Spoon by Alain Ducasse - classic and beautiful French flavours

http://www.alain-ducasse.com/en/restaurant/spoon-by-alain-ducasse-hong-kong

I'm not really sure why it took over eighteen months to finally get around to visiting legendary chef Alain Ducasse's Hong Kong restaurant.  It ticks pretty much every box that I ever look for in a restaurant, French, modern, Michelin Starred and as a bonus, a restaurant from one of the top chefs in the world.

Perplexing really.

Anyway, I finally managed to get along to Hong Kong's Intercontinental Hotel, the home of Spoon by Alain Ducasse.  I've dined at the Intercontinental before, for another legendary chef's HK outlet; Nobu, which I found to be quite outstanding (see post here); so I had an inkling of the amazing view that awaited us when we were shown to our window seat.

Hong Kong undoubtably has the world's most spectacular skyline, and the view from Spoon gave us unfettered access to the Island's many skyscrapers.  We were seated just before the sun set and were able to watch the skyline come alive as we consumed our meal.

The incredible service that you'd expect from a Michelin starred restaurant in a five star hotel commenced from the moment we were greeted by the front staff, who took us to our table and introduced us to our two waiters who would pamper us for the entire evening.  We were the first to arrive in the restaurant, ensuring that for the first part of our meal we were the complete focus of our team.

Mandarin Grill and Bar - the perfect lunch?

http://www.mandarinoriental.com/hongkong/fine-dining/mandarin-grill-and-bar/

I suspected that I might like the Mandarin Grill and Bar.  Having all of the hallmarks of a great restaurant helps: Michelin Star, world class home in the Mandarin Oriental and a head chef that trained under arguably this century's most innovate chef, Ferran Adria of El Bulli fame.  Yep, there was a fair chance that I was in for a beauty of a meal.

But I've been wrong before!

I have a love-hate relationship with Michelin Starred restaurants for lunch, love the fact that in Hong Kong you can access a Michelin restaurant for around quarter their usual price.  Hate the fact that more often than not, the star chef is not presiding over lunch time service and you're never sure if the meal will be at the same standard as a dinner.

With a reputation as an innovative chef, Executive Chef Uwe Opocensky has had the opportunity learn from more than just one master, having also worked with Anton Mosimann and Alain Ducasse. That reputation was the key ingredient for the Mandarin Grill securing its Michelin star in 2009, and more importantly, keeping the menu and restaurant fresh while maintaining the gold standard of a Michelin star.  I could think of no better place to have lunch with some colleagues - secretly hoping those lunchtime blues wouldn't become a factor.

Surprisingly, my dining companions had beaten me to the restaurant and were seated by the time I arrived.  I say surprisingly because I've a reputation for being early to dine and I felt just a little weird coming to the table last!

Tate Dining Room and Bar - a standout in a city with standouts

http://www.tate.com.hk/about

There is a mind boggling number of restaurants in Hong Kong, in fact, it's pretty hard to get your head around how many there really are.  Practically everywhere you go, every building, has a dining room of some kind.  To put that in context, there are over seven million people and around 6,000 skyscrapers in the greater Hong Kong area.  Open Rice, Hong Kong's main online restaurant guide, lists around 79,000 restaurants, so finding a restaurant is not a problem.  Finding a great restaurant is the challenge.

Walking around, I see lots of restaurants that I'd like to get back to and visit, but with so many around, I often forget which ones I want to get back to.  We were walking up Elgin on Saturday night, just looking around, when we walked past a stylish little dining room that looked the goods.  It helped that there was a cute little horse head that held up a quaint little sign that stated the restaurant open.  Triggering a memory, I checked my list of Michelin Starred restaurants I wanted to visit and sure enough, the little restaurant was on my list!

Tate Dining Room and Bar is the creation of Vicki Lau, a graduate of New York University in Graphic Communication.  With an obvious flare for the creative, Vicki commenced a recreational endeavour at the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu, one of the worlds most prestigious hospitality education institutions.  It was a decision that would set the course of Vicki's life and out her as one of the Region's most creative and influential chefs.  Combining an appreciation of design with the culinary arts, Tate has won a coveted Michelin Star from 2013 through to 2015, culminating in being named Asia's best female chef.

Singapore Series - Bacchanalia - uber cool dining

http://bacchanalia.asia/

I'd been in Singapore a few days and was starting to get a 'lay of the land', in fact, given my normal propensity to get lost in suburban Brisbane, I was on geo-positional fire.  I have to say that my cause was helped by one of the most amazing public Mass Transit Systems I've come across, it's so simple to get around Singapore on their 'MRT'....

The day before, I'd enjoyed a great NYC style burger in db Bistro (see post here) and was given a Gourmet & Travel magazine to read through, which just happened to have the The Peak Annual Restaurant Award winner profiles.  I was looking for some great restaurants to check out and thought it quite serendipitous.  Flipping through the magazine, one restaurant jumped right out at me with its cool and familiar name.  Bacchanalia (similar to our own Bacchus) has just picked up Best New Restaurant for 2014, which meant that it was now on my 'must visit list'.

Suspecting that Bacchanalia might be hard to get into, I called for a reservation and was pretty stoked to get in straight away.  My call to the restaurant had me connected to an expat Aussie and we got to chatting for a while and made a note to catch up with him when I hit the dining room.  A short MRT ride to City Hall, which was the closest MRT station saw me in the heart of old Singapore and brought back memories of my first couple of visits to Singapore more than 20 years earlier.  It didn't seem to have changed as much as other parts of the city that I'd visited so far.  It was a weird experience!

Tartufo - classic Italian

http://www.tartufo.com.au/

It was a Sunday night and we had absolutely no idea what we wanted for dinner.... None.  Sometimes it's like that and SC and I just look at each other and shrug our shoulders.  You would think that it would be easy to grab a bite to eat with so many great restaurants just a short walk away but sometimes 'analysis paralysis' in.  To sort ourselves out, we went for a walk and it just so happened that we walked towards the Valley and did a menu shop.  You know what I mean, walking up to interesting looking dining spots, casually glancing at the menu and seeing if anything jumps out.

Restaurant after restaurant passed us by as literally nothing looked interesting to us.  Eventually we made our way to Emporium and after walking a complete circle around the little Valley precinct we found ourselves standing in front of Tartufo.  A quick glance and a short nod and we were walking through the front door and asking for a seat.

It had been some time since our last outing to Tartufo, in fact it was incredibly over twelve months since we last walked through its doors (see post here).  That last outing to the Tony Percuoco's incredibly well regarded Italian fine diner was a beauty and we'd had a great time.  It was a contrast to our first visit, which had been disappointing to say the least and we were hoping that our latest visit would herald another winning meal.

I'm not sure if had been a conscious decision to head to Tartufo but I had been talking about the fine diner earlier that week. A fellow foodie asked if I'd seen Queensland's top ten wildest desserts in which Tartufo's chocolate fondant had featured heavily.  Tony Percuoco Tartufo is used to awards, informal and formal and has consistently been recognised with chefs hats and Gourmet Travellers stars.  

The Euro - a faultless meal

http://www.theeuro.com.au/

We'd left it until the last moment before deciding that we wanted to hit one of Brisbane's best restaurants on a Saturday night.  I'm not sure if you've ever tried to book into on of the city's best restaurants at 2:30pm on a Saturday, but it can be a bit hit and miss (mostly miss).  We really wanted to have a meal that would be faultless, so that meant that there was only a handful of restaurants where we could be absolutely certain that we'd have a perfect dinner.  Sure, we could have tried some of our usual haunts, but we also wanted to go somewhere where we'd not been before.

We actually decided that it was impossible to find an amazing restaurant that we'd not eaten at, at least once, so we agreed that we should go to one that we'd not been to together before.  The Euro in Mary Street is just such a restaurant and I'd tried to get a seat the previous weekend at around the same time, without luck, but being the eternal optimist, had another crack.  A quick call to book a table was successful, albeit for a 6pm sitting with a promise of being out by 8pm, something that we were happy to guarantee.

I'd last been to The Euro for a work function in 2012 and at the very beginning of my food blogging journey and had been mightily impressed (see post here).  At the time The Euro had recently acquired a new head chef, and co-owner Alejandro Cancino, who was still finding his feet in Brisbane.  In the sixteen months since my last visit to The Euro, Alejandro has woven his magic in the kitchen and elevated the restaurant to one of the top in the country.  The Euro is currently 66th on the 2014 Gourmet Traveller list of top 100 restaurants, which is a pretty impressive feat - even more so when you consider big fine dining brother Urbane is number 12 on the same list.  More impressive when you consider The Euro also has a Brisbane Times chefs hat and a Gourmet Traveller star.

The Long Apron - Regional perfection

http://www.spicersgroup.com.au/restaurant/long-apron

I'm pretty well versed with the dining scene in Brisbane and it's surrounds and feel extremely lucky that I have some of the best restaurants in the country just a short distance from my front door.  I guess you could say I'm very comfortable knowing that at any time I can quite easily hit a fine dining restaurant for a meal.  I have to admit that lately I've been getting a little restless with my dining choices, sure, there are some amazing dining options, but sometimes there is a little 'sameness' about them.  To 'spice' it up a little bit, I've been going further and further afield from my CBD base and I've been discovering some amazing restaurants and meals.

My best mate the Big Boy, who lives overseas now and I only get to see a couple of times a year, was recently back for a week.  It's been our custom to book into as many nice restaurants as possible when he's back so he can get a reminder about how great Australian food can be.  We generally take him to our favourite restaurants, which this time included Hatch & Co, Gerard's, Rogue Bar and Bistro and  of course Esquire.  There is no doubt that these are all amazing restaurants and the Big Boy loved them all, but there was still that notion that there was a bit of 'sameness' about the experiences.  We thought it would be time to 'spice' it up.

The idea actually came from SC and it was a beauty.  We'd been hearing for a long time that there was an amazing restaurant up at Spicers Resort at Montville called The Long Apron.  Our plan was to make a day of it, drive up to Montville mid-morning and arrive in time for lunch, then drive home through Maleny and stop off for some gelato.  We'd been toying with the idea of doing a day trip to visit the Long Apron for years but given my propensity against driving long distances, I've always avoided going.

E'cco Bistro - sharing the love with friends

http://www.eccobistro.com/

What can I tell ya, I'm a sucker for the classics!  I'd been heading down to check out Philip Johnson's pop-up burger place, Howzat Burgers (see post here), so often that I got it into my head that I needed to take it one step further and try the latest E'cco Bistro menu.  Not that eating at E'cco bistro is much of a chore, it's been one of Brisbane's best restaurants for as long as I can remember and it's been one of my favourites ever since I ate there my first time.

I've had many memorable meals at E'cco but had a surprising time trying to convince my mate to come along with us for a double date.  CI recanted how he'd been disappointed with the size of the meals and the price of mains the last time he'd been to E'cco, which he also admitted had been a long time ago. Sensing that I'd have better luck with TB, I asked CI to check in with his more culinary adventurous other half, which turned out to be a masterstroke.  TB had never been to E'cco before and had been keen to check it out for a long time, so it was a lock, we were heading over to E'cco Bistro for dinner.

There was just one problem, I'd left it pretty late on a Saturday afternoon to get into one of the most popular restaurants in Brisbane, pretty silly really.  Luckily though the restaurant was able to squeeze us into an earlier sitting (thanks Philip), as long as we got along by 6:30, we were going to be sweet.  SC and I were pretty happy with this earlier starting time but TB and CI found it a bit early, but were just really happy the we'd been able to score a seat.

Tartufo - Italian for truffle

http://tartufo.com.au/t/

There is a spot over at the Emporium in the Valley that used to be one of my favourite restaurants, unfortunately it closed down and the spot remained vacant for a while.  That restaurant was Belle Epoque and it was a lovely French restaurant, where ironically I had the best risotto ever.  I say ironically because the restaurant that replaced Belle Epoque was an Italian fine diner called Tartufo.

Chef and owner Tony Percuoco has a long and distinguished career in the food industry, which started in his family's restaurant in Naples as a young boy.  In 1973, Tony began his career at Bennalong at the Sydney Opera House, then onto continue working in his family's restaurant in Kings Cross.  After opening and running his own restaurant in Surrey Hills, Senso Unico, Tony moved to the Gold Coast to open a number of restaurants including the well known Restaurant Fellini.  All of this led to taking over the space at Emporium and creating Tartufo.

Adelaide Trip - Press Food & Wine the up and comer

http://www.pressfoodandwine.com.au/

On my recent trip to Adelaide I set about hitting the best restaurants the city had to offer in the three days I was there.  This meant that I had to make some tough decisions about which of the many fantastic restaurants that now grace the Adelaide dining scene I would visit.  The first night in town was Celsius and you can read about it here.  But it was night two and I needed somewhere to go, so after doing the obligatory online research and again hitting up some local bloggers for their suggestions I decided on Press Food & Wine.

I had been spending the days wandering the streets of Adelaide, so had a pretty good idea where Press was located, which is just outside of the reglar dining haunt of Gouger Street.  I did however notice that Waymouth Street was starting to get a nice little gathering of restaurants with Georges on Waymouth right next door.

Adelaide Trip - Celsius Restaurant Three Hat Perfection

http://www.celsiusrestaurant.com.au/

It's not very often I get to Adelaide so when I do go down, anywhere for that matter, I am always looking for a great restaurant to visit.  You can find out a little more about my reason for an Adelaide visit here! When travelling, I normally try to arrange a visit to the best restaurant at my chosen destination - sometimes I can get in and sometimes not.  After doing some research online and looking at the various guides in Adelaide, as well as linking in with some Food Bloggers who know Adelaide pretty well, I settled on Celsius Restaurant and Bar as my first port of call.

What better way to start off a food odyssey than with Adelaide's most awarded and celebrated restaurant of the last few years.  Celsius is Adelaide's only three hatted restaurant with a AGFG score of 17 out of 20, which is an outstanding achievement and one of only a handful of restaurants in the country to have such a score.  It's also ranked 54th best restaurant in the country by Gourmet Traveller and has been awarded a Gourmet Traveller Star.  As I said, some serious credentials here, so my expectations were high.

Tank - Japanese Australian Fusion

http://www.tankrestaurant.com.au/

Brisbane has some very well known restaurant precincts, but also some lesser known spaces where some real gems are located.  North Quay is one of those areas with a couple of gems!  I have recently posted about Public but thought it would be time to get back to the original North Quay gem, Tank.  Tank is located in a cool lane-way in between 400 George Street and Santos Place.  It's an extremely popular drinking spot for the suits up that end of town and has been one of my favourite restaurants ever since it opened.

When you first approach Tank, it appears as if out of nowhere.  It's a pretty isolated part of Brisbane at night but you can easily find it by the crowd milling around out the front and the raucous noise of after work drinkers.  It almost looks organic in it's design with architects Donovan Hill, who also designed Santos Place, using locally sourced and environmentally sustainable materials such as Orazia Gold marble and Spotted Gum timber.  It is a very pretty restaurant!

Tank hit the Brisbane dining scene just over two years ago and quickly became a favourite for many Brisbanites.  Accolades soon followed with Tank securing a coveted Brisbane Times Good Food Guide Chefs Hat, as well as a Gourmet Travellers One Star, one of a handful of restaurants in Queensland to do so.

Stokehouse - Melbourne comes to Brisbane town

http://stokehousebrisbane.com.au/

A few years ago one of the final vestiges of Expo '88 was removed from Southbank.  One of my favourite restaurants, the River Canteen, was located in the far corner of Southbank near the Maritime Museum along with a number of other cafes and shops.  Sure they were looking a bit tired but I was incensed and outraged when I heard the news.  I dutifully went along to one of the final sittings at River Canteen and wondered why it was all coming to an end.

Fast forward a few years and we now have one of the most vibrant and amazing restaurant precincts in Brisbane with River Quay  now fully completed.  One of the first restaurants into River Quay was a southern interloper in the Stokehouse, a Melbourne institution located on the St Kilda foreshore.  The Stokehouse has been a favourite for Melbournians for over 20 years and a legitimate question about its fit into the Brisbane market is, would it succeed on the Brisbane River?

Restaurant Two - a menu to die for?

http://www.restaurant2.com.au/

21st December 2102 - 10:11 AEDST..................  Phew

There has been a heap of media coverage about the ancient Maya and their calendar and in particular a certain prophecy that the world would end at 10:11 on 21/12/2012 (or 9:11 Brisbane time).  My thoughts on this....... Unlikely, but just in case, I thought there would be no better way to go than a last meal with my lovely partner over a delicious meal in one of Brisbane's finest restaurants.

Restaurant Two has been at the forefront of fine dining in Brisbane for around 13 years, which puts it in exclusive company in the Brisbane dining scene.  Of course it has awards, too many to mention over the years, but most notably it is one of the few restaurants that has a Brisbane Times Good Food Guide Chefs Hat as well as a Gourmet Traveller One Star.  Head Chef and owner David Pugh is passionate about his food and uses only the freshest local produce.

Located in probably the classiest part of town at the corner of Alice and Edwards Streets and right by the entrance to the Botanical Gardens, Two is in the heritage-listed Old Mineral House building which has been lovingly restored with large picture windows that overlook Alice Street and the Botanical Gardens with glimpses of the Brisbane River.  Its such a lovely spot and a favourite for brides & grooms to celebrate their weddings.