Eat Drink Asia, a food podcast: episode two – from Bourdain to Robuchon via tripe and milk tea
In the second episode of the Post’s new regular food-themed podcast series, we pay tribute to one of the culinary world’s true greats, get a foreigner to try chicken feet, and discuss Joel Robuchon shutting his two Singapore restaurants
Welcome to the second episode of the Eat Drink Asia podcast.
We finished recording the show last Friday morning, but that evening, while I was trying out a spaghetti dish by a new chef at Sabatini in the Royal Garden hotel, I received a shocking text message about Anthony Bourdain.
Details were scant at the time, but the reverberations from his death are profound.
It was his trip to Hong Kong that featured in the last episode of his television series, Parts Unknown, to air before his death.
Bourdain ate here: check out the chef’s Hong Kong haunts
In the episode, filmed in January and aired on June 3, he talks to members of local post punk band David Boring and they go for dim sum.
In the podcast we pay tribute to Bourdain, and I also take my co-host Alkira Reinfrank for a local lunchtime feast. In the first podcast I challenged her to go beyond the usual things foreigners order at dim sum and try chicken feet and tripe. I’m very proud to say I have made a new convert to this Hong Kong classic.
Fine Chinese tea is also on the podcast menu. We talk to a tea sommelier – arguably Hong Kong’s first – at Yan Toh Heen in the InterContinental Hong Kong to find out how best to appreciate the beverage, before heading to Sham Shui Po with local food writer Emily Tong for a drink that us Hong Kong locals have all grown up with: milk tea.
Finally there was news last week of master chef Joel Robuchon announcing the closure of two of his restaurants in Singapore. I had a chat with chef Julien Royer of Odette in Singapore asking him what he thought of the news, and how this young man from a small town in France is conquering the fine dining food scene in the Lion City – and why no one who eats at his restaurant forgets his grandmother’s name.
Follow us on Twitter:
Bernice Chan @beijingcalling
Alkira Reinfrank @alkirareinfrank
