Tag Archives: epicurean

The Best Restaurants in Cannes

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When the glitterati descend on Cannes for, perhaps, the most glamorous film festival on earth, the city’s restaurants will also be kicking into high gear as they prepare to feed the world’s biggest stars. With 316 brasseries, wine bars, and fine dining restaurants dotted throughout the city, visitors can choose between eateries that serve a global mix of fare from fresh sea urchin to sushi, African antelope to Australian ostrich and traditionally French Béarnaise sauces to harissa.

From Michelin-starred eateries to the best places for stargazing, here’s a selection of some of the hottest addresses in Cannes, film festival and otherwise:

La Palme d’Or-Hotel Martinez
73 Blvd de la Croisette
+ 33 4 92 98 74 14

This contemporary French restaurant makes an appearance on nearly every restaurant guide list for boasting two Michelin stars and a 17/20 rating in the GaultMillau guide. Menu items include dishes like grilled red mullet seasoned with coral, garlic and lime for €52, and lobster thermidor served with potatoes, morel mushrooms steamed in ‘vin jaune,’ for €96.

Le Park 45
45 Blvd de la Croisette
+33 4 93 38 15 45

Described as a traditional Mediterranean restaurant with contemporary influences, this one Michelin-starred eatery a few doors down from La Palme d’Or has become another favorite among locals and celebrities alike. The menus change every three weeks and are inspired by local, seasonal ingredients. Multi-course fixed menu range from €50€ to €110. A sample fish dish includes white bream roasted on the skin with asparagus, ricotta gnocchi and Serrano ham juices.

Le Restaurant Arménien
82 Blvd de la Croisette
+33 4 93 94 00 58

Selected by the Michelin guide for its good value eats, Le Restaurant Arménien is the only restaurant of its kind in Cannes. Dishes are spiked with traditional Armenian spices like cumin, paprika, peppers, garlic, onions, mint and parsley. A three-course meal is €47.

Tetou
8 Avenue Frères Roustan, Le Golfe Juan
+33 7 93 63 71 16

Tetou enjoys a reputation as one of the most famous seafood restaurants along the Côte d’Azur not only for its legendary bouillabaisse but for attracting a bevy of celebrities. Last year, the restaurant became ground zero for the paparazzi when Hollywood A-list couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt paid a visit during the film festival. Other celebrity sightings: Francis Ford Coppola, Tilda Swinton, Diane Kruger and Mick Jagger.

Le Moulin de Mougins
Notre Dame de Vie – 06250 Mougins
+33 4 93 75 78 24

A restaurant that invites guests to dine in their picturesque, outdoor garden, Le Moulin de Mougins serves traditional Provençal cuisine with an occasional Asian twist in a 16th century mill. Prix fixe menus range from 80 to €100 and include dishes like Brittany lobster fricassée, Sauternes and pink pepper sauce, and cuttlefish in cannelloni and vialone nano ink rice. Star sightings here include Sharon Stone, Nathalie Portman and Elton John.


Volcano Tours, Iceland

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Volcano-loving tourists are spoiled for choice in Iceland, a country with over 100 volcanic mountains to admire, but few would relish the opportunity climb inside — until now that is.

This week, tour company Discover the World launched a new tour which will take visitors to the country inside a volcano for the first time, all the way to the ground floor of the magma chamber.

It should be noted that the volcano in question, Thrihnukagigur, has been dormant for 4,000 years and so the trip isn’t quite as daring as it sounds, but the “Up Close and Personal Volcano Adventure” is likely to attract plenty of fans nonetheless.

Using a specially-constructed cable car, visitors descend past the bright walls of the inside of the volcano and into the magma chamber, spending an hour on the bottom before being winched back up again.

The rest of the tour involves a hike over the lava fields to get to the volcano itself, along with a volcano safari on board four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Discover the World has made something of a name for itself when it comes to volcano tourism — it has even set up a “Volcano Hotline” that allows volcano tourists to register their interest and receive a call with a proposed travel package whenever one of Iceland’s volcanoes blows its top.

It may be a niche service, but it’s earned Discover the World plenty of customers and a call sheet of over 200 people, desperate for a slice of the volcano action.

“Volcano Tourism has really taken off in the last few years and we have seen a huge increase in demand, especially for visits to Iceland following the news exposure the destination received after the 2010 eruptions,” Discover the World’s Georgina Hancock said.

Other agencies, including Icelandic airlines, reported a similar boost in business following the global exposure afforded the country by Eyjaffjollajokull — perhaps because it awakened some dormant knowledge that most of us have but had hitherto forgotten.

“I believe that part of the fascination of volcanoes harks back to our school days, where they were a major feature in our geography syllabus and still hold an almost ‘mystical’ interest to many of us,” said Hancock.

“So, when Iceland hit the news it spurred many on to visit and find out more firsthand.”


Sotheby’s champagne

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Pop! Sotheby’s has launched its own private-label champagne, the first from an auction house, with a bottle costing $29.99 and a magnum $69.95.

The bubbly is being produced by sixth-generation French champagne house R & L Legras, which supplies many Michelin-starred restaurants such as Guy Savoy, La Tour d’Argent and Ledoyen.

The in-house brand will also be served at Sotheby’s events around the world including New York, London, and Hong Kong.

The champagne is made from 100 percent chardonnay grapes grown in the Grand Cru vineyards of Chouilly and is described as light and fresh.

Bottles are available for sale online and in the company’s retail store in New York.


The World’s Most Expensive Club Sandwich is in Paris

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Paris may be known as the most romantic city in the world, but it’s also the most expensive place to buy a club sandwich — making it the priciest travel destination on the globe.

That’s the conclusion of online accommodation booking site Hotels.com which surveyed 750 hotels in three to five star categories across 26 countries and price-checked a standard club sandwich — a staple on nearly every hotel menu — against one another.

Dubbed the Club Sandwich Index or CSI, a triple-decker sandwich in Paris averages $33.10, followed by Geneva and Oslo, where ordering the all-American chicken, bacon, lettuce and mayonnaise club will set you back on average $32.56 and $30.50 respectively. Like The Economist’s Big Mac Index which uses the worldwide prices of McDonald’s iconic sandwich to gauge the purchasing power parity between two currencies, Hotels.com says it created the CSI to help serve as a barometer of travel costs for globetrotters.

New Delhi sells the cheapest club sandwich at $9.57, while Berlin and Brasilia landed in the middle at $17.77.

Meanwhile, a club sandwich at a Tokyo hotel will set you back $27.65; in Hong Kong it will cost US$18.35; in London $18.71 and Toronto $16.05.

Said Hotels.com spokesperson Alison Couper in a statement: “Paris may well be the gastronomic capital of the world but at an average $33.10, per club, travellers may be better off sticking to a Croque-Monsieur.”


Brad Pitt to star in The Billionaire’s Vinegar

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Brad Pitt has been tapped to star in a movie based on the controversial book The Billionaire’s Vinegar based on the true story centred around a bottle of 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux, purportedly owned by Thomas Jefferson.

The movie, which is slated to hit theatres this year, is produced by Will Smith who bought the rights to the book written by Benjamin Wallace.

Based on a true story, the book traces the journey of the fabled Jefferson Bordeaux that sold for US$156,000 (RM477,360) at an auction and was later called out as a fake. The bottle continues to be at the centre of a legal case.

According to thedrinksbusinessk.com, billionaire William Koch asked a US appeals court this month to revive the lawsuit against auction house Christie’s for assisting in the sale of fake bottles that were said to belong to Thomas Jefferson.

The story, meanwhile, follows the journey of this mythical bottle from Paris, Monticello, to Zurich and Munich, and is interspersed with grand intrigue, fraud and suspense in the exclusive world of the absurdly rich.

Pitt’s involvement in a movie about wine shouldn’t come as a surprise given his personal interest in winemaking. The home he shares with partner Angelina Jolie in the South of France, Chateau Miraval, also comes with a winery that produces white, red and rosé wines.

Not since the Oscar-winning 2004 movie Sideways, about Pinot Noir, has a movie based on wine generated cinematic buzz.

No release date for The Billionaire’s Vinegar has been announced.


James Beard Foundation Names San Francisco Restaurant ‘Boulevard’ The Best in the US

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San Francisco restaurant Boulevard, set in a historic building and designed in the manner of France’s Belle Epoque, has been named the best in the US.

At the James Beard Foundation Awards, an event known within the hospitality industry as the ‘Oscars’ of the food world, chef Nancy Oakes’s eatery was named Outstanding Restaurant Monday night, beating fellow nominees like Blue Hill and Balthazar, both of New York; Highlands Bar and Grill in Birmingham, Alabama; and Vetri in Philadelphia.

Since opening in 1993, Boulevard restaurant, housed in the only structure to have survived the devastating 1906 earthquake that destroyed major portions of San Francisco, has become a local institution.

The menu at Boulevard is described as an “an expression of American regional flavors with a French influenced style.”

Menu items include wood oven roasted Angus filet mignon with fingerling potatoes, smoked red onion marmalade, broccoli di Ciccio, onion rings and sherry caramelized cipollini, sauce vert, green peppercorn beef jus, VSOP butter with foie gras for $42 (32 euros).

After eight consecutive nominations in this category, Boulevard restaurant clinched the award this year which goes to a restaurant that serves as a national standard-bearer for consistent quality and excellence in food, atmosphere, and service for the last 10 years or more.


Graffiti Café in Bulgaria by Studio MODE

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Taking the design of a café to another level is what the creative team at Studio MODE struggled to achieve when developing the original Graffiti Cafe in Varna, Bulgaria.

The Gallery of Modern Art, situated above the café, was the starting point for the design. The discrepancy between this gathering place and the cultural area above had to be brought to a minimum. As a consequence, the designers built a continuous space and enriched it with sculptural elements made of wood: “We created an identical and unique concept that generalizes and masters the space while satisfying all technological and functional requirements. The result is trendy interior with sufficient dose of artistry as intentionally wanted reference to the Gallery of Modern Art situated on the next level of the building“.

Structurally, the café is divided into two areas: the first was incorporated into the exterior, with outdoor views, while the rear zone is emphasized by a special floor and roof design.


El Bulli’s Ferran Adrià sued

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Powered by Guardian.co.ukThis article titled “El Bulli chef sued over allegations of cheating former partner” was written by Giles Tremlett in Madrid, for The Guardian on Monday 7th May 2012 17.49 UTC

One of the world’s most celebrated chefs, Spaniard Ferran Adrià, is to appear in court over allegations that he cheated a former partner out of his proper share in the legendary El Bulli restaurant.

The heirs of Miquel Horta, a former financial backer and shareholder in El Bulli, claim that the chef took advantage of their father’s frail mental health to con him into selling his share in the business for a knockdown rate, according to Spain’s Cadena SER radio station.

Horta’s children say that their father’s financing of a new, bigger kitchen at the beachside restaurant outside the north-eastern town of Roses was key to El Bulli’s later success.

Horta received 20% of the business in return for putting in the money to rebuild and expand the kitchens in the early 1990s.

In 2005, Adrià and his business partner Juli Soler bought out Horta – who had originally made his money from making eau de cologne. They reportedly paid Horta, who has since died, €1m for the 20% share.

Now Horta’s sons, Jofre and Sergi, claim that Adrià and Soler deliberately set an excessively low valuation for a restaurant that had become a brand name with global recognition.

They have produced an independent valuation, which reportedly priced El Bulli as nine times higher than the rate paid to their father – or some €45m altogether.

A civil court judge in Barcelona has set a trial date for November, although experts say the two sides could reach an out-of-court settlement before that.

Adrià did not respond publicly to the announcement of the trial and there was no response to messages left by the Guardian.

The Catalan chef closed El Bulli last July, ending a period of 17 years in which he and Soler turned it into the world’s most famous restaurant.

He said at the time that he had wanted to close the restaurant while it was still at its best.

El Bulli was voted Restaurant magazine’s best restaurant for five years running from 2006.

Cadena SER reported that both Adrià and Soler had decided not to comment on the Horta affair in public – though Soler was reportedly “hurt” by the allegations.

“The truth is I am not interested in polemics,” Adrià told a television interviewer last year after news of a dispute with the Horta family first became public.

“I haven’t got involved because one has to be aware that one cannot be liked by everyone, that is impossible.”

Last year, Adrià said that the restaurant barely made money. “This is like a research and development department. You shouldn’t expect it to make money,” he said.

Professor Julia Prats, an economist who carried out a case study on El Bulli for the University of Navarre’s IESE business school, told the Guardian that it worked more as a marketing tool for Adrià. “Even if it breaks even, that’s an accomplishment,” she said.

The Horta family believe that their father was “cheated by the accused, who hid from him both profits and parallel activities carried out through third companies during the time he was a partner”.

In the meantime, the Adrià family has now branched out into tapas bars in nearby Barcelona.

El Bulli is being turned into a research foundation, with architects plans already available for a new cinema-brainstorming house inside what looks like a large rock, and other buildings including an archive.

The new buildings will have to win planning approval, as El Bulli is inside the Cap de Creus natural park.

Adrià has teamed up with Spanish telecoms company Telefonica, which is the foundation’s main sponsor.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

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L’Etoile’s Tory Miller Named Best Chef Midwest

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L’Etoile, our favorite restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin (hell, it’s our favorite restaurant in the entire state of Wisconsin), has a wonder new honor — the James Beard Foundation has named Tory Miller as the “Best Chef Midwest.” This is the second time a chef from L’Etoile has taken home this award, the first begin Odessa Piper. Chef Tory is steadfast in his devotion to local produce and Wisconsin farmers. Congrats to Tory and the entire culinary team at L’Etoile and Graze.

The L’Etoile restaurant in Madison is a foodie institution. Founded by Piper in 1976, the restaurant was one of the first to “go local” with regional and seasonal dining. A few years ago, Odessa sold L’Etoile to chef Tory Miller and his sister, Traci Miller. The culinary thrills continued on the Madison Square under Tory’s direction in embracing the sustainable food movement.


The best baguette in Paris

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The title of Paris’s best baguette has, for the fifth time in six years, gone to one of the bakeries situated in the city’s 18th arrondissement. And while first-time visitors to Paris may delight in any which baguette from any which bakery, not all are created equal.

Here’s primer on how to tell a good baguette from a mediocre one, with tips collected from popular Paris food bloggers David Lebovitz, an American expat and former professional baker, Paris by Mouth and Chocolate and Zucchini.

David Lebovitz, who previously worked as a baker at Chez Panisse in California with Alice Waters, offers a slew of tips on his blog on the differences between a good and ‘crummy’ baguette. For example:

1. If you see rows of Braille-like dots on the bottom of the loaf, it’s been baked industrially – avoid at all costs

2. A good baguette should be sturdy and hold its shape when you pick it up

3. An inferior loaf will have a smooth appearance with regularly-spaced holes when sliced. It will taste ‘cottony’ and bland and will dissolve in the mouth.

4. A good baguette will have an ‘apricot-like’ aroma

5. A superior loaf will likewise have large, irregular holes inside and uneven coloration on the crust

6. The innards should be pale-ivory in color and be chewy.

7. Look for a sign that reads ‘Artisan Boulangerie’ in the bakery, indicating that the bread is baked on the premises.

8. Bakeries that have won the Grand Prix for making the best baguettes in Paris will also have signs affixed to their windows.

Clotilde Dusoulier, who writes Chocolate & Zucchini, says her favorite baguettes have a hearty crust and a developed flavor from slow fermentation.

Meanwhile, mediocre baguettes have a tougher, darker bottom crust and a softer interior texture and go stale faster.

Dusoulier makes repeated mention of her favorite neighborhood bakery, Coquelicot bakery on 24, rue des Abbesses in the 18th arrondissement, also home to this year’s winner of the best baguette in Paris, Boulangerie Mauvieux.

Meanwhile, Paris by Mouth offers a round-up of the editors’ favorite bakeries by arrondissement, as well as another post that ranks the top five baguette makers. The overall favorite? Eric Kayser, who has several outlets around the city.