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.  

The FoodMeUpScotty Top 10 of 2015 - Best Restaurants

Food Me Up Scotty 2015 Top Ten

It's hard to believe that my first year in Hong Kong is at an end.  It was exactly twelve months ago today that I hoped off the Qantas flight and stepped into my new life in Asia's most dynamic culinary city.  There are only a handful of cities around the world that truely have a reputation as being an epicentre for the culinary pursuits and Hong Kong just happens to be one of those few.  As a food blogger, that has meant that I've been like a kid in a candy store.

I've had time to reflect on my first twelve months and the amazing restaurant and dining experiences in which I've managed to partake.  While there have been well over a hundred restaurants I've checked out in my first year, there have only been a handful that I've repetitively revisited throughout the year, one of which has made my list.  

As you'd expect from a food capital, Hong Kong is home to many restaurant guides that have helped identify the standout dining establishments.  The Michelin Guide, the SCMP Top 100 Tables, the Hong Kong Tatler are all well known guides that mostly get it right but sometimes get it very wrong, with one of my favourite restaurants of all time losing it's Michelin Star.  I have to say that I'm excited to be living in a city that is part of the Michelin family, but I've also come to understand that the guide is fallible.

Fine Dining - Amber Hong Kong

http://www.amberhongkong.com/

Our first year in Hong Kong means a round of special occasions in a new country, you know the ones, birthdays, anniversaries and such. We've always had our favourite restaurants to revisit on those special occasions, but being in a new country means new dining spots and hopefully new memories.  We've had some lovely meals in Hong Kong so far, but were any worthy of revisits on a special occasion, that special someone only turns forty once right?

With an abundance of Michelin Starred restaurants in Hong Kong, we knew that we'd be able to find a great restaurant for dinner, but it had to be special.  So, what to do when presented with such a dilemma?  It was time to pull out the big guns, sure we could just look at the Michelin Starred list, but I wanted to go even better, so it was time to pull out the San Pellegrino - World's top 50 restaurants list.  There are some amazing restaurants in HK, but only one has consistently made the world's top 50 list, and that restaurant is Amber!

Amber has graced the list for five consecutive years, first joining the elite of world restaurants in 2011, where it listed as the 37th best restaurant on planet earth.  Since then, it's been a bit of a yo-yo ride up and down the list (currently back at #38), with it's highest ranking coming in 2014 where it came in at number twenty four, ahead of perennial favourites like Per Se and The Fat Duck.  Now, we're not strangers to the worlds restaurants in the world's top 50 list, with visits to Eleven Madison Park (#5 see post here), Le Bernadin (#18 see post here) and Attica (#32 see post here), so I was expecting something special.

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.