In early May, the Sardinian summer season is slowly kicking off. The atmosphere’s halcyon, the sky cerulean, the waters clear and flowers exploding with colour everywhere you look, yet the tourist hordes have yet to land. It’s paradise. One typically fine morning, Monsieur and I drove to Porto Rotondo, a village with impressive marina just south of the…
Category: Restaurants – let’s eat chic
Restaurant reviews, recommendations, eating out
Certa, Paris – Where It’s Colder on the Inside
Paris on 27th December last was cold. Bitterly cold. It was so horribly cold that I figured Jack Frost was out and about, only this time on on steroids. In spite of coats and scarves and gloves with thermal lining it was too cold to venture across town in search of an evening meal; on this, Monsieur and I were agreed. Any sort…
Riverside Terrace, Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Bangkok
Bangkok is a city of the river that dissects it: the Chao Praya River, or River of Kings, is the main route for water traffic of all types imaginable, from ferries zipping commuters from bank to bank, to barges laden with cargo and the plentiful longtails a.k.a. water taxis. In many respects this river embodies the spirit of Bangkok, feeding it,…
Pho Lights My Fire
If you’re Vietnamese and you don’t like Pho, there’s definitely something wrong with your genetic make up. Pronounced ‘FUH’, pho is Vietnam’s national dish and the thought of that single syllable makes my stomach grumble with longing. Pho’s concept is simple: make a fully-balanced meal fit into a single bowl. The main components are rice noodles, broth and…
McDonald’s, France: Venez comme vous etes!
At the end of the summer, Monsieur and I were in Cap Ferret when we spotted a poster for the new McDonald’s France ad campaign, called Venez comme vous êtes, or ‘Come as you are’. It showed a shrouded figure in a death mask, like those seen in SCREAM, sitting down to eat a Happy Meal (or…
Tasca da Se, Lisbon
Exploring Lisbon in the rain didn’t dampen our spirits, but unless we wanted to get well and truly squelchy, Monsieur and I were going to have to stop and dry off. So far that day, we’d smacked our lips after wonderfully oozy custard pastries with breakfast, had ventured onto one of the city’s bright yellow funiculars, explored the Castello,…
O Visconde – Funchal, Madeira
Last November, when London was cold and grey, Monsieur and I sunned ourselves at lunch in Funchal, Madeira. It was warm enough to take an outdoor table at O Visconde Restaurante, a complete find of an eatery, tucked away down a little alley near the centre of town but far from the cruise ship crowds. There…
Dining Success at Borgnefesse!
The Blind-in-one-eye Bum is an interesting name for a food establishment, and that’s the rough English translation for a Saint Malo restaurant named Borgnefesse. Borgne means blind in one eye (how efficient of the French to have one word for this affliction instead of four in English) and fesse means bum, buttock or bottom, whichever…
Moules on Market Day – Honfleur
I can’t say I really knew much about Normandy until recently. Admittedly, the closest I’d come to getting to know the place would be waving at it from moving vehicles or watching Band of Brothers. So how much Norman knowledge did my grey matter actually hold? Astonishingly little: Normandy is a place in France with English weather and lots and lots of…
The Price of Eggs at Mont Saint-Michel
Ever since I first set eyes on an image of Mont Saint Michel in a school French textbook I’ve dreamed of visiting the famed island abbey and recently that dream came true. At last Monsieur and I were able to see Mont Saint Michel for ourselves, but that experience is a whole different blog post….
California Heaving
Something wasn’t right but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Monsieur and I were sitting in a beautiful dining room that I’d been dying to visit, surrounded by people who, like us, fully appreciate their food. We had a romantic table in a quiet corner and we’d just started the second of four tasting…
A Lavish Laurel Court Breakfast Buffet
Warning: the reading of the following post may cause excessive salivation. Prepare to dribble. Might be an idea to grab a cuppa, too, cos it’s longish… But you know what I’m like when we talk food, right? The lobby at The Fairmont. At long last Monsieur and I could begin our much-needed honeymoon in earnest….
Epicurienne 