Having studied Politics of developing countries at Keio University - one of the top private universities in Japan - Chef Namae came to the culinary world with critical thinking and a philosophical mind. Apart from playing rock music and wanting to become a journalist, he worked in Hokkaido, South France and The Fat Duck in the UK before finally opening his own restaurant which was destined to be special.
London's many foreign hospitality workers had to leave the UK as the restaurant industry faced intermittent shut-down policy during the initial phase of the pandemic. What's more, many were unable to return to the UK due to visa issues caused by Brexit. As a result, restaurants are generally experiencing a shortage of staff.
Taiwanese cuisine was prevalently characterised by exquisiteness around the 1930s, if you consider the many refined restaurants of the Beitou hot springs region during the Japanese rule. Admittedly, Taiwanese cuisine today is typically associated with street food and home-style cooking, and many finely crafted recipes didn’t get a chance to be passed on. To recapture the gorgeous Taiwanese cuisine of the 1930s, the Yong Feng Yu Group, investor of organic produce restaurants including Green & Safe in Shanghai, has found Mountain and Sea House as well as Master Cai Ruilang, a traditional Taiwanese cuisine inheritor who has been in the business for 30 years and once studied under Master Huang Dexing of Peng Lai Ge Restaurant, one of the four major restaurants in Taiwan during the Japanese rule. The group also sought advice from local cuisine expert Huang Wanling on a few classic Taiwanese dishes in Tainan.
The impact of covid on the UK people's life has become trivial as they can continue to live and work as usual even if they test positive. For the country's F&B industry, rising prices are not a problem for fine dining restaurants, some of which, however, have had to reduce the number of tables due to staff shortages, making it even more difficult to book at popular places.
People are already making plans to travel abroad as many Asian countries no longer require quarantine for returning travellers after October. London has always been popular with tourists and now with the devaluation of the pound and a tourism potentially boosted following the Queen's death, it could possibly become one of the most-visited destinations by then.
Situated in the north of Italy, Bologna not only houses the almost 1,000-year-old University of Bologna, but the city is also known as the food capital of Italy, and not just for pastas. You may wonder if there is still any place for Michelin restaurants in this paradise of budget-friendly meals.
It's been over three years since I last visited Reale, a celebrated restaurant situated in the remote town of Castel di Sangro nestled in the mountains of Abruzzo in central Italy. It is not a tourist town and takes about 1.5 hours driving from Naples. It is interesting that a world-famous three-starred Michelin restaurant is housed in a time-honoured 16th century monastery.
It might be a bit of a cliché, but the story started when a boy fell in love with a girl.
"I started working as a cook when I was seventeen and that was a lot of years ago. Before doing catering school, I did a technical school. But this school was not suitable for me, also because to find a girl was like finding a needle in a haystack. I was very young with my hormones totally out of control. When I went to catering school, it was a great party for me, because eighty percent were girls."
After finishing school and several experiences in high level restaurants, he attended university and had the luck to teach in a catering school to maintain his studies. He decided at that time that he didn’t want to be a professional cook because it was a very hard job and he wanted to continue studying.
Some people can walk into a room and instantly put everyone at ease, and Chef Tam is one of them. He is widely acclaimed for his solid cooking techniques as well as for his gentle, friendly personality. It is no exaggeration to say that he is the iconic figure of Macau’s culinary scene.
"Food is beautiful in the most authentic ways." Apart from the warm hospitality that I received at Xin Rong Ji Taizhou, I was deeply moved by the way restaurant staff are treated, as well as the way ingredients are handled.
Let us now once again unveil how Xin Rong Ji was born.
