Florilege is a Michelin-starred French restaurant in Tokyo, also included in the list of the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. Reservations are pretty tough. But in October 2019 I was able to get a seat at one of their Kakigori special events nicknamed Gari Garilege.
Kakigori, of course, is Japanese saved ice (see this review). This random events at Florilege are announced through their Instagram and headed by pastry chef Miho Horio. I learnt about the event thanks to Time Out Tokyo event page.
The visit
I just showed up at around 3pm and I was promised a slot at 4.30pm. Meantime I hang out in the neighborhood (there was a festival going on in the nearby shrine), then I got an email from the receptionist for an earlier opening. All good.
Before being seated, I had to place my order and pay at the reception. I chose the kakigori with Japanese chestnut (by the way, I think there was a mistake in the menu because there was no chocolate). All kakigori available looked interesting. I should mention that they also had ramen available. But I passed on it since I had other dinner plans.
I sat at the counter circling the kitchen. The room was very dark and the pictures are pretty bad. It must be nice to have a full meal here.
I was shown the drink menu.
I ordered a cold tea that incurred in additional 500 yen that I paid directly to the waiter behind the counter.
The kakigori arrived with an additional glazed chestnut on the side. It was really rich with pastry-grade chestnut paste spread on top. It took a while to find my way inside this huge kakigori. It was certainly a great specimen of Japanese shaved ice.
The check
So, all in all, I spent 3,000 yen… that was a handsome amount of money for a kakigori and a tea. But it was in a top venue with top-shelf ingredients. No regrets.
Lured by its inclusion in the list of Asia’s 50 best restaurants (2019), during my September 2019 trip to Hong Kong I made a reservation at Neighborhood, a bistro hidden in Soho. It is listed on some websites as a “French” restaurant, but the chef-owner, David Lai, plays also with Italian and Spanish recipes and ingredients.
The visit
I established contact with the restaurant on their Facebook page, then they asked for my mobile and we exchanged a couple of text messages to pinpoint a reservation. I was warned that I would get a bar chair, that was fine since I was alone.
The restaurant has an unassuming front in an alley.
The restaurant technically is located on Hollywood road, but you won’t find it there… rather you have to look for the nearby Man Hing Lane (shown above).
I was initially seated at the bar as expected. After 10 minutes one of my leg was numb… it was really an uncomfortable chair and luckily after some begging I was moved to a normal table.
I already knew that the menu changes frequently. I was a bit disappointed that the menu I was handed was remarkably shorter than others I saw online. The most interesting dish would have required a pre-order. Yet, there were some attracting dishes and the ingredients seemed to be handpicked.
My first order was an appetizer, Spanish salami that came with a fantastic ciabatta bread (apparently they buy the bread from a nearby award-winning French restaurant, Belon).
My first dish was a delicious beef tartar with salmon roe. The addition of salty fish eggs gave a nice touch to the overall flavor.
Meantime I was offered a complimentary dish: some grilled bell-peppers. Very nice.
My last dish was handmade garganelli (a type of pasta) with an interesting combination of spicy scallop skirts and beef tripe. It was quite spicy (I would say Korean style), but very good.
With the check, I was offered a complimentary French pastry.
The check
The final check was 610 HKD (78 USD) for three courses. Not outrageous and the food in the end was good. This was a luxury casual restaurant. If I was living in Soho and I was a millionaire, I would make it my kitchen. At the same time I feel I missed something since I could have planned my dinner in a more effective way if I had seen the menu beforehand. If you go, ask them to send you the menu, when available.
Where in Hong Kong: G/F, 61-63 Hollywood Road, Soho, Central. (But look for Man Hing Lane.)
La Maison de la Nature Goh is a restaurant in Fukuoka included in the list of Asia’s 50 Best restaurants and awarded one star in the 2019 Michelin Guide to Fukuoka, Nagasaki, and Saga. Goh is the name of the chef. As I will show, defining it a French restaurant, as some guides do, is reductive. Goh created his own cuisine blending French techniques with Japanese style and making use of the best ingredients sourced around Kyushu.
The visit
I contacted the restaurant by email during my summer 2019 trip to Japan. They always answered quickly and politely. Initially it was a no-go, since the restaurant, unsurprisingly, was fully booked. However while I was in Fukuoka I checked if there was any last-minute cancellation and they were able to accommodate me in the end. I am so glad I kept insisting because the pay-off was one the best meals of the year.
The restaurant is located in a neighborhood full of eateries and clubs. It has been operating for the past 17 years, even before the area became popular. The magic door is at the end of an alley. There are just 6 counter seats and 2 tables (each seating 6 people). If you sit at the counter, like I did, some of the cooking takes place in front of you. Goh was in the kitchen, but he was working on the other side of the counter. My cover was taken care by one of the chefs, Andy, and by Ana. They were wonderful in explaining the dishes and speaking in English with me. Service was uncompromisingly good.
There was no menu. It was an omakase course that the chef changes and tweaks frequently.
The opening dish was eel with kobayashi, balsamic vinegar, beef stock sauce, and wine on a piece of cucumber soaked in dashi. On the side there was a green gazpacho made with tomato and cucumber, some chili inside. The composition was inspired by a Japanese dish called uzako, with vinegar eel and cucumber. As this first dish shows, Goh’s cuisine defies labeling. Dishes like these are like small works of art, a sculpture or a painting.
The second dish was even more mind-blowing. It was a platter (it could have been a painting!) with four snacks: Top right: a monaka topped with a iburigakko pickle from Akita, filled with foi gras, and sprinkled with cooked soy beans Bottom right: quiche with bacon from Kumamoto. Top left: shungiku (crown daisy) on a secret white paste. Bottom left: hirame sashimi wrapped in crispy green tea leaves looking like seaweed.
At this point I received some warm ciabatta bread.
The third dish was a colorful cold soup with grilled eggplant, jelly-like beef stock broth, topped by uni, shiso flower, water-shield.
Next was a risotto with spinach and abalone liver, pieces of abalone and Japanese mushrooms (visually they look very similar!), brown butter and mushroom sauce. Eaten mixed together. I was told that this was one of Goh’s signature dishes.
Next was a piece of lobster with chicken sauce, sprinkled with five spices powder and Chinese spinach. An unusual and interesting flavor for this dish.
The big-ticket item of the course menu was wagyu from Kagoshima (very prized!) cooked at low temperature, with vinegar sauce from Yame, onion cooked for 2 hours from Saga, celery puree. Indeed excellent.
The next two dishes were desserts. The first was a homemade yogurt with milk from Hanno enclosing shiso paste and a dill flower on top, plus a Wagayama plum.
Then the dish was completed adding ice bits sprinkled with Yamazaki whiskey.
Finally, from the picture above you can see the green shiso paste hidden by the yogurt.
At this point I was offered a glass of cold green tea from Yame. What was remarkable was that I could smell the aroma of the tea, even if it was a cold brew. Yame green tea is particularly sought-after in Japan. During the dinner I just had still water.
The last dessert was caramel ice cream sprinkled with grated soy sauce on a base of miso, with Sumomo peach. All of this on top of a layer of catalana cream, kept separate from the glazed top. It was like a double bottom. Very clever.
At this point I was shown two miniature statues of Goh and his friend Gaggan. It is well-known that the two like to collaborate together and may even start a restaurant together in the not-so-distant future. Now you know where Gaggan gets his onions…
The check
Now, this incredible meal was 7,257 yen (I did not have wine, I believe water was included) or 68 USD. That’s an amazing price for this kind of culinary experience. They also had a higher-priced menu with basically the same dishes, but an additional palate-cleanser and a more expensive cut of beef for around 9,500 yen. I regret I did not choose this menu as they had a chocolate dessert I would have certainly liked, perhaps next time!
In conclusion, this was not just a meal, it was quiet display of culinary art. Every dish was the result of the combination and balancing of so many details and quality ingredients. All the dishes were also delicious and I was fully satisfied by the end of the meal. I also liked the intimate environment and the counter seat.
The Michelin Guide gives Goh one star. Travesty. This is the kind of restaurant that, using the Michelin’s lingo, is well worth a detour if not a special journey.
Where in Fukuoka: 2-26 Nishinakasu, Chuo Ward, Website: www.gohfukuoka.com.
TocToc is a Michelin-starred restaurant in Seoul also included in the list of the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants. This is my experience in July 2019, during the week of their grand opening in a new location in Gangnam.
The meaning of the name is explained on their website: “‘Toc Toc’ is a French expression of ‘knock knock’; demonstrating chef’s determination to open up your taste through fine cuisine”.
The visit
They took my booking by email after a bit of back and forth, but at the end they also asked me to pay a deposit of 50,000 Won with an online system. I hate when restaurants do that, but I obliged. It was not explained to me, but the deposit was to be returned and not deducted from the check.
I went for dinner on a Saturday night. The dining room is very elegant. Everything was brand new. When I arrived I discovered that they had made some changes to the set menu that I had seen on their website (now it is up to date), but fine. I went for their dinner course menu.
The amuse bouche was a slice of cooked ham with a stick of grissini. That’s Italian in my books. But fine.
The welcome dish consisted of three snacks: watermelon, seabass (fermented and deep fried), beef tartare with house sauce.
Then the bread was served with some fanfare. It turns out that TocToc’s executive chef and owner also started a bakery called Sikbugwan and that’s where the bread came from. Time for a cross-promotion. But the bread was very good and best eaten while warm.
The raw dish was brown croacker sashimi with ginger dressing. I am all for sashimi, but the dressing flavor was a bit overwhelming. Something funny happened here. Since the waiter was a bit chatty, I randomly mentioned that I like to eat sashimi with chopsticks. I did not phrase it as a request or a complaint, but the guy did not like my remark and put me to my place saying “We are in French restaurant in Seoul“. You cannot argue with that. Chopsticks or not, it was a forgettable dish.
In addition to the course menu, I ordered a beef tartare with crispy lotus flowers that was excellent. They did not messed up adding too many ingredients and let the beef speak for itself.
The warm dish was a piece of abalone on mash and eggplant.
Exceptionally, because it was their opening week in the new location, they grated some French truffle from Avignone on the abalone. Truffle or not, the abalone was tender and very good.
For main I could choose between lamb, fish, or Hanu beef. It was a simple choice, I went for the local beef – striploin – that did not disappoint. Korea has some incredible beef.
More truffle on the pasta, some pappardelle with pecorino cheese. It was good, but it was a minuscule portion.
Finally I was served the seasonal dessert (a sorbet on a mango puree).
And it was nice that a cup of tea was also included.
The check
The course menu was 110,000 Won that became 120,000 because I opted for the truffle pasta that commanded 10,000 Won extra (the only pasta with no surcharge was kelp pasta… not the most attractive; they also had lobster pasta for a 15,000 won surcharge). The tartare was excellent but also not cheap at 37,000 Won. So, all in all, I spent 157,000 won (or 130 USD).
The overall experience left me unsatisfied. It was not a disappointment because overall the course menu was good, but I was expecting something more. The chef mostly played safe with traditional French high cuisine classics and some Italian dishes. I wish he had brought more of his Seoul’s upbringings into the menu.
Where in Seoul: 3F 41 Hakdong-ro 97-gil, Gangnam-gu. In Korean: 서울특별시 강남구 학동로97길 41 3층. Website: www.restauranttoctoc.com.
Corner House is a Michelin-starred restaurant located inside Singapore Botanic Garden. It is the apt location of a restaurant promoting a Gastro Botanica style of cuisine, an approach emphasizing refinement and quality, giving equivalent weight on the plate to protein and botanical elements. It is the creation of Chef Jason Tan inspired by curious travel, a French classic culinary ground and a devotion to provenance, terroir and seasonality.
The visit
The Corner House is a colonial style bungalow inside the Botanic Gardens. It is not in a corner… “Corner” was the surname of one of the early assistant director of the institution (1929-1945) and the bungalow is where he lived.
It was easy to book via Chope, but not so easy to reach. You have two options. The first is to get to the Botanic Garden metro station then to walk for around 900 meters. This is how I arrived. It was a pleasant walk (but not really passing next to any botanic landmark) and there were plenty of signs. The second option is to get a taxi Nassim Gate of the Gardens and then walk around 200 meters. That’s how I left and there was some waiting for a taxi to show up.
They only operate with set menus. I was there on a Sunday for brunch and they had the brunch menu available which was fine with me.
The bread was a croissant with five spices, raisins bread, unsalted butter and yuzu flavored butter (yuzu everywhere nowadays).
The first course was a set of appetizers. The spread included (from the left) honeydew (a tropical fruit) with watermelon radish, king fish tartare with seaweed (ichiki), foie gras with orange marmalade (with some tasted bread), mushroom tempura with Parmesan cheese emulsion for dipping (the dish on the back). All delicious, but not a lot of food.
The first main dish was an egg Benedict (one…) with burnt oranges, iberico ham, and topped with tobiko.
Then there was a piece of New Zealand blue cod with fried scale in a chili and butterscotch sauce, with some salmon roe.
Finally the desert was emulsion of durian enclosing coffee ice cream on a scone pastry. The ice cream flavor helped to tame the durian and was overall good.
From start to finish, the brunch took exactly 1 hour.
The check
Brunch and a bottle of water was 127.10 SGD (92 USD). It should be noted that the brunch menu is one of their most affordable menus (dinner set are much more expensive).
I had the impression that the brunch did not help them to display the gastro-botanic style in full. Certainly the dishes were impressively presented and all very good. However, I found the value proposition a bit defective.
One bonus: the restaurant is 200 meters from the famous Orchid Garden (entrance fee required, while the rest of the Gardens is free of charge) that is worth a visit.
Where in Singapore: 1 Cluny Road, E J H Corner House Singapore Botanic Gardens (Nassim Gate Entrance) Website: https://cornerhouse.com.sg.
Paste is an award winning Thai restaurant in Gaysorn Village in Bangkok. According to their website :chef-owners Bongkoch ‘Bee’ Satongun and her husband Jason Bailey have spent years painstakingly studying and chronicling the evolution of Thai cuisine, discovering century-old recipes and long-forgotten techniques in the process”. It is Thai cuisine blending history, tradition, and modernity.
The visit
I booked my table with Chope and I went for a lunch.
Luckily they had a tasting menu perfect for a solo diner. The a la carte menu is more suitable for parties as the dish are quite large. The tasting menu was also massive!
I was seated in the part of the restaurant furnished with booths.
I was quickly offered an amuse bouche: spanner crab from Fraser Island on a seaweed cracker with sesame seeds. A very nice and rich welcome dish.
The tasting menu included three starters and three mains, plus dessert.
The first dish was based on a recipe used for the inauguration of the Emerald Buddha temple in the year 1809 under King Rama I. The dish had a base of watermelon, ground salmon (like a floss) with fried shallots, roasted galangal powder, and salmon roe. This was an exquisite dish. The flavors fused together seamlessly. The salmon roe were very fresh and provided sudden explosions of flavor. I liked the combination of fruit and seafood.
The next dish arrived after a bit of waiting and consisted in seared scallops tossed in a salad with fresh mangosteen, Peromia, lemongrass, young coconut, and Thai wild almonds. Just delicious.
The final appetizer was a finger food: roasted duck, nutmeg, curry paste, and sawtoothcoriander on a rice cracker. This recipe was inspired by an old traditional Thai cookbook.
The first main was again inspired by the Snidwongse family cookbook and consisted in seabass and jicama dumplings in a watermelon rind and fishroe soup.
The second main was crunchy rice balls with sour sausage, kaffir lime zest, red curry paste, river weed, and rose pepper leaf.
Finally I was served a delicious yellow curry with Australian spanner crab, hummingbird flowers, Thai samphire, and tumeric. I was also served rice to mix it.
The dessert was a trio of palm sugar ice cream, coconut ice cream, and Thai coffee sorbet.
And finally a chocolate treat: walnut chocolate filled with orange and thailam.
The check
After tax, service charge, and one bottle of water, I spent 4,167 THB (135 USD). I must say that it was a massive tasting menu. Not the usual tiny bites. Given the quality of the dishes, I was extremely happy about the meal and I am ok with price point. It would just be advisable for them to also have a lighter tasting menu, at least for lunch!
Where in Bangkok: Gaysorn Village, 3rd floor, 999 Phloen Chit Rd, Khwaeng Lumphini, Khet Pathum Wan, Krung Thep Maha Nakhon 10330, Thailand. Website: https://www.pastebangkok.com/
I was passing through Bangkok in August 2019 and I was able to book a seat at Gaggan, the iconic restaurant that for many years topped the Asia’s 50 Best restaurant list (to slide to number 2 in 2019). What prompted me to try the venue was my experience with Goh in Fukuoka: apparently Gaggan (the chef) will close his Bangkok restaurant by the end of the year and relocate in Fukuoka starting a collaboration with Goh. This was Gaggan’s last menu and, according to the them, the most challenging to date. Here’s how it went.
UPDATE: The restaurant ended operations on 24 August 2019 earlier than expected, not without some drama. Future plans are still unclear.
The visit
Booking took some back and forth via email. They wanted me to prepay via a bank transfer (no way!). We settled eventually for a Paypal payment.
They have two turns per night, one at 5.30pm and one at 9.30pm. I was offered the second turn that worked very well with my schedule.
A bit early, at 9.10pm, I was the first to be accommodated in the dining room, friendly nicknamed the Lab. It was a true chef’s table experience with all the diners sitting around a horseshoe-shaped counter circling the open kitchen. All 14 seats were taken, but a couple disappeared maybe preferring the privacy of a private room. We were asked our nationality (I overheard some Italians, Spanish, and Americans, definitely a crowd made of travelers) and presented the wine options by a flamboyant sommelier (I had to kill his spirit by only asking water; surprisingly they did not have a non-alcoholic pairing).
Gaggan was not there and the head chef was a young professional from Costa Rica. He did most of the interaction with the guests and opened the dinner with a short oration about Gaggan’s philosophy centered around perception and seasonality. He also indicated that we were about to experience the last iteration of their menu in Bangkok as the restaurant was about to shut down (but he did not mention the future projects) and that this was the most challenging menu to date. Behind the kitchen there was a team of half dozen young chefs from all over the world. Someone mentioned that over 20 nationalities were represented in the kitchen staff, sometimes hired just through emails. Gaggan was certainly a big school for many young chefs. At this point it was 9.50pm and we had yet to start with the food.
The menu was made only with emojis. This was actually a clever idea catering to an international audience. In the past they had tried other innovative approaches such as using poems, but this turned out to be the sleeker. I will try to incorporate the emoji for each dish (it may or may not be visualized depending on your system. To be very precise, the menu used the Apple emojis, while in this page you will see visualized the official ones from Unicode).
Once the food started to come, it was very well timed and there was no wasted time. We received our checks at 10 minutes after Midnight. It was “just” a little over 2 hours for 25 dishes.
1. 🏺 We started with what in another restaurant would be called a welcome drink (here summer pitcher): it was a mocktail based on seasonal fruits, lemon juice, and mint infusion. It had a refreshing taste with small bits of fruit pulp.
2. 💥 The next dish was a fixture on Gaggan’s menus called yogurt explosion. It was a sort of molecular lassi to be eaten in one bite from the spoon.
3. 👅 The third opening dish highlighted the attempt to play with perception and with the guests. From what I understand it was another fixture on the menu, with the content of the plate changing but the way to eat it remaining the same: licking it up. It was funny to see 12 grown up men and women licking the plate. A gentlemen did a particularly good job and was praised with an applause as the winner of the context for the cleanest plate (I guess his wife must be a happy woman). Meantime, loud music was underscoring our deeds. Music tended to be too loud for my taste during the dinner. There were four pastes on the plate with tomato, some berry, something I could not identify (the green), and mango flavors. Appropriately, Lick It Up by the Kiss was used as a soundtrack for this segment.
4. 🥚 Starting with this dish, the appetizers were inspired by various Indian regions, highlighting the roots of the cuisine (Gaggan is from India). The first dish in this series was called Chili nest and had a quail egg resting on a nest of fried noodles. It was inspired by the panipuri from UP/Bihar and the egg was filled with flavored water.
5. ❄️ The next dish called khandvi snow was inspired by khandvi, a savory snack in Maharashtrian as well as in Gujarati cuisines of India. It was a cold appetizer based on a yellow fried curry that is one of the key ingredients in Gaggan’s kitchen. It was very fresh.
6. 🌾 Then, we had a kachori (a type of Indian fried dumplings) topped with mashed peas.
7. 🍪 The journey across India continued with a cookie inspired by Kolkata Jhalmuri, a type of street snack made using puffed rice. We were told that this was a childhood favorite for Gaggan. Our cookie was flour-less with some sort of marmalade in the middle. I would have called it an Indian macaroon.
8. 🥔 This series of dishes was ended by a special aloo bonda, an Indian fritter that can be found with different fillings. Ours was pitch black, thanks to a homemade batter, as a homage to the use of charcoal by street vendors. It was filled mainly with yellow curry.
These initial snacks were meant to display the Indian roots of the restaurant. The plates came together to form a silhouette of India. I must admit that I liked this gimmick, it was very clever and gave a sense of structure to this part of the meal.
9. 🧠 With the new dish, we were back to test our perceptions. We were offered a blindfold and we were given the next dish on our hand while blindfolded. It was something gummy, tender, a bit spicy.
After taking off the blindfold, all it was left of the dish was a skull.
Apparently, we just had eaten a brain made with tumeric, tofu, and peppers. The “brain” was shown to us after the fact. It was an interesting commentary about the role of our brain in determining perception, I guess.
10. 🍄 The new dish was called fake truffle and came in the form of a dim sum dish. It was not said, but clearly the buns were meant to replicate the famous Hong Kong pineapple buns (that is a fake pineapple by the way). The filling was foie gras and a hint of truffle (I think).
11. 🍅 Next was a “tomato sundae”. The main ingredient was salmon roe squeezed in a roll made of pastry. Another nice refreshing bite.
12 🌽 The dinner continued with what the chef defined a “love letter to fast food”. It was a fried corn dog filled with foie gras.
13. 🍊 The next dish was a snack where the shell was made with orange candy. Inside there was a piece of smoked eel.
14. 🤤 The drooling face was quite a fitting for the next dish called “uni and onion orgasm”. It was probably my favorite dish of the evening. It consisted of a handmade Monaka base filled with onion ice cream and topped by uni. The onion was not just any onion, but onion from Awaji island in Japan (we were informed that they cost 10USD a pop). The union of the flavors was perfect.
15. 🍣 The next dish was a tribute to sushi. It was a superb piece of fatty tuna on an original base of nori (seaweed), rice, and dashi. The base was a bit too hard for my taste, but the tuna, which was blowtorched, was phenomenal. No soy sauce, but only citrus and salt.
16. 🌱 We then had an interesting mushroom soup that was poured on a tea-infused egg custard on the bottom.
17. 🦐 The next dish brought us to Goa, an Indian state whose cuisine has been influenced by the Portuguese. We had a big prawn inspired by the Prawn Balchão, that is a spicy shrimp based masala pickle in Goa. Interestingly enough, this was the first “main” dish (or “protein rich dish” as the chef put it). And it was dish number 17!
18. 🍜 The second main was a dish of curry noodles. But not the Thai type. This was a kind of idiyappam (string hoppers) with vindaloo sauce. The idiyappams are steamed Indian noodles. Again, it was a dish popular in Goa. I felt that the noodles were stuck together, the curry was great.
19. 💨 Then we had a lamb chop with Indian spices. Man, this was a delicious lamb chop, I would have eaten many… The official name of the dish was “A hater called it as a fart…”. Apparently 15 year ago or so, Gaggan got a bad review for this dish and it was kept on the menu with the idea to make it perfect (or maybe it was already perfect…). This dish was a subtle commentary about the tricky relation between chefs and reviewers.
20. 🦀 The crab dish was made with dashi stock from a fried crab shell, sesame paste (to me, reminding the crab roe) and a couple of microscopic crab pieces. Nice flavor, but the dish left me unsatisfied.
21. 🔥 The next dish was much more satisfying. It was a kind of fish paturi, where the fish was a piece of prized kinmedai from Japan. It was cooked using blowtorches wrapped in banana leaves. The chefs worked at the rhythm of heavy metal music.
22. 🍈 The 22nd dish opened the dessert streak. The first dessert was called “pebbles in the water”. We were challenged to find the edible pebble in the mix (it was, of course, the white one on top). The stone was filled with melon flavored water.
23 🥭 Time for more games with the next dessert: a mango shake. The trick was that the shake was presented in a feeding bottle. We all sucked it up.
24. 🌳 The second last dessert was a beautiful bonsai standing on a jasmine tea mousse. Bonsai are mainly Japanese and Japanese music was playing. But jasmine tea is Chinese. And this was by design.
25. 🕹️ Final dish was a tribute to a popular culture icon: Pac-Man. Eating the eating-video-game character was funny enough. Pac-Man was I believe yuzu, the mini-ghost was chocolate and then there was a raspberry ball. Pac-Man Fever song was playing in the background.
Before closing there was an additional dish for people with birthdays and for couples. Too bad if you were there as a single.
At the end they were also supposed to handout a celebratory t-shirt, but for some reason they forgot.
The check
Cost? The total cost for the experience after taxes was 9,816 THB (or 318 USD). No charge for still water (and non alcoholic drinks were reasonably priced, but I did not have any). There were 400 THB that I paid to cover Paypal charges not shown on the check.
Was it worth it? I will use two emojis: 🤯 😦.
The first emoji is the exploding head. Yes, it was a mind-blowing experience. So much creativity and twists. They challenged the diners, but in an acceptable way. It was fun and the food was excellent.
The second emoji is the frowning face with open mouth. Because here and there I also got the impression that the ratio between food and showmanship was skewed too much toward the latter.
On balance, I think it was a worthwhile experience, I do not regret the final check and I enjoyed the creativity in both the dishes and their presentation.
PS: Speaking of emojis, did they really make a movie about them? That’s mind-blowing.
Where in Bangkok: 68/1 Soi Langsuan Ploenchit Road Lumpini, Bangkok 10330 Website: http://eatatgaggan.com. Closed.
The Shanghai Michelin Guide Scramble continued and I visited with two friends one of the two vegetarians restaurants listed in the 2019 edition of the Guide with one star: Fu he Hui (I already had visited the other).
Fu He Hui is part of the Fu Group that runs three other restaurants in the same Changning District: Fu 1015, Fu 1039 and Fu 1088 (the number coming from the address).
The restaurant is located in three-storey town house on Yuyuan road in a street dotted by trees (and coffee shops) in the typical fashion of the former French Concession. The ground floor hosts the reception and cashier, while each floor above has both private dining rooms and a common area.
I made my reservation through Chope where only bookings for 2 or more people where accepted. Given the large location, I think you can find a table even without a reservation most of the times (but do not quote me on this).
Above pictured an example of seating in the common dining area on the second floor.
We were greeted by an English-speaking waitress that explained us the basics: the restaurant only offers set menus (she did not specify this, but I believe the same set menu must be ordered for all guests sitting at the same table). She also removed from the room a shopping bag that I had because she spotted inside something that could contain meat (no meat allowed in the dining room apparently).
We chose the introductory menu for 580 RMB (net). They had two chef recommended menus for 780 and 880 RMB (with the possibility to add a tea pairing for an additional 288 RMB; the tea pairing was not available for the 580 RMB menu). In the past they also had a 300 RMB (or so) menu that is no longer offered.
We also ordered a pot of tea that was non cheap.
The initial amouse bouche selection included some salty crisps shaped as maple leaves (hidden among real leaves that we were recommended not to eat), some crackers with egg plant puree, and a beetroot roll with a chickpea filling. The latter appetizer was really good and could have been a stand-alone dish.
The first dish of the menu was avocado mixed with mango and tomatoes in a nori (seaweed) waffle cone. The taste of truffle oil used to amalgamate the ingredients was very clear.
We all enjoyed the next dish: lotus fungus with some baby corn and clack medlar with a mushroom based broth that came in its own bottle. The mushroom flavor of the broth was unmistakable.
Next, we got two bites of eggplant filled with crunchy lotus root, sprinkled with sesame in teriyaki sauce, and some gorgon fruit (an aquatic plant actually).
The fourth dish was a combination of white and purple yam paste (yin and yang?) surmounted by termite mushrooms (I guess a type of termitomyces) in a housemade soy sauce. I did not know the yam could be so good.
Then we got another type of fungus: morels on a melon squash made with Jiang Bing melon (a Chinese variety).
The sixth dish was a fairly conventional carrot puree (I could not identify the flavor of the potato and bamboo shoots indicated in the menu) made more interesting by the addition of balsamic vinegar pearls. The pearls were really powerful and mixed in the puree conferred an interesting counterbalance.
The second last dish was called a “spring pancake”: on a nori base with a line of soy paste there was cocumber, crisp tofu skin and a bai ling mushroom. We were instructed to roll the seaweed and eat it with our hands.
The last dish was a green bean dessert with green tea and mint oil. It was served chilled and I could not expect that green peas could be such a tasty base for a dessert. It came with a mini mooncake filled with bean paste.
Some extra sweet treat: walnut cakes (right), panna cotta in transparent edible paper (homage to White Rabbit candies), and sweet chocolate balls.
The check
The set menu was 580 RMB per person, but after adding the tea pot (and the wet towels! I cannot believe that they charged the wet towels) the individual cost per person rose to 681 RMB, basically 100 USD.
The 580 RMB menu is very similar to the previous 380 RMB menu offered before the Michelin Guide’s mention (and for a while after), so it looks that they decided to raise their price point over the past year.
The comparison with the other Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant in Shanghai, Wujie, seems mandatory: I found the same level of quality and creativity in the Wujie’s introductory tasting menu, at a more affordable price, in a more casual environment with staff non speaking English (but super friendly). Wujie also used some cheese, Fu He Hui seems to be strictly vegan.
I and my friends truly enjoyed the experience. Apart from being overcharged for the tea, the service, the creativity and quality of the food was excellent. Even more interesting dishes can be found in the higher price set menus that I might try one day.
Where in Shanghai: 1037 Yuyuan Lu In Chinese: 愚园路1037号 Nearest metro station: Jiangsu Road Station (line 2), exit 6 or 4 (if you are adventurous, the 20 bus from the Bund stops nearby as well).
Was it a fine dining event? Or was it a movie? Or an ASMR experience? Or an artistic performance? A dinner at Ultraviolet by Paul Pairet is all of this and more. It is difficult to label Ultraviolet because Paul Pairet created a new genre by fusing innovative food and multi-sensory cues.
Ultraviolet is the only triple-starred restaurant in the 2018 and 2019 Shanghai edition of the Michelin Guide (oddly it had only two stars in the 2017 inaugural Shanghai edition). Three stars, in the Guide’s jargon, mean “exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey”. Is Ultraviolet worth a special journey? Absolutely. If you were to travel to Shanghai just for this, it would make perfect sense.
I have dined at Ultraviolet in December 2018 as part of the ongoing Shanghai Michelin Guide scramble, and I have given a lot of thought on how to put together this write-up. Initially I thought to provide a very detailed account of the experience, but I will not do that. It would be like writing a review full of spoilers. Rather, I will focus on the dishes and give a general idea of what I experienced.
The visit
I had been eyeing the Ultraviolet calendar since early 2017… it took me a while before I could find an available slot in a day fitting my schedule. The website worked well and I was able to make my reservation and pay the 50% deposit.
Ultraviolet only seats 10 diners per evening from Tuesday to Saturday and spots at the table are booked quickly.
Since my booking, I was contacted by email a couple of times to confirm the menu and to be reminded the time for the meeting. At the time of my booking, Ultraviolet was sporting 3 multi-course menus, mine was B (the second in chronological order to be introduced… the first one is A and the latest one is C). Menus come with drink pairings, including an option for a non-alcoholic pairing that I chose
The meeting point for the guests is the other Pairet’s restaurant in Shanghai, Mr and Ms Bund. The exact address of the dining room is a well-kept secret and I will not disclose it. Before leaving, the two hosts (Ms Kim and Mr Colin) briefed the group both in English and Chinese.
By 7pm our group was on the mini-bus heading to the secret dining room and by 7.30 we were seated. Not only the address is secret, but to step into the dining room a secret door had to be revealed.
I will say upfront that the pictures that I will include in this write-up do not do justice to the experience.
By the time the first dish was served, the tone of the evening became clear: every second of the dinner was perfectly choreographed in terms of lights, sounds, music, movements by the staff, images projected on the walls and the table. And everything had the quality of a high value movie production: it was not a flimsy video projector; every image and sequence had been meticulously edited to seamlessly fuse with the surroundings.
The first dish, pictured above, was made of bits of pomelo and grapefruit fused together by using dry ice or some similar component: the fruit was immersed in the cooling agent in front of the table and the dish was literally created on the spot. I must confess that I do not crazy about the outcome of this process, but the creativity and the showmanship was mind-blowing.
The next two dishes were inspired by Pairet’s early years in France where, like in many Southern European countries, children were entitled an afternoon snack before dinner. Specifically, the dishes were inspired by yogurt and a chocolate tartine (but with foie gras).
Next, the scene moved in a busy fish market with some seafood dishes. The first was a delicious oyster with caviar, pepper and lemon, then a dish based on crab and finally an homage to France and Japan fusion: a piece of tuna steak and deep fried whitebait. For all the dishes we received instructions on how to eat them to taste them better; usually, the suggestion was to eat all the ingredients together.
Then we had a slice of meunière truffle bread. The dish is also available from Mr and Ms Bund and is one of my favorite dishes in Shanghai. It is a slice of toasted bread soaked in meunière sauce, a very traditional French sauce made of brown butter, chopped parsley, and lemon (usually used for the sole fish). Then the bread is covered with truffle flakes. However, there was a twist. The bread was served under a glass cover containing some cigar smoke. The cigar odor was distinctive and added to the tasting experience of this great dish. Around us the images of a foggy forest completed the experience (I swear I could smell the fog… not sure if something was released in the air or if the sensory component was just so good to activate some memories of this kind of environment).
Then we were served a delicious egg with truffle and taleggio.
The last dish before the break was clearly designed to play with the audience. We were asked to prepare our own noodles using a set of surgical-like instruments. The noodles were made of coconut paste and obtaining them was part of the fun of this dish.
At this point we were invited outside the dining room for a break. Needless to say, even during the break something happened…
Upon our re-entering the main dining room, we found that the table and the imagery had been reset to look like a meadow ready for a pic nic. We were presented the next dishes including cod, chicken and veal.
We were given a chance to look at the main ingredients of the next dishes before they were finalized in the kitchen. They were presented with the right theatrics and they were not just cod, chicken, and veal, but cod cooked with a jelly cover, chicken in a jar with aromas, and “beggar’s veal” cooked in a clay container full of herbs.
The final dishes were the cod with rice and condiments; a piece of chicken with foie gras; and a glorious piece of veal with sauces. These were substantial dishes.
Next was a very creative dish called “mozza and again”: mozzarella with condiments in two seemingly identical dishes. I will not disclose more, but this dish was clearly meant to engage not only with the palate but also with the brain of the guests.
The truffle bread was presented again, this time in a “sweet” version with peanut butter. I prefer the original one, but it was a nice variation.
At this point the dinner was starting to come to an end. The last dish on the menu was a “Montblanc snowball” dominated by a scoop of Yakult ice cream. It came with orange blossom water with a polar bear on an ice cube.
But no, actually the dinner was not finished yet… there was a “coda”: we were invited to have an American breakfast! With eggs, bread, frozen passion fruit and more.
By this time I could see I was full… I enjoyed every single dish throughout the dinner and, even if I am not a chef, I could appreciate the sophisticated techniques used to prepare the dishes in which not the slightest detail was overlooked.
I also appreciated the non-alcoholic pairings that came in the form of various delicate infusions. But of course, the food was only one component of a sophisticated multimedia performance where the guests were both users and actors.
Before leaving, a final coup the theater was the opportunity to meet the kitchen staff and Paul Pairet in person. It was nice to have a chance to interact with the staff because all the staff showed an incredible degree of professionalism. In the kitchen Paired welcomed us with a final delight and some champagne. Time to celebrate.
At the very end we were asked to pay the check and the shuttle bus brought (part of) the group back to the Bund (others chose to take a cab).
We were back by 11.45. Overall, the dinner lasted around 4 hours. I cannot say that I was bored for a single instant. Every second there was something happening absorbing my attention and filling my senses.
The check
Dining at Ultraviolet cost me 4,000 RMB (around 580 USD). This is the price for Tuesdays and Wednesdays. the other days usually cost 6,000 (with a more prestigious wine pairing). They also have some special evenings priced 8,888 or 10,000 RMB.
Clearly, at this price level it not just about the food. The dishes are masterpieces and the ingredients are top-shelf, but you pay for the whole experience and for being part of a unique performance. Is it worth? Personally I think so, especially if you consider that in China you could easily end up spending that sum of money for some lobster and abalone. The creative investment behind the performance in my opinion justifies the price point.
As I wrote at the beginning, Pairet created a new genre and enriched Shanghai’s food scene with an unique experience that is well worth the trip.
