The Miele Guide: Vote now

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.

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.

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.