Ume is a charming restaurant. Like the plum which it’s named after, it is sweet, and it is delicate. This modern Japanese eatery feels like it was taken straight out of the old streets of Kyoto and seamlessly placed in a leafy area of the otherwise buzzy Surry Hills, in Sydney. Continue Reading →
A couple of years ago, my friend Lynda gifted me with a canvas tote bag that had a quirky and beautifully illustrated print. It was a gorgeous print of a loaf of bread with its Chinese name enclosed in dotted boxes. I thought the design was pretty ingenious. If you were in primary school back in the 1980s (yes, you can start figuring out my age), the bag will bring back memories of writing Chinese characters within the dotted boxes and figuring out the correct hanyu pinyin (汉语拼音). Another huge reason why I love this bag is because it features one of my favourite things to bake – bread. This is one foodie gift I greatly enjoy carrying around.
As an ex-magazine editor, I’m always thrilled to run across a new, beautifully designed, tightly curated, sharply edited, and well-written editorial product. It doesn’t really matter to me if that product is in print or in a digital format. What matters to me these days is quality. If you haven’t yet discovered Sabor, a dutch food magazine that this year has made the transition from print to iPad, you simply must download it as soon as possible.
You’ll ditch store-bought options once you realise how little it takes to make a seriously yummy tomato sauce of your own! This is my favourite tomato sauce recipe. It’s easy to make, incredibly tasty and relatively inexpensive. I’m a firm believer of layering flavours. And with a jar of this tomato sauce sitting in the fridge or freezer, part of the work of throwing a meal together is already done.
Popeye owes much of his strength to spinach, and I fondly remember my three young nephews scarfing down entire plates of sautéed and creamed spinach after watching the cartoons. If spinach was absent from dinner, they would collectively rain hell and fury like you’ve never seen. I don’t blame them, and their allegiance is well-justified, because apart from being delicious, spinach features on most superfoods lists. Continue Reading →
I’ve just come back from a two-week holiday in London and Paris, during which I ate until I started hallucinating, and drank more wine than I had in the last twelve months combined. It was, as you can imagine, a completely indulgent vacation of hedonistic proportions, and a blow to my wallet from which it may never recover (hence justifying my purchase of a pretty new wallet from a luxury men’s store near Portobello market). Over this and my next couple of posts, I’ll share some of the more memorable, and hopefully less well-known, restaurants I visited, starting with Bocca di Lupo, a casual pan-Italian joint in London’s theater district.
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Hi all, just a quick little announcement for all Singapore-based readers. Running a small promo via this site’s Facebook Page. Chef Lino Sauro of Gattopardo restaurant is collaborating with Singapore’s premier dining privileges club, Palate, to create a special Sicilian Experience on 28 March 2013. When making reservations, CH readers have the chance to win Palate memberships worth over S$428 each. For more info, go here: https://www.facebook.com/events/519141288125180/
As you can see from the posts that have come before this on, there are many things to see and do when vacationing in Tohoku. There are wonderful onsens to bathe in, great drink to be tasted and purchased, and incredible food to eat. There’s also a rich cultural heritage to explore. One city worth stopping in is Aizu Wakamatsu, which is the main city in Aizu, in the western part of Fukushima. Continue Reading →
When it comes to breakfast treats like waffles and (American-styled) muffins, I rarely get them from cafés or coffee-shop chains. One big reason is that I can easily make them at home. Another bigger reason is that almost all of the time, the store-bought ones turn out to be quite bad.
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When I worked in advertising, I was constantly back and forth from New York to Los Angeles for TV commercial shoots. The thing that was immediately apparent to me about this city was the amazing food culture, and particularly the love of burgers. Regardless of where we live, we have all been part of a ‘great burger debate.’ Who has the best burger? Best overall, best taste, best value, etc. When I was traveling there in the early 2000′s, I was told Father’s Office was un-challenged by the city’s denizens as the best burger in town. Today in 2013, Los Angeles is littered with “gastropubs” but Father’s Office is still heralded by many as the City of Angels’ best burger. Continue Reading →
One of the most beautiful sites in Tohoku, Japan, has to be Hiraizumi. This UNESCO World Heritage Site in Iwate prefecture is home to Konjiki-do (Golden Hall) within Chusonji Temple, which attempts to recreate an ideal Buddhist world within our realm, and Motsuji Temple, famous for its Jodo (Pure Land) garden grounds. Continue Reading →