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Thursday, May 15, 2008 A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a project that S and I — with loads of help from a fantastic and hard-working team — have been working on for several months. I’ll be the first to admit that The Miele Guide is an ambitious project. Our goal with this publication is to launch the first really independent and credible guide to Asia’s best restaurants. It is something that S and I have been talking about for years and are thrilled to finally get off the ground. In simple terms, what we are hoping to do, through The Miele Guide, is raise the profile of Asia’s top restaurants and to make them as well known as their counterparts overseas. If successful, The Miele Guide should be able to draw attention to the culinary richness of Asia as a region. At present, there is no credible Asia-wide restaurant guide which Asian food lovers consider a benchmark reflective of our region’s taste, culture and collective culinary standards. Our hope and goal is that The Miele Guide can set that standard. In order to put together the best possible list of Asia’s best restaurants, we are conducting four rounds of evaluation. In the first, a panel made up of 84 of Asia’s top restaurant critics have created a shortlist of what they believe are the best restaurants in the region (each was asked to nominate what they felt were the 20 best restaurants in their home country). Now, it’s your turn. Our second round of evaluations, which has just started, depends upon your participation. We’ve launched a public vote on our site, www.mieleguide.com. Please take some time to click over and vote. You’ll need to register — this will take all of a minute and a half — before you can vote. And when you do, you’ll stand a chance to win one of three pretty cool prizes. We’re giving away dinner for 2 at the top-ranked restaurants in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo (respectively), plus a 2-night stay at a five-star hotel in each city. Voting should also take just a few minutes. Visa is our Official Credit Card. In order to vote, you’ll need to key in a few digits from your Visa card number — just a few, i.e. just enough to register you as a unique voter.
Voting is open from now until 31 July at www.mieleguide.com. So far on this blog, I’ve avoided running pictures of myself. But the one I have included I actually kind of like. Pictured from left to right is me, The Miele Guide’s Associate Publisher Ms Pauline Ooi, and S. And of course, The Miele Guide is holding court centre-stage. The photo was taken by superstar fashion photographer Geoff Ang, whom I’ve known and whose work I have admired for almost a decade. I was told by the PR firm who is helping us publicize The Miele Guide, after seeing the rather scary pictures that the Straits Times ran of S and me a couple weeks back, that we had to have proper press portraits taken. Which we did. Thank you again for your support. Please tell your friends about The Miele Guide.        Posted by Chubby Hubby 
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Once registered, you’ll have 10 votes. If you live in one of the 16 countries in Asia that we’re covering, you’ll only be allowed to vote for a maximum of 3 restaurants in your home-country. Voting is simple. Just choose the country whose restaurants you want to see and a shortlist appears on screen. To select, just click on the restaurant’s name. If there is a restaurant that isn’t on the shortlist that you want to vote for, no problem. We’ve made allowances for you to be able to write in your own nominations.
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Hi CH, yep, I saw that article in the Straits Time and felt that a photo showing you chomping on a hamburger may not have been the best shot! Plus it totally didn’t do S any justice! I vaguely read about S in Her World mag previously and always thought of her as really pretty and fashionable. Thank god for your new shots, look really cool….try to run them in Straits Time again…haha!
Posted by: Joyz | 15 May 2008 @ 8:31 pm
even as an anglosaxon based in london, but a lover of your special kind of food….could there be an appendix listing the best asian restaurants within europe….this could surely increase the number of buyers of your guide…could i also suggest that the guide is “pocketsized” and printed on as light a paper as viable
Posted by: mazza | 16 May 2008 @ 2:29 am
You shouldn’t be so shy… You are a nice looking man!
I just found your blog recently, and am enjoying it. I’m from upstate NY/USA.
Best of Luck!
Posted by: susand | 16 May 2008 @ 7:50 am
I went on the site, I chose one restaurant in one country, then clicked submit. For some reason I can’t choose restaurants in other restaurants! I believe the system thinks I’ve already made all my selections. You may look into how to fix this, as maybe others are making the same mistake as me.
Thanks for doing this though, I really appreciate it.
Posted by: Gourmande | 16 May 2008 @ 5:03 pm
Hi Gourmande, only after selecting the restaurants from all of the countries should you hit the submit button. You can view different country lists using the country menu on the top right. Thanks for your feedback though.
Posted by: Chubby Hubby | 16 May 2008 @ 6:31 pm
Hi Gourmande,
Thanks for voting, or at least the attempt to. Actually if you have clicked submit by accident and went to the confirmation screen, you can still use “No, go back and edit my votes” to edit up your votes.
Thanks for your feedback too.
Posted by: Aen | 17 May 2008 @ 2:54 am
Wah! You two look damn professional in the photo! Black (against a black background) is definitely your colour.
Posted by: Ng Yi-Sheng | 18 May 2008 @ 1:34 am
hey! i put in a preorder for the book already! I’m looking forward to receiving it!
S is really pretty!
Posted by: lynn | 19 May 2008 @ 9:06 pm
I had the same problem as Gourmande. I didn’t realise that I could only do the process once. So if I only submitted and confirmed the SG section, do my votes still count?
Posted by: sandra | 20 May 2008 @ 10:45 am
Hi CH,
Just thought of something when I submitted my votes. It will be great if all the restaurants that made it to voting round could listed on a single page for easy reference. Like yourself and many other frequently your site, I enjoy traveling and eating, and would love to have a chance to try out all the places listed, even if they don’t make it into the final Miele guide. If putting them on the same page (text/web links would be ideal) is not possible, I might have to manually copy all of them down. =)
Great job with your blog! Made me recall today the good memories of Sushi Endo which I tried out after your blog post.
Posted by: justin | 20 May 2008 @ 7:23 pm
what a fantastic idea! i can’t wait for the book to be out then. it’s always really good to get great restaurants greater exposure just so oriental cuisine gets out there a little more and not to forget, we get to know where to go for awesome food!
lovely.
Posted by: diva@theSugarBar | 20 May 2008 @ 9:58 pm
Great job your doing here CH. An independent guide to Asian restaurants would really be helpful and help promote our culinary richess globally.
Posted by: whiff and a sip | 21 May 2008 @ 11:25 am
Much as I want to register and vote, I only have a MC. I cancelled my Visa card. Maybe you can include MC or can I use my hubby’s VISA card?
Posted by: noemi | 25 May 2008 @ 9:03 pm
I can’t seem to do any voting under Safari on a Mac. The restaurant selections won’t select.
Posted by: Phil Pham | 31 May 2008 @ 11:35 pm