It is now possible to go to a restaurant in Belgium and choose to try wines like Sassicaia or a Chateau LafiteRothschild by the glass. Since April this year, wine lovers have a unique opportunity at 2 Michelin star restaurant Pastorle, in Reek a few kilometres away from Antwerp. Chef and restaurateur Bart de Pooter told Food and Wine Gazette the restaurant is now serving over 150 wines by the glass for their guests. Using the Coravin system which keeps the wines at their very best even after they have been opened means that this is a win win situation for the restaurant and guests. This is still relatively unique in the restaurant world though Bart said that he first saw the system in Paris. "I saw the system at the restaurant of Yannick Alleno who was serving around 120 wines by the glass." "We thought a bit more about it and decided to offer different possibilities of serving even 8cl and 12 cl so that guests can enjoy two to three glasses of wine and still be able to … [Read more...]
Archives for November 2017
Noma reservations for seafood season open tomorrow
The first guests of the new noma will be welcomed on 15 February with the first menu celebrating Scandinavian seafood which is at its best during the cold winter months. Reservations for the first season of the new noma open tomorrow 16 November at 4pm CET time and guests will be able to book for the period from 15 February to 29 April 2018. The year has been divided into three seasons during which the menu will change dramatically to match the type of ingredients that are at their peak at any given time of the year. Each serving of the first menu will include some element from the ocean. Please keep this in mind when booking a table. If you have an aversion or allergy to any foods from the ocean, or adhere to a vegetarian or vegan diet, please join us during one of our other two seasons. The other two seasons are the vegetable season which will be served from early summer to early fall. This menu is perfect for vegetarians and vegans and will make full use of noma's urban … [Read more...]
Unprecedented five day restaurant swap by Mauro Colagreco and Jorge Vallejo
GELINAZ! came up with the shuffle in which chefs would travel to an unknown restaurant and cook one service. Now, chef Mauro Colagreco and Jorge Vallejo are taking the idea to the next level in what could be billed as the Shuffle 2.0. From 22nd to 26th November, the two chefs and their teams will swap restaurants, taking their signature dishes across the Atlantic for an unprecedented, exclusive, restaurant event. Mauro and seven of his team will host a pop-up at Quintonil in Mexico City, while Jorge and his chefs will simultaneously take over Mirazur on the Côte d’Azur. Chef Mauro Colagreco currently hold’s two Michelin stars at Restaurant Mirazur, Menton, and gained fourth place in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants this year. A long-standing friend of Mauro, Jorge Vallejo is one of South America’s brightest culinary stars, and is currently ranked 22nd in the World’s 50 Best list. The idea was conceived following the enormous success of a one-off autumnal dinner that … [Read more...]
2017: A very fine and abundant vintage for Austrian wine with winemakers describing it as a picture perfect year
Austria has reported a harvest that is good in terms of quality and volume. While worldwide 2017 saw the lowest level of wine production in years, Austria's yield of 2.6 million hl (according to October’s third harvest estimate) amounted to a quarter above the five-year average, which will go a long way to filling cellars that in many places have been rather empty. True, there were late frosts in 2017 as well as hailstorms, but both caused substantially less damage than in the previous year. Only the Weinviertel experienced a more modest harvest compared with the average, due to extremely arid conditions in one of the hottest summers in a long time. In general, this year was distinguished by constant fluctuations of temperature, setting meteorological records. 2017 began with the coldest January of the past thirty years, which in addition was also very dry – by contrast, February was extraordinarily warm. This was followed by the warmest month of March that had ever been recorded in … [Read more...]
Eric Fernez is the Gault & Millau Belgian chef of the year
Eric Fernez chef of d'Eugénie à Emilie is this year's Gault & Millau chef of the year. This was announced during the launch of the 2018 guide which celebrates its 15th anniversary this year. The chef of the restaurant in Baudour, Bergen was given this award for his perfectly executed classic cuisine. The anonymous inspectors of the guide have visited and reviewed over 1,280 restaurants this year. Peter Goossens, the chef of Hof van Cleve has retained a 19.5 on 20 score for the 15th year in the row. He is the only chef to have achieved this result for 15 consecutive years. The other restaurant with the same score is Brussels restaurant Bon Bon by chef Christophe Hardiquest. The new restaurant by Kobe Desramaults in Gent Chambre Separee was awarded 17.5 points, the same score as D'Eugénie à Émilie, Nuance and the Chalet de la Forêt. Newcomers Zet'Joe by Geert Van Hecke and Hoorseele by Dany Hoorseele both got a 17 score. The young chefs of the year for Gault & Millau … [Read more...]
Gert de Mangeleer Unplugged, a collection of recipes to share in English released
Gert de Mangeleer, chef of three Michelin star restaurant Hertog Jan in Zedelgem, Bruges has just released his collection of recipes to share in a book called Unplugged in English. Originally published in Flemish, the book is now also available in English. “This is the first book in which I collected many of my favourite recipes. I never was really into sharing my recipes until now because my style of cooking evolves too much for that. Nor did I want to give people the impression that they could easily recreate the dishes we serve at Hertog Jan at home. Because they can’t. I cannot even do the things I do in my restaurant at home, because I neither have the kitchen equipment nor the team for it,” he says in the introduction to the book. Instead the book is accessible and presents a series of the tastiest dishes the Belgian chef has prepared for his family and friends in recent years. He says he gets inspiration for his dishes everywhere he goes and that is very visible in the … [Read more...]
Bo Songvisava: Dreaming of a self-sustainable restaurant
Bo Songvisava is a chef with a vision. With her husband, chef and business partner Dylan Jones, they have received critical acclaim for their progressive, ethical Thai cooking at their restaurant Bo.Lan in Bangkok. They have already made plans to become a zero carbon restaurant by next year. But they also have plans to move out of Bangkok even if this is a long term objective. The vision is already set, it is now about implementing in when the time arrives. “We want to be able to serve fewer customers a night, we want to be independent and a self-sustainable restaurant. We do not want to hire anyone as we do not want to deal with the tax office. We will generate our own power, filter our own water, manage our own waste. The dream is to create something where we will not have to deal with bureacracy,” Bo told Food and Wine Gazette when we caught up with her at GELINAZ! Does Upper Austria earlier this year. While the place is not yet decided, Bo knows that she and her husband want … [Read more...]
Amber to close temporarily for complete refurbishment next year
World acclaimed Hong Kong restaurant Amber by chef Richard Ekkebus will be closing for a complete refurbishment for four months in the summer of 2018, the Dutch chef told Food and Wine Gazette in an interview to be published in the coming days. Ekkebus who opened the restaurant at the Landmark Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong 13 years ago said that they will be starting afresh. “It is going to be like a reopening. We will need to learn how to cook again. It is a very big exercise and we have been working on this for the past three years,” he said. Chef of what was once called the 'Da Vinci code menu restaurant' because of the avant garde approach he took to Hong Kong traditions, Ekkebus said that he felt that ‘we are coming to a point where everybody loves us and we need to find something new to push a little bit further and to get clients a bit outside their comfort zone.” Without going too much into the details on the refurbishment which is still being planned together with the … [Read more...]
Mater Iniciativa has become essential to Central restaurant says chef Virgilio Martinez
Virgilio Martinez, chef of acclaimed restaurant Central, in Lima, Peru has been leading a team of researchers travelling across Peru collecting ingredients that grow on the banks of a river in the Amazon jungle, in the middle of the frozen Puna grasslands or at more than 13000 feet above sea level on a snow-covered mountain top. He believes that the diversity of the country demands this type of expedition. That sense of expedition has led to worldwide fame. Today, Virgilio sees Mater Iniciativa, the non-profit organisation he set up as a crucial part of his work to the extent that he tells me that Central Restaurante, the acclaimed restaurant would not exist without the non-profit organisation Mater Iniciativa, the biological and cultural research centre that he set up. "We are working with ingredients that we have not seen before and the first thing we have to ascertain is whether they are edible or not," Virgilio Martinez tells Food and Wine Gazette when we caught up with him … [Read more...]
Rasmus Kofoed of Copenhagen restaurant Geranium latest chef to cook at Villa Louise
The chef of three Michelin star restaurant, Geranium, in Copenhagen Denmark, Rasmus Kofoed was the latest guest chef at Villa Louise in Aachen, Germany for a dinner at the end of October. The Danish chef created a menu which included some of his most iconic dishes which are served at his restaurant in the Danish capital including the ‘edible’ razor clams, a dish he served to Michelin guide inspectors who left the shells intact. (See story here). In its sixth season, Villa Louise has been organising these private dinners since 2012 and has welcomed chefs like Alain Passard, Sergio Herman (who also cooked in October a week before Rasmus), Pierre Gagnaire, Sven Elverfeld, Virgilio Martinez, Gert de Mangeleer and many more. Villa Louise, is an offshoot of asset manager Creutz and Partners and they have been inviting some of the world’s best chefs to cook at their premises to collaborate, cook and share their creativity with their clients. This was the first time that Rasmus … [Read more...]