Eat Drink Asia: Michelin stars for Hong Kong and Macau, chef Theo Randall on Italian cooking and sake sommelier Seju Yang
- Michelin announcement sees fine dining French restaurant Caprice get back its third star
- British chef Randall gives us some quick dinner solutions
Welcome to episode 9 of Eat Drink Asia – the final one for 2018.
It’s hard to believe it’s December already but things have hardly wound down yet. This past week was one of the biggest food events of the year for Hong Kong and Macau – the Michelin announcement for Hong Kong and Macau that was held at the Grand Hyatt Macau.
There were some surprises. We were happy to see the fine-dining French restaurant Caprice in the Four Seasons Hong Kong get back its third star with chef Guillaume Galliot, while Jade Dragon, which serves refined Cantonese cuisine, also received three stars.
Eyebrows were raised when Alain Ducasse at Morpheus, which opened six months ago, immediately got two stars, while its Chinese counterpart Yi in the same hotel was unrecognised.
Another new French restaurant, Ecriture, jumped to two stars, as did Sushi Saito, the first overseas branch of the famed Tokyo omakase restaurant.
Speaking of star chefs, when most people think of British chefs who are known for cooking Italian, Jamie Oliver probably comes to mind. But he actually learned his chops from Theo Randall, who has a restaurant, Theo Mistral, in the InterContinental Grand Stanford hotel in Hong Kong.
We caught up with him last time he was in the city to find out how a Briton can cook Italian, and he gave us some quick dinner solutions that got our mouths watering.
Now that we have food sorted, what about drinks, specifically sake?
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Seju Yang from Japan could give you a hand. He is a sake sommelier at Brushstroke in New York, and we spoke to him recently at the Mira Hong Kong.
Yang was studying music composition in Boston and New York when he started working in bars and restaurants for extra money. At first he knew nothing about sake and wine, but now he is very passionate about them. Like music, there needs to be a balance when it comes to taste, he says.
This being the last episode for 2018, we reminisce about the year. We started it off with the opening of Shake Shack and since then have seen several more burger restaurants open up, including Five Guys.
The Hong Kong craft beer community had a shake-up when several Hong Kong breweries pulled out of the annual Beertopia festival, which marked its seventh anniversary at Central harbourfront, over cost issues and their feeling that the event had lost its focus.
Instead they held their own event at PMQ in Central with no food, DJs, or shisha pipes, just different varieties of locally made craft beer.
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We also make a few predictions for 2019 about the food scene. What are yours?
Follow us on Twitter at @beijingcalling and @alkirareinfrank.
Happy Holidays and Happy Eating!
