Your dose of inspiration this week should start with this article about Mikael Jonsson of Hedone who traded a career as a successful lawyer in Sweden with being a Michelin starred chef in London. He decided to do this when he was 44 when he says it started to grind in the back of his head that he should take his home-cooking skills and see how could he could become as a chef. And he does not believe that he will retire as a chef. “If I see there’s another passion I really want to exercise, then I will probably change again. I don’t understand this notion that you have one career in life and then that’s it.”
Foodiva interviews Spanish three Michelin star chef Quique Dacosta. He is the first chef to take over Palazzo Versace’s Enigma restaurant in Dubai for a three month pop-up. The restaurant will change hands every three months. Like Jonsson above, he is also a self-taught chef.
On the subject of chefs, you should not miss the interview with Jason Atherton on opening 14 restaurants around the world in just five years. He speaks about how to succeed in managing such a global operation.
Jane Anson reports on a tasting of French and English cheeses and explores the art of eating mindfully.
At Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Slips and Stumbles is an honest review of one of the top restaurants in the United States (Per Se) in the New York Times. The newspaper starts the report as follows: The lady had dropped her napkin. More accurately, she had hurled it to the floor in a fit of disillusionment, her small protest against the slow creep of mediocrity and missed cues during a four-hour dinner at Per Se that would cost the four of us close to $3,000. Some time later, a passing server picked up the napkin without pausing to see whose lap it was missing from, neatly embodying the oblivious sleepwalking that had pushed my guest to this point. Such is Per Se’s mystique that I briefly wondered if the failure to bring her a new napkin could have been intentional.
If you’ve missed the report about the cafe manager who hit back at a terrible TripAdvisor review don’t miss this article. His response is spot-on.
A new documentary by Michael Moore “Where to Invade Next” is released next month and compares the school lunches in the United States as compared to French children. There is a lot of food for thought in this article.
Read an interview with Michael Pollan about how the US got screwed up with food.
Here is an article about how to best preserve half drunk bottles of wine.
Antonio Galloni writes about Riesling, and in particular German Riesling.
And to conclude here is a list of 52 places to go in 2016 as selected by the New York Times.
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