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Three 3-stars in France day 1: transit through Doha
I'm off to France for a week, and unlike previous trips, I've chosen to transit through the Middle East rather than fly direct. While look at airfares a few months ago, I realized that Business Class...
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Dim sum for a short visit
Mikacina's back in town for a short stopover, and The Great One organized a dim sum session for lunch. After rotating through some of the usual suspects over her last few trips, today it was Seventh...
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Clueless at the club, part 2
We're having our third MNSC gathering in a month, and tonight it was Curry's turn to play host. After debating whether he could live with the poor stemware at his favorite Seventh Son (家全七福), our host...
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Party like it's 1990
An invitation came to join a group for friends to dinner, ostensibly to help celebrate Giona's birthday. The chosen venue was somewhere the birthday girl has never been, and one that I have also never...
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Hokkien in da haus
We have known about Mr. Chichi's new project for some time now, and a number of us have been looking forward to having a fine dining Hokkien restaurant in town. We know he has high standards and...
View ArticleVisiting UNESCO World Heritage Sites
Since early 2007, I have been wanting to gear my future travels towards visiting more locations which have been designated UNESCO World Heritage Sites. There are so many amazing places around the world...
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Choking smoky sticks
I had a pretty good first experience at Torikaze (鳥かぜ) - the local outpost of famed Tokyo joint Torishiki (鳥しき). That was, of course, by invitation from B Bestie. After that meal, I thought maybe, just...
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Detour to Hangzhou day 2: shrimp and tea leaves
It's a new day and I need some breakfast. I had originally thought about grabbing some noodles like the Hangzhou specialty pian er chuan (片儿川), but the place Nicemo recommended would take 20 minutes by...
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Detour to Hangzhou day 1: dinner by the lake
On my trip to Hangzhou last month, I kept telling people that the first (and previous) time I was in Hangzhou had been in 1998. At that time, the only international hotel in existence was Shangri-La,...
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Detour to Hangzhou day 1: Liangzhu culture
I’ve been spending time around Anji (安吉) over the last 2 days for our company offsite, and it was time to go home. Since Nicemo offered to drive a few of us back to Hangzhou, I requested a detour to...
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Caprice in August, part 2: Le Pin duo
It's been exactly two days since some of the MNSC boys last saw each other, and here we are again tonight, sitting around a table blind tasting wines. It's my turn again to play host, and for the...
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Beef and Bro Bro
It's been six years since Bro Bro left us, and we continue to toast him on his birthday. Unfortunately I messed up by choosing to host an MNSC dinner on his birthday this year, so tonight we're doing...
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Clueless at the club
The MNSC boys are doing two dinners this week, two days apart. We almost made it three in a row, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. The Ox played host tonight, and we found ourselves back in The Grill at...
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Shantou hop day 3: beef hotpot brunch
It's our last day in Shantou, and we didn't get out of bed as early as originally planned. BUT we learned our lesson yesterday so we went out for coffee before breakfast. We went back to my new...
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Shantou hop day 2: cooking the ocean
Dinner tonight was probably my most-anticipated meal of this trip. I very much appreciate the casul aspect of Chaoshan cuisine, and I'm well aware of the traditional way of dining that we had at lunch...
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Shantou hop day 2: criss crossing the city
We needed two things this morning: coffee and breakfast. We went downstairs to the café at WhyTime Hotel (怀棠府邸酒店) to see what the free breakfast was like, but they were pretty full with other guests......
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Shantou hop day 1: seafood supper
I had originally wanted to take a break from traveling this weekend. There was an invitation to an extremely hard to book restaurant in Yunnan, but with two big meals earlier in the week and a few more...
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Mushrooms and peppers
The Compatriot was back in town for a couple of days, and we agreed to catch up over dinner. Lately he hasn't been getting as much good Chinese food as he would like, so he requested for a visit to...
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Caprice in August, part 1: magnum party
I'm seeing the Hairy Chevalier two weeks in a row, as I play host to two different crowds. I had been wanting to treat Dashijie (大師姐) for dinner for some time now, and also repay the favor of some...
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Champagne and dim sum
We have been fans and supporters of Sato-san and Takano-san for years, and one of the things we admire about Sato-san as a chef is his curiosity, on top of his obvious creativity. During the pandemic...
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