Another year of amazing gastronomic discoveries has flown by. Tokyo, Kyoto, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York, Paris, Vilnius, Stockholm, Rome, Venice, London, Barcelona, Valencia, Amsterdam, Thailand, the Mediterranean… I couldn’t be more grateful in my life for being able to travel and discover the work of all these extraordinary chefs……

Nowhere in the world you can have such excellent beef as in Japan. Wagyu (which literally means “Japanese beef” ) can be so marbled and fatty that if you go for the highest grade beef you might feel as if you are eating foie gras or pure fat. (So my…

This time I’ve also revisited Miyako sushi (or Miyakozushi, 4th best sushi restaurant on the tabelog.com site) which for me is probably the favourite from all the high-end sushi-yas in Tokyo at the moment. Sugita san has this rare ability, even among the best sushi chefs, to bring out the…

Today I had an exceptional chance to shop at the Tsukiji market with Sugita Taka-aki who is one of the best sushi masters in Tokyo. I’ve written about Miyako sushi (or the correct way would be Miyakozushi) restaurant before and I do think that Sugita san art of sushi making is on the…

If you pass by this tiny Japanese restaurant in the 16th, you might not even notice it. The exterior and interior of Juan ( 144 rue de la Pompe, 75116 Paris, tel. 0147274351 ) are typically Japanese, very discrete and minimalist. When I sat down at one of the four tables…

An excellent WSJ article by Amy Ma about the trend at contemporary restaurants to give their dishes nondescript names. El Bulli famously does that, Bo Innoovation so as many other modern restaurants. While I agree with the Hong Kong blogger Peter Chang that such menus are ” really annoying”, what…

According to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, Noma is the best restaurant in the world in 2010. I love Noma and I am glad I went there last year as now it will be impossible to get a reservation! Having said that I don’t understand what Le Chateaubriand is…

Sushis in a random sushiya somewhere in Japan.. Nothing in common with this or this. Looking from a European point of view, the fish in “a random sushiya somewhere in Japan” was still better than anywhere in Europe. The rice was a disaster though. You get what you pay for…

I am jealous of all the great sushi restaurants you can find in Manhattan. In that sense, Europe is sad (I know, I am repeating myself ;)) – the fish quality is bad most of the times, the sushi masters (or those pretending to be sushi masters) don’t slice fish…

I missed my plane back to Europe, so instead of waiting at Narita for the evening flight I went back to Tokyo and had lunch at Sukiyabashi Jiro in Roppongi Hills. (The one Michelin English speaking sister restaurant of the three Michelin Sukiyabashi Jiro in Ginza. The sushi chef is…