here).  Don't get me wrong, it was good, but just not what I'd come to expect when dining at a Robuchon establishment.  

The last time, we'd selected our meal from the a la carte menu, so this time we wanted to sample the menu decouverte, or discovery menu, Robuchon's famous tasting menu.  I'd had the tasting menu at the Singapore outlet and had been blown away by the meal, so was hoping for the same for our latest visit.

Melbourne Series - Cutler & Co

http://www.cutlerandco.com.au/

We were drawing to the end of our Melbourne food safari but we'd left one our most anticipated restaurants until last.  There are an astounding number of well regarded restaurants in Melbourne and while Sydney might currently hold the record for the most number of three hatted restaurants, Melbourne has its fair share as well. People often wonder why I'm so focussed on visiting hatted restaurants around the country and it's simply this....they represent the pinnacle, the absolute best in what food has to offer.  The chefs behind these three hatted restaurants dedicate their lives to be the best, often with an unwavering focus that can be a little maniacal.

I'm slowly crossing off all of the country's best restaurants off my 'must visit' list and on this trip I was able to visit two of the best.  Vue De Monde was now a 'notch on my belt' (see post here) and our last dinner of the trip would see Cutler & Co join the list of prestigious restaurants I've dined at.  Amazingly, Cutler & Co is currently the seventh best restaurant on the Gourmet Travellers top 100 list and sits above eight ranked Vue de Monde.  Chef and owner of Cutler & Co Andrew McConnell, was also named the Gourmet Traveller Chef of the Year for 2014, which is an outstanding recognition of excellence.

Cutler & Co is located in up-and-coming Fitzroy, we'd initially found the restaurant when we had taken a wander around Fitzroy and Collingwood after our trip to the James Bond exhibition at the Melbourne Museum. We'd heard from a friend of SC's that Gertrude Street in Fitzroy was a place to check out and still had that cross over feel that was not quite gentrified and not quite grunge.  We had an early 6pm booking for dinner and since we'd already checked out where Cutler & Co was, and it was quite a lovely evening, we chose to walk the 15 minutes from our hotel.

Melbourne Series - Vue de Monde

http://www.vuedemonde.com.au/

In my first post about our Melbourne food safari (see post here), I talked about our thought process and planning to get down to Australia's food capital. What I should have mentioned was that there was a completely different script going through SC's mind, and it was a little different to what was going on in my mind.  As soon as I heard about a possible trip to Melbourne, I was instantly fantasising about the great food I'd get to eat.  What SC was actually thinking about was visiting the James Bond exhibition at the Melbourne Museum!  I'll admit that I was a little bit excited about this when she first mentioned it, but once the planning for the trip started, it was all about the food and I quickly forgot about James Bond.

No food safari to Melbourne would be complete without going to arguably the country's best restaurant with, in many minds, Australia's most innovative chef - Shannon Bennet.  I'd been so keen to get to Vue de Monde for many years and I almost got there a couple of years ago when I was flying solo in Melbourne for work.  I'd even called up and arranged a table for one but at the last moment decided that this was an experience best shared, then opted for another iconic Melbourne restaurant in Grossi Florentino (before I was blogging, so no post).

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling a little giddy at the prospect of getting in and trying the incredibly inventive food of Shannon Bennet.  There was no restaurant in the country that I wanted to check out more, and that includes Sydney restaurants like Quay.  While currently not sitting at the top of the restaurant awards tree, Vue de Monde has it all, three hats with the Australian Good Food Guide and the Age Good Food Guide along with three stars from the Gourmet Traveller and ranked number seven on the top one hundred list from the same magazine.  It simply does not get much better than that for a restaurant, well maybe being included in the San Pellegrino top 50 restaurants in the world might be pretty good too...

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.