All posts tagged: restaurants

Sichuan dreams: My favourite Chinese restaurants in London

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Sign up for the Independent Women email for the latest news, opinion and features Get the Independent Women email for free Get the Independent Women email for free My love affair with Sichuan food began just over a decade ago. At the height of this whirlwind romance, I barely went out to eat in London if Sichuan food wasn’t by my side – both returning to tried and tested favourites but also exploring new spots. For the uninitiated, Sichuan food originates from the Sichuan province and the next-door Chongqing municipality in the southwest of China. Sichuan food is known for its bold, spicy flavours, with some dishes feeling like a firework of flavours in the mouth. It is a varied cuisine, with dishes for those who are apprehensive or antagonistic towards chilli. Sichuan food obliterates most Britons’ preconceptions and misconceptions about Chinese food. Many continue to wrongly assume Chinese food is synonymous with Cantonese food and not the country’s regional cuisines. Home to 1.4 billion humans, China is also home to an eclectic variety …

How To Find The Best Restaurants And Food When You Travel

Published by Sam

[ad_1] Finding a place to eat when you’re traveling can be tricky if you don’t know a few secrets. It can be tough to trust online reviews, and depending on the various cravings of those you’re traveling with, there can be a lot of pressure to find a crowd-pleaser. Sure, it’s easy to do a Google search for nearby restaurants or just eat at the hotel where you’re staying. It can also be reliable and comfortable to dine at a chain restaurant where you know the menu and quality of the food. “This is, of course, the last thing you want to do when exploring and trying new cultures and destinations — and the last thing I want to do as a food and beverage writer,” said Aly Walansky, a freelance food and travel journalist. “I may love a chain restaurant on occasion when at home, but when traveling, I want to try new things and explore new flavours and cooking styles through the locals,” she added. Getting out to walk around and explore the …

Pharrell Loved This Hand Roll Spot So Much He Became a Partner

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] The first time Pharrell Williams visited Nami Nori’s flagship location on Carmine Street in New York’s West Village, he found himself in hand roll heaven. “My friend told me it would be everything I loved in one experience, and she was absolutely right,” the multihyphenate recalls of what was the beginning of a hot-as-wasabi love affair. “I was first in awe of the precision and innovation in the food, but also the incredible energy of the space, which begins with the positivity and warmth of the founders.” From love at first bite, the Grammy Award–winner grabbed his chopsticks and soon became a partner and investor in the viral five-year-old temaki eatery, teaming up with founders Taka Sakaeda, Jihan Lee, and Lisa Limb, who have been at the forefront of what’s been dubbed a “hand roll revolution.” Nami Nori’s new Miami location Sebastian Lucrecio “For us, it really is about creativity,” says Limb, when asked what it was about Nami Nori that turned a nuanced tastemaker like Pharrell into a passionate disciple. “We really take …

Best restaurants to try in Los Angeles 2024, ranked

Published by Sam

[ad_1] There is no such thing as the quintessential Los Angeles restaurant. That’s the soul-deep beauty of dining in our city. The street stand where burnt-orange birria juice drips onto your T-shirt from your third taco defines the L.A. experience as much as the holiest omakase counter, the scrappiest natural wine bar and the latest steakhouse-style burger sensation. Some chefs arrange lettuces among summertime peaches so otherworldly in flavor they all but cross into science fiction. That describes our glory with salads — as do the stinging lime and crisped rice of nam khao tod, and the specific tang of dried mint and pomegranate molasses in fattoush made by careful, practiced hands. It’s the collective greatness, the sum of our exquisite differences, that makes L.A. remarkable. Perhaps such a thought can comfort in dark times. The 101 Best Restaurants in Los Angeles, now in its 12th year, is a guide to excellence but also the annual family photo:: The calendar flips and we don’t look quite the same as before. Food columnist Jenn Harris joins …

Restaurants Are Hiring AI to Pick Up the Phone When You Call

Published by José

[ad_1] Just what customers want to hear. Having Reservations The next time you call an eatery to book a table, you might want to make sure you’re talking to an actual human. That’s because more and more restaurants are turning to AI to handle over-the-phone reservations, Wired reports, in one of the more overlooked areas of the tech being used in hospitality. A slew of these services have been launched in just the past few years. Among them, per Wired, include the startups Maitre-D AI, which rolled out in the Bay Area in 2024, RestoHost, which now takes calls at over 150 restaurants in Atlanta, and Slang, which pivoted to offering AI services to restaurants last year when it raised around $20 million in funding. It’s a pretty low-stakes application of the tech, as far as irresponsible uses of AI go — but it’s a testament to just how pervasive AI is becoming in taking over customer service roles once handled by humans across multiple industries. Bot Backup The developers of these AI assistants frame …

Dorset foodie guide: best restaurants, cafes and bakeries

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Enter through a Narnia-like door, up a flight of stairs and all is calm, whitewashed and a little Nordic. This is the new digs of ex Pollen Street Social chef, Mike Naidoo, who’s a deft hand at spinning all coastal treasures (an enormous sea bass, brill, really whatever the fisherman procures), into haute, wholly delicious plates. It has earned him a well-deserved one Michelin star, and put a port town in need of a wee spruce firmly on the foodie map. Expect the usual, spanking fresh salty suspects such as Portland crab dumplings, perfectly-roasted scallops, which are meaty and moreish inside, washed down with local Langham’s wine, of course, rounded off with a light, fluffy New Forest Strawberry Baba. catchattheoldfishmarket.com [ad_2] Source link

‘Dine and dash’ pair who left restaurants without paying bills worth £1,000 are jailed | UK News

Published by Sam

[ad_1] A couple who left a number of restaurants in the South Wales area without paying bills totalling more than £1,000 have been jailed. Ann McDonagh, 39, and Bernard McDonagh, 41, previously pleaded guilty to five counts of fraud. Ann McDonagh also admitted four counts of theft and one count of obstructing or resisting a constable in the execution of duty. The pair, from the Sandfields area of Port Talbot, were sentenced at Swansea Crown Court on Wednesday. She was handed a 12-month prison sentence, while he was jailed for eight months. Newly-opened restaurant Bella Ciao in Swansea alleged in a Facebook post that a family left the premises without paying their £329 bill. The post was shared thousands of times on social media. Several other restaurants in the South Wales area also posted about similar experiences, including River House and La Casona. A previous court hearing heard the unpaid bills totalled £1,168.10 across five restaurants. Image: Ann McDonagh ‘Most expensive items on the menu’ Judge Paul Thomas KC said the defendants had “set out …

Apple Butter Cafe, London W1: ‘Food to make a diabetes doctor sigh anxiously’ – restaurant review | Restaurants

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Apple Butter Cafe, which recently opened a second branch at the top of London’s Regent Street, is very much a cafe of its time. Today’s young may be eschewing the vices of yesteryear – booze, ciggies, drugs, etc – but their Achilles heel is sugar. Build a cafe that serves short stacks of chunky, fat pancakes smothered in banoffee syrup and topped with mini meringues, shards of tempered chocolate, quenelles of thick cream and microplaned lemon zest, and they will come. Post a video on TikTok of someone blowtorching said pancake stack, so the meringue browns and gives the whole hot mess a baked alaska vibe, however, and your customers will queue from 8am for the chance to make their own content next to the fake plastic trees “growing” inside the cafe. ‘Fortunately, the place is only a hop, skip and a jump from Harley Street’: Apple Butter Cafe’s creme brulee french toast. Photograph: The Guardian Sugar is the most cheerily pernicious of vices. I come from a long line of bingo-winged, eccles cake-addicted …

Kensington’s best restaurants, from Zaika to Jacuzzi

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] Popular with anyone in Kensington in search of Chinese food without the Min Jiang price tag, Sichuan Popo is, as the name suggests, focused on the cuisine of the central Chinese region, but also its northern neighbour Shaanxi. That means decently done classics of dan dan noodles, mapo tofu and Xi’an biang biang noodles (the name of a sister restaurant in Covent Garden and the City), plus the signature dish of fried pork with Sichuan pepper, the melt-in-the-mouth meat given a blast of mouth-numbing heat to cut through the richness. The kitchen isn’t so purist, though, that it doesn’t serve dim sum, the daytime speciality of Guangdong, and in the evening, too, should one fancy siu mai, har gau or char siu pork buns for supper, while elsewhere the lengthy menu takes in everything from pig’s intestines to spring rolls. If you’re in the area for a Chelsea game there’s another branch near Fulham Broadway.     [ad_2] Source link

Kato wins World’s 50 Best Restaurants Resy One to Watch award

Published by skeptic

[ad_1] For the first time in more than a decade, the World’s 50 Best Restaurants will recognize a Los Angeles restaurant with an award. The organization, which puts out the annual world’s 50 Best Restaurants list, has named Kato the recipient of the 2024 Resy One to Watch award. While Kato didn’t make the actual World’s 50 Best list this year, the recognition is an acknowledgment of a restaurant’s potential to be named to the list at some point in the future. “Los Angeles has one of the most exciting and diverse dining scenes in the world right now,” William Drew, director of content for the World’s 50 Best Restaurants, said in a statement to The Times. “Kato is representative of Southern California as a region, reflecting Jon Yao’s own experience as an Asian American growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, but also embodying the dynamic gastronomic spirit of Los Angeles.” Kato business partners, from left: Nikki Reginaldo, chef Jon Yao and Ryan Bailey outside the restaurants’ new location at the Row DTLA. (Mariah …