At Koya and Koya bar (49 and 50 Frith St, London W1D 4SG, London; tel. +44 20 7434 4463) the main focus is cold or hot udon noodles and all kinds of traditional or innovative broths that can go with them (think smoked mackerel, beef shabu-shabu or mushrooms with walnuts…

L’Assiette Champenoise (40 Avenue Paul Vaillant Couturier, 51430 Tinqueux; tel. +33 3 26 84 64 64), the latest restaurant in France to receive 3 Michelin stars, is 45 min by TGV from Paris and 5 min by taxi from the central Reims train station. It’s chef Arnaud Lallement has inherited…

Each time I go to Hedone (1*) each time I feel that it’s getting better and better. I don’t know how far a chef can go in search for perfection, but Hedone’s chef Mikael Jonsson is not far from it.

This kind of bento box is available for lunch at Joël Robuchon’s Japanese restaurant Yoshi (at hotel Metropole in Monaco). The executive chef Takeo Yamazaki used to work at Robuchon in Tokyo. Oishii Yoshi!

Shake Shack in London’s Covent Garden works on the same principle as the flagship stand in Manhattan. You queue the line, get the buzzer and then wait until it rings as soon as your food is ready. Unfortunately, my experience at Shake Shack London was not much better than in…

Not your everyday dim sum at A. Wong in London, whose chef Andrew revisits and modernizes traditional regional Chinese recipes. Pork buns with a sugar coating deserve a special mentioning. (and some desserts, such as “coconut ice cream with glutinous dumpling, apple, pandan jelly and peanut cream” …) Besides the…

Eggplant caviar with raw spring vegetables at Joël Robuchon – Hôtel Metropole Monte-Carlo, in my opinion, the best Robuchon in Europe thanks to the executive chef Christophe Cussac. It’s amazing how much the quality of a restaurant will depend on an executive chef when Michelin starred “chains” like Robuchon or…

Cherry blossoms are not only viewed and admired, but also used for cooking during their blooming season in Japan. The very short and almost ephemeral life of cherry blossoms can be an embodiment of many things – changes in nature, fragility of our lives and also seasonality in cooking, for…

Out of all these most amazing steakhouses and teppanyaki restaurants in Tokyo, Dons de la Nature ( Kawai Building B1F, 1-7-6 Ginza, Chuo-ko, Tokyo; tel. 03- 3563-4129) is considered one of the best. Tokyo chef and book author Yukari Sakamoto went there recently and kindly allowed me to republish her…

When Hedone’s chef Mikael Jonsson decided to bake his own bread, he didn’t just improvise, instead, the ingredients quality-obsessed chef did his bread baking training at Alex Croquet boulangerie in Wattignies, France. Michelin has described Alex Croquet as a bread-making genius, whose approach to baking is almost scientific. (Read the full…