Last weekend we flew to New York City for a foodie getaway, a birthday gift from Siv. His idea was to take me on an Iron Chef restaurant tour, but as soon as I heard that we were going to New York, I had to pick out the places. Yeah, I am kind of a control freak when it comes to food. So instead of the iron chef tour, we went through the 2010 Michelin list and picked the places from there. Even though we didn’t really plan it like …

The title of this post is not that accurate, as we didn’t cover the entire gastronomic landscape of Italy in this trip, especially the country side. Yes, it was in the original plan, but a last minute illness caused us to cut down a few precious days from our much awaited trip to the culinary capital of the world. So this post is really about our culinary experiences in Rome and Venice; thankfully these are two cities with some rich and diverse cuisines to offer, more than enough to fill …

Last time we had dinner at Feenie’s in Vancouver, chef Robert Feenie was already out of there. I guess it was just a matter of time before they changed the name of the place. After Robert Feenie left, famous New York chef Daniel Boulud took over that restaurant as well as Lumiere and Feenie’s is now called db Bistro Moderne.
Last week I went to Vancouver with some friends for a girlie weekend getaway and we decided to try out db Bistro for the Sunday brunch.  When I called to …

I have so many restaurants reviews in draft, I am using the Thanksgiving holidays to get as many of these reviews out before I completely forget about the experience, so this is going to be a restaurant review week here. We are going away on a short trip for a couple of days, so I won’t be able to reply to your comments, but I will be back with a recipe next week.
The reason why you haven’t seen many Indian restaurant reviews in this space is very simple – we …

Even though there is no shortage of fine food or shops in Seattle, we often drive to Canada to enjoy the range of food and shopping that Vancouver BC has to offer. There are a few favorite restaurants that we frequent, but we also try a new place every now and then. Bin 941 is not exactly a new restaurant, we’ve been there years ago, but somehow forgot about it over time. This time I was browsing through the complementary Vancouver magazine in our hotel room and saw that Bin …

We didn’t do many grand scale dinners this time in Vegas. Instead we decided to check out some casual fare by some of our favorite chefs. We don’t normally venture out much in Vegas. Whichever casino we chose to stay at is where we end up eating and playing at. Who wants to waste all those precious Las Vegas hours sitting in traffic! So even though we loved our stay at the Bellagio last time, we decided to try out the Venetian this time, since the dining options there included …

I am so behind on blogging that I never finished my Las Vegas restaurant trilogy from the first week of June!  I left the best for last; now after almost two months my memory is a little dicey! Same is the case with so many Seattle restaurants in my drafts, but those I can go back and refresh my memory any time I want.   With so many more Vegas restaurants remaining in our must-try list, a Las Vegas repeat is going to take a while. So I am just going …

Siv and I are major Iron Chef fans – one of the very few TV programs we watch together.  One of the Iron chefs we really love to watch is Bobby Flay, the main reason being his love towards using bold flavors. He is not afraid to experiment with a little heat, his favorite cooking ingredients being different varieties of chili peppers! So we were looking forward to trying out Mesa Grill, the Las Vegas version of Bobby Flay’s flagship restaurant in NYC. We only got to have lunch there, …

Since this was our anniversary trip to Vegas, we were all ready to check off as many restaurants as we can from our Las Vegas wish list. Michael Mina was right up there on top of the list, as we missed the opportunity in San Francisco last year.  Michael Mina’s SF restaurant has got two Michelin stars and the Vegas restaurant has one star in addition to the countless awards and accolades his different restaurants have received. With so much fanfare, needless to say the expectation was sky high, but …

I am sure all the food network fans out there are familiar with the name Rob Feenie – one of the few chefs to win the battle against the ultimate Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto on Iron Chef America. He used to be the executive chef at Lumiere in Vancouver, one of the best restaurants in Canada, and has consistently won the top restaurant in Vancouver award for years. We had the most amazing meal there in 2005, where we even met Rob Feenie. Well, we didn’t really meet him, we …

Here it is, the post I have been promising to write for about two weeks now. I finally got around to sorting through all the pictures, a lot of them unusable, especially the ones that were taken after a few glasses of Sangria. But I do have quite a lot, to give you some idea about the diverse cuisine that we didn’t know much about before this trip, except for everyone’s favorite Spanish food -Tapas.

As I mentioned in my previous SF post, the highlight of our San Francisco trip was the dinner at Gary Danko, a Michelin rated restaurant, which just happened to be a block away from our hotel. Our reservation was at a different place, Michael Mina, which was a small drive away. When I called up Gary Danko for reservation (they were completely booked on both nights we were there), they had told me about the walk-in bar, so we decided to just give it a try, before driving to Michael …

This was my first ever trip to San Francisco, but it definitely won’t be the last. You know how after a vacation you feel like taking another vacation to get over the exhaustion? Well, this one was not like that at all, if I can call a barely three day trip a vacation! This trip was totally relaxing for the mind! I felt so refreshed after the trip, totally rejuvenating – retail therapy really works.
We literally spent almost all the time at Union Square, a shopper’s paradise!  Zara is my favorite shop, and …

I was just sorting through the Puerto Vallarta pictures today and came across the pictures from my birthday dinner at Cafe de Artistes, I had to write about this place and the special night I had before I get around to writing a trip report.
For dinner on my birthday, Siv had made reservations at the Cocina de Autor, the fine dining area at the world famous restaurant Cafe des Artistes owned by the award winning chef Thierry Blouet. Truly, the best restaurant I have ever been to! I think this …