Here is our weekly round-up a day earlier than usual as we are heading to Chef Sache 2015 tomorrow to watch Massimo Bottura, Jock Zonfrillo and Mitsuharu Tsumara in action among others. We will bring you news on that next week so please do come back. In the meantime, here are some articles we found interesting this week.
Have you ever wondered how hard it is for chefs and people in the hospitality business. They have to work long hours and also work when most people are not working, for example on weekends or evenings. A Michelin star chef in the UK, James Close, has decided to scrap the weekday lunch service in a bid to improve staff hours and encourage creativity. This follows news from Sat Bains earlier this year when he announced his Nottingham restaurant was switching to a four day week. Let’s keep watch of this trend. Even Mikael Jonsson of Hedone recently announced he will be opening for just six sittings every week to improve the well-being of his staff. Times are changing and we think this trend will become more common.
The guide is in Italian but this is really a guide you should look for when planning where to eat on your trips to Italy. It is called “Osterie d’Italia and is a publication of Slow Food Italy. It highlights over 1,700 places you should visit to eat. The 2016 guide has just been published. We’ve been to some of their recommended places and their advice has always turned out to be spot on. Don’t expect anything fancy but rather honest cooking, exceptional ingredients and great value for money.
Tom Kerridge is a great British chef who is famous for his Michelin-starred pub, the Hand and Flowers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Here is an interesting interview with him.
Are you curious to know about the project of the Adria brothers (of el Bulli fame) with the Cirque du Soleil in Ibiza? Then read this article which explains what it is all about. It’s a place which brings together gastronomy, entertainment and art trough a triple concept.
Laura Marsh looks at the scientific art of making a perfect meal. She takes a look at cookbooks and then argues that bloggers no longer have any constraints and can therefore write in detail about topics which would not do well in print. It’s a very interesting point of view.
Piedmont is high on our list of places to visit. So we are keeping this article for future reference when we get a chance to visit this Italian region known for its splendid wine like Barolo, Barbaresco.
Jancis Robinson has been to a tasting of some of the world’s most famous Syrah wines and writes that even some Australian producers have now started to call their wines Syrah rather than Shiraz. Read what she thought here.
The Oxford Companion to Wine is considered to be one of the most influential wine books. There is a new edition and the Wine Searcher tells us what’s new in the book.
How do you go about deciding how to buy wine? Do you prefer to buy a wine from a lesser known producer in a good vintage or do you prefer a wine produced by a great producer even when the vintage is not good. Lettie Teague has a great article on the subject.
And to conclude here is an article from the 36 Hours series from the New York Times about the Right Bank of Paris.
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