Around the World in 30 Steaks: The Best From Las Vegas to Tokyo: Restaurant food doesn’t get much simpler than a properly cooked chunk of beef—and rarely delivers so much pleasure. The smoky sweetness of the char, with its hint of crispness. The soft flesh releasing the deep and earthy flavors of the meat. It’s the stuff of meaty dreams and enjoyed worldwide. Yet it’s easy to ruin a steak. No amount of sauce or mustard can fix bad beef. Overcooked meat will be dry and chewy. Walk into a random steakhouse when traveling and you may suffer more disappointment than joy.
The Team Behind The ‘World’s Best Restaurant’ Tackle Fast-Casual: Dinner at Eleven Madison Park, Will Guidara and chef Daniel Humm’s vaunted haute cuisine hangout — which closes June 9 for renovations and a summer Hamptons pop-up — costs a lofty $295 per person. For many, that kind of expense would rightly raise eyebrows and prompt double takes. Even a meal at the NoMad — the partners’ clubby hotel restaurant that practically redefined what clubby NYC hotel restaurants can be — will set you back, what with the opulent chicken for two fetching just under $90. In the six years since taking the reins from Union Square Hospitality Group honcho Danny Meyer, they’ve maxed out Michelin (EMP has three stars, NoMad one), wowed critics, and consistently reinvented themselves — sometimes to contentious results. They’re also fresh off a “World’s Best Restaurant” win for EMP, having topped this year’s “50 Best” list. So what are two of the hottest and best-respected fine-dining industry leaders doing next? Taking their talents to the people.
Gaggan, An Indian Restaurant AKA Asia’s Best Restaurant Is Shutting Down And Here’s Why! Recently, while watching (all right, binge watching) Master of None Season 2 Dev talks about how it takes months to get a reservation at a particular restaurant in Italy. At the time I assumed that it was hyperbole, but it turns out that restaurants like these do exist – and Gaggan is one of them. Chef Gaggan Anand, using tools like molecular gastronomy revolutionised Indian cuisine in Bangkok. His restaurant currently has a wait list of around 4 months, with 4 people needed to handle the 500 requests for reservations that come in every day. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that they’ve won Asia’s 50 best award 3 years running.
Michelin-starred chefs go casual, with affordable, accessible alternatives: Brazilian chef Alex Atala is the latest Michelin-starred chef to open a more affordable and accessible restaurant for the masses, with the opening of an all-day eatery Bio in Sao Paulo. In the upper echelons of haute, contemporary gastronomy, Atala is best known for his trailblazing restaurant DOM in Sao Paulo, currently ranked No. 16 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list and holder of two Michelin stars. The chef is credited with restoring pride in traditional Brazilian cuisine and using native Amazonian ingredients like acai berries and jungle ants, which are said to impart the flavour of lemongrass.
Charcoal or Gas? Depends on What You’re Grilling: Gas or charcoal? It is a question that has bedeviled American consumers and cooks for decades, since the first LazyMan propane grill went on sale in the 1950s and left the Smiths with their briquette-fueled brazier looking jealously over the fence at the Joneses and their new outdoor science stove. In the abstract, there is no one correct answer. You can have affirmative responses to the use of either fuel. You can stack them as high as summer corn.
English champagne anyone? British wine goes from sad to sparkling: There was a time when English wine was the butt of jokes among connoisseurs, and given the inferior quality of what was being produced, many would say, deservedly so. Today, however, thanks to a combination of climate change, increased wine knowledge and more investment, British wines are flourishing.
How an Accountant Turned a Water Bottle Company Into a $100 Million Fashion Brand: When S’well founder Sarah Kauss locked in a distribution deal with Target, her first reflex was to make sure someone on her team actually toiled through the vendor’s phone book-size guide for new partners. It’s not all that surprising, considering Kauss began her career as a CPA at Ernst & Young and then got her MBA at Harvard Business School. “I’m so organized, it drives everyone nuts,” says Kauss. “Really, I’m a recovering accountant.”
China Is Building a Disney World for Wine: At Chateau Changyu Reina, honey-colored brick towers enclose wide cobbled courtyards, and vast, wood-beamed halls look as if they are prepared to host an imminent medieval banquet. At first glance, the Italianate castle and winery could have been built hundreds of years ago, in Italy’s Tuscan hills. Spoiler: It wasn’t.
Can sherry blossom again?:
I had lunch the other day with Hugh Johnson, my old friend and co-author of The World Atlas of Wine. He had recently revisited the sherry town of Jerez for the first time in decades and was still in shock, rocked by the transformation of the landscape surrounding it.
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