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cooking personal

A Michelin Tasting at Home

In the last year of COVID life I only made one multi course meal and it was a collection of old favourites that I put together for a Pandemic Thanksgiving meal. During the meal I was talking to our guests about those recipes when I realised that I hadn’t really made a truly new menu since my Potato Dinner of 2018. We got to talking about cookbooks at that meal and I brought out the Alinea and Manresa books to show people. I then spent the Christmas break going through the two books and marked out a selection of recipes that I thought were both interesting and practical to make at home.… Read the rest

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cooking review

Alinea Kitchen Table Experience

Living in the Bay Area, I had heard of Alinea a few times but since I never had a reason to go to Chicago, I never investigated it as a destination restaurant like the Fat Duck. In fact when I did eventually go to Chicago for the first time we made a special trip to Moto instead since I was a big fan of Homaru Cantu’s Iron Chef episode with Morimoto. All that changed when I saw the Grant Achatz episode of Chefs table and Alinea instantly went to the top of my list based on its presentation alone. It took several months but I was finally able to get a group of 6 California friends willing to fly out to Chicago and do the full Alinea Kitchen Table experience on a cold night in December.… Read the rest

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cooking personal photos review

The Fat Duck Experience

TL;DR summary – the Fat Duck is an incredibly theatrical experience that is as much about the “show” as it is the food. Highly recommended if you like complex meals and culinary surprises.

The Fat Duck "Menu" Map

I first heard about Heston Blumenthal when I tried a sous vide recipe for scrambled eggs. The dish is one of my all time favourites and became a go to dish to show the power of sous vide. I then saw a few of his BBC shows and loved the way he does molecular gastronomy with a deep exploration of the science behind each dish. Plus The Fat Duck had 3 Michelin Stars and was consistently mentioned in the same breath as El Bulli and French Laundry in the late aughts.… Read the rest

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personal technology

FamousFood.us updated

Just a quick note that I have recently updated the FamousFood.us databases to include the 2012 Michelin Guide, Best Thing I Ever Ate (Season 6), Diners Drive-Ins & Dives (upto season 13) and Throwdown with Bobby Flay (Season 9). This update has added over 300 new restaurants to the database.

So head on over to FamousFood.us and find the restaurants featured on the Michelin Guide and TV shows like Best Thing I Ever Ate, Food Wars, Man V Food, Throwdown with Bobby Flay and Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Happy Eating 🙂… Read the rest

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cooking mashup personal

FamousFood.us: Find the restaurants featured on your favourite TV shows

As some of you may already know, I have recently launched a new website named FamousFood.us that allows you to quickly find restaurants featured on TV shows such as Best Thing I Ever Ate, Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, etc.. as well as Michellin guide rated restaurants. I figure it finally time for me to write a blog post explaining the site and what I hope to do with it.

The idea for the site came from my summer road trip to Seattle. Since Nithya and I were driving up there with no specific plans we decided that we wanted to try out as many of the Best Thing I Ever Ate restaurants as we could using my existing map as a guide.… Read the rest