Take a step back in time at Berlin’s Paris Bar. Beneath its glowing neon sign, artworks by German artist Martin Kippenberger adorn almost every surface of the bar’s interior, which was once the haunt of many A-list artists, actors and rock stars, including Madonna, Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro and Yoko Ono.
Paris Bar is also the place of the infamous 1979 Rolling Stone interview with an inebriated David Bowie and Iggy Pop, and where Iggy drunkenly rolled around in the snow outside. It serves classical French cuisine and while a visit here is accompanied by a somewhat hefty price tag, it’s still worth sitting with the locals among the bar’s rich old-world glamour, admiring the art that decorates the walls and, if you’re lucky, rubbing shoulders with a celebrity.
This Mayfair townhouse is actually an adult’s playground in disguise. Flawlessly designed, furnished and finished with an artist’s touch, Sketch offers a range of rooms for the adventurous soul, each with its own theme, bar and menu. Even the dress code is different.
One of its rooms, called The Glade, is reminiscent of a mystical forest, only it serves brunch and cocktails. The room has been decorated with a single twentieth-century French postcard printed onto hundreds of metres of paper and decoupaged to the walls. Order some Coteaux de l’Ardèche rosé and slip into this fairytale setting before moving on to one of the other rooms. We like the dreamy pink setting of the Gallery, decorated with 91 of artist David Shrigley’s works.
With 300 days of sunshine every year, Denver is a city where people like to get outside, and one of the big draw cards are its outdoor patios – they’re almost always ready to welcome visitors to enjoy their farm-to-table cuisine al fresco. Especially at historic Larimer Square, which has become the city’s premier dining and shopping destination. Victorian buildings connected by fairy lights have been converted into stylish boutiques, lounges and hyper-local, chef-driven restaurants. And most of them have a patio.
TAG Restaurant is just one of the Square’s amazing offerings. The menu, inspired by chef Troy Guard’s Hawaiian roots, is a dazzling homage to the flavours of Asia made with local ingredients. Seafood potstickers with Korean soy vinaigrette, flash-seared hamachi (yellowtail tuna) tricked out with pop rocks, and taco sushi with Hawaiian ahi, guacamole and mango salsa are just some of the dishes you can try.
The city’s other source of prime entertainment real estate comes from up high. Places like 54Thirty Rooftop, Denver’s highest open-air bar, are popular for late-afternoon sessions. Cocktails, bar snacks and stunning views of the city are all part of its charm.
Welcome to the granddaddy of Madrid eateries. With its gold-leaf interior, wine catacombs and fascinating heritage, you better believe dining at Sobrino de Botín is quite the experience. It opened in 1725 and is now the oldest continually operating restaurant in the world (at least according to the Guinness Book of Records). In the past Spanish writer María Dueñas, Graham Greene and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Ernest Hemingway – the restaurant gets a mention in both The Sun Also Rises and Death in the Afternoon – have all sat at its tables, spread across four dining rooms.
Don’t come for the spectacle or its pedigree though. Here, it’s all about the food. Whether you fancy the scrambled eggs with black sausage and potatoes or the inky baby squid served with rice, you’ll walk away satisfied. We do have one very strong recommendation for you, though: the roast suckling pig, Botín’s specialty, is the dish to order. Such is the demand, special Segovia suckling pigs are delivered to the restaurant three or four times a week. They’ve been cooking it the same way in the same wood-fired ovens for a couple of centuries now and, man, have they nailed the right way to do it. This is the sort of meal you’ll be talking about for years to come.
If you want to really know Macao, let your stomach lead the way. Just a stone’s throw from Hong Kong, Macao has a rich and varied history that reflects in its tasty food. Yes, you’ll get dim sum and stir-fried Chinese vegetables but you’ll also get a whole lot of Portuguese cuisine, thanks to a period of settlement by the Europeans from the mid-sixteenth century.
Head to Lord Stow’s Bakery, set up by Englishman Andrew Stow in 1989, to tuck into a few of the egg tarts for which the bakery is famous. Up the cobblestone streets of historic Taipa village you’ll find Antonio’s, headed by Antonio Coelho. Antonio serves up sautéed clams with garlic and white wine sauce, alongside stuffed crab and homemade Portuguese sausage. With its colourful tiles and paintings inside, you’ll have to remind yourself you’re in Asia.
There are loads of other places to eat in Taipa Village, originally a fishing hamlet that’s hung on to its heritage architecture. O Manel is in high demand, along with Litoral, much sought after for its Macanese dishes such as African chicken, cod cakes and minchi (steamed rice and fried mince meat with egg on top).
Step back into the 1960s at Old Macao’s Lung Wah Tea House, with its retro furniture and huge windows overlooking Red Market. If you want to eat like a local, small street-side eateries serve up claypot and hot-pot meals alongside barbecued skewers.
For something truly special, investigate one of the 19 Michelin-star restaurants in Macao. Dim sum (yum cha) at The 8 Restaurant(within the Grand Lisboa), Wing Lei Palace (Wynn Palace Cotai) and Wing lei (Wynn Macau) will leave you wanting more.
With Macao having been designated a UNESCO Creative City for gastronomy, this is the place to let your taste buds go wild.
His hands move quickly and expertly dipping into a large dark bowl of soft white rice. A dab of green wasabi is added before he rolls the mixture into a ball in his palm and carefully layers it with a slice of raw pink fish. With a practised flourish he presents it on the bench in front of me. I reach for my chop sticks and am told no. “Use hands. Hands are better. Old way.” I pick up the yellow tail and rice portion, slip it into my salivating mouth and groan audibly.
I’m at Sentori Sushi in Kanazawa, central Japan eating the best sushi of my life. Nine more servings follow the yellow tail down my grateful gullet: flounder, shrimp soft roe, bail shell, abalone. My chef, Kazuhisa Yoshida, is the third-generation owner of the restaurant which welcomed its first customer seven years after the war (1952). He’s been to Australia twice and speaks English slowly and thoughtfully. He tells me about the local fish market and his grandfather and his fondness for the Australian artist, Ken Done. I watch him operate his knives and carefully wrap seaweed around another delicacy. This is real Japanese sushi, similar yet so very different from the kind we know in Australia and the USA. There is no avocado, cream cheese or cooked meat and the meal has been paired with a sweet local sake. I sip, eat slowly and smile contentedly.
At the meal’s conclusion I ask Kazuhisa about the secret to great sushi. He thinks on this a while. “Hospitality,” he decides. “Fresh ingredients and good rice are needed. But hospitality and presentation make for the best sushi.” When I leave a waiter appears with my winter coat and helps me into it. Kazuhisa follows me to the door and we thank each other gratefully and sincerely. It is the Japanese way.
You hear whispers of this secret sushi restaurant online and with friends. Someone says they know someone who knows someone who has been, but you think this is just another urban legend, like when Bill Murray spontaneously walked into a random bar and started bartending.
Well, it turns out that like the Bill Murray story, the restaurant actually exists. On the tenth floor of a very random midtown Manhattan hotel you will find one of the rooms has been converted into a full scale, fine dining, four-seat sushi restaurant. Global personality Chef David Bouhadana is the master itame at the helm of this 17-course, 60-minute omakase (dishes selected by the chef).
If you can get in, expect a treat. Chef David will let you know everything about him and his process, and will do so over a flowing river of sake. The food is perfectly prepared and the city views from the balcony are sublime.
This is an experience not to be forgotten. Ever. Even if your friends don’t believe you went.
Cleanse your palate and prepare to taste the flavours of Persia by learning how to prepare an iconic Iranian feast at a local family home on this sumptuous culinary adventure.
Tachin Morgh, which translates to ‘arranged at the bottom’, is the dish you’ll be making. It’s a traditional delicacy of saffron-infused rice and tender chicken layered in a rich egg yolk and yoghurt sauce, and baked to produce a crisp bottom layer bursting with flavour. The interplay of the crust with steamed saffron rice is both beautiful and irresistible, and just one of many moments you’ll have you tastebuds titillated on this Iran Real Food Adventure with Intrepid Travel.
You’ll begin your foray into the life of an Iranian Masterchef by plunging into the markets and bazaars with your tour leader, a local from the area, who will show you how and where to source the freshest ingredients for your dish. Once you’ve collected your bounty, you’ll venture to a local home to learn about each of the necessary steps for crafting the Tachin – especially how to achieve the perfect crisp bottom layer, known as tahdig.
Once you’ve finished cooking a storm, tuck in to your homemade Tachin alongside other traditional dishes and drinks. If you can drag your thoughts from the myriad flavours exploding in your mouth, you’ll also have the opportunity to learn about the local customs and Iranian culture from your host family.
If you’ve ever lamented not being able to indulge in the odd dinner party while abroad then fret no longer: you can dine with not one, but three different families on Rarotonga’s Progressive Dinner Tour, stopping at different houses for your starter, main and dessert. From cool tiled terraces overlooking the hills to tables lined up on the front lawn of old colonial houses and spreads laid on in back gardens where the ocean laps the shore, the magical mystery tour promises a different house (and experience) each time.
While every family will showcase their own signature dishes, it’s unlikely you’ll hit the hay without sampling ika mata, a raw, white fish dish that’s marinated with coconut cream and ‘cooked’ with lemon juice; violet rounds of dense yet creamy taro; and platters full of tropical fresh fruit, perfect for cutting through Rarotonga’s balmy climes. All while listening to the mellifluous sounds of your designated drivers playing the ukulele. And as one host pointed out, the tour offers access to the heart of a Rarotonga you mightn’t have seen before: “We know you have come here to eat local food, to talk to locals. It’s not always genuine in the hotels, but we – we are genuine.”
If eating dinner in the extension of a stranger’s living room sounds unappealing then Tupuna’s might not be the restaurant for you. But if the prospect of devouring home-cooked fare with your feet in the sand lights your fire then read on.
The only independent restaurant on the island to offer fine dining, Tupuna’s is a masterclass in casual culinary decadence. The chilli lime fish – an updated take on local classic ika mata – is a house special. Chunks of lime-doused raw fish fill a coconut shell, adorned with a side of the Cooks’ ubiquitous arrowroot fries – dense, nutty shards with crisp edges and rich, buttery centres.
Fish is always the flavour of the day in this tropical archipelago, and the plump fillets of freshly grilled wahoo and tuna (the catch of the day), served with a medley of charred, caramelised and slightly bitter root vegetables, won’t disappoint.
There’s a cosy country kitchen vibe, with a colour palette of creamy yellows and cool orange, and a warm clutter of bits and pieces: pans dangle from the ceiling; paintings of idyllic seascapes line the walls, illuminated by tea lights; glasses and teapots knock shoulders on shelves next to cookbooks and a blackboard scrawled with specials.
If the portions prove too huge to handle then three-legged Soda, the resident moggy, will likely lend a helping paw.
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