Woman in Amazonian attire opens Latin American gastronomic fair

LIMA, Peru—A dancer wearing an Amazonian attire and carrying two boa constrictors parades dancing with a touristic group at the gastronomic fair of Mistura, the largest in Latin America, which opened doors next to the Pacific Ocean on September 5, 2013 in Lima.

The fair showcases about 130 restaurants and expects to attract over half a million visitors in the ten days it will run, aiming to promote food as a tool for sustainable development, social inclusion, and cultural identity.  



The Peruvian food industry could generate income for the country by about $7 billion dollars in 2013, according to the Chamber of Commerce of Lima.

source: interaksyon.com

5 reasons why you should dine at Chateau 1771 again in your next night out

Reliable menu, friendly waitstaff, and elegant but warm interiors. These are some of the reasons that regular patrons claim on why they keep returning to 25-year-old restaurant Chateau 1771.

The restaurant recently added new offerings to their menu—a welcome addition to some of our favorites. A little change here or there, Chateau 1771 confirms that it still serves the best food created by Executive Chef Vicky Rose Pacheco. And here are more reasons why you should revisit the classic restaurant in your next night out.






1. No borders cuisine
Chateau 1771 started out as a French restaurant and but now serves French, Italian, Swiss, and no-borders cuisine. “By no borders, we mean you can ask for specific things to be changed in the menu or on your dish because you don’t like it, or if you are in a particular diet,” says Kirk Daquioag, Chateau Group marketing manager. “Restaurants would say no they wouldn’t do that, whereas here, we will always, if we can, oblige to your request.

2. Healthy, organic ingredients
A welcome addition to the Chateau 1771 is the organic dishes such as the chicken, pork shoulders, and vegetables.

“If we can find a good source of ingredients, we try to make it organic,” shares Daquioag. “For example, all our chicken dishes are organic, the pork shoulder  (the only pork dish in the menu) is organic. We also serve organic vegetable, organic rice, so that you would have a lot more choices to side dishes and things like that.”

“We try to give healthier choices,” he says. “So, if you are in any specific diet, be it Cohen diet, low carbs diet, there is something for you.”


3. More seafood dishes
If you have been browsing Chateau 1771’s menu, then you would have certainly noticed the wider selection of seafood that they have been carrying since late last year. There have been some add-on sea food dishes to the choices, a delight to any pescetarian.

“We have a section which has a variety of different fishes and as well as a local fish of the day and you can have that cooked in three different ways,” says Daquioag.

Selections include Norwegian salmon, ocean trout, halibut, or the local fish of the day to be cooked according to your preference. The restaurant also offers it in three different ways: steamed covered with bokchoy, leek and carrot cream sauces, and mashed potato, sautéed then covered with bread crumbs then baked with lemon butter, and then baked with fresh lemon thyme, extra virgin olive oil & pecan nuts, and rice.  Seafood such as fish or prawns can also be grilled.

4. Slow-cooked meats
The selection of cocette (small casserole) fare is another welcome addition to the menu.

Meat are slowly cooked together with spices such as oregano, sage, rosemary, and many more in the cocette giving your tastebuds utmost pleasure. Pick your choice of lamb, veal, beef, duck, or pork to be served in the tiny casserole.

 5. More delectable dishes to come
Chateau 1771 first started in Malate. CEO Ricky Gutierrez wanted to offer something to the internationals who were dining there.  Over the course of the years, the influences—Italian, French—for Chateau has changed.

The restaurant has become known for its signature dishes such as the Raclette, Flaming Potence, Caesar Salad, and Pasta Chorizo. “But it is our ability to adapt to changing times and market which is reflected in surviving for 25 years, but not only surviving but excelling in what we do. I am sure the way we are going, we have got another 25 years to go,” Daquioag says.

• Chateau 1771 is located on the Ground Level of Greenbelt 5, Greenbelt, Paseo de Roxas cor. Legaspi St., Ayala Center, Makati City. For inquiries, (+632) 729-9761.

source: interaksyon.com

800 chefs, food experts vote for 50 world's best restaurants

More than 800 chefs, restaurateurs, journalists and food experts voted Danish restaurant Noma as the world's best restaurant for the third year in a row, beating top eateries in Spain, Brazil, Italy, Britain, the United States and elsewhere.

According to a report of Reuters, the annual list of S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna World's 50 Best Restaurants, produced by Britain's Restaurant Magazine, were unveiled in London.

Reuters said a panel rated chef Rene Redzepi's Noma as the "standard-bearer for the new Nordic movement.

The following restaurants made it to the top 10 of the world's 50 best restaurants:

1. Noma (Copenhagen)
DENMARK (home to 9,401 Filipinos)*

2. El Celler de Can Roca (Girona)
SPAIN (home to 52,611 Filipinos)*

3. Mugaritz (San Sebastian)
SPAIN

4. D.O.M. (Sao Paulo)
BRAZIL (home to 679 Filipinos)*

5. Osteria Francescana (Modena)
ITALY (home to 123,379 Filipinos)*

6. Per Se (New York)
UNITED STATES (home to 3,166,529)*

7. Alinea (Chicago)
UNITED STATES

8. Arzak (San Sebastian)
SPAIN

9. Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (London)
UNITED KINGDOM (home to 196,740 Filipinos)

10. Eleven Madison Park (New York)
UNITED STATES


* Based on the 2010 Stock Estimates of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas

According to the 50 Best Restaurants website, the list is "created from The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy, an influential group of over 800 international leaders in the restaurant industry, each selected for their expert opinion of the international restaurant scene."

"The Academy comprises 27 separate regions around the world. Each region has its own panel of 31 members including a chairperson to head it up. The panel is made up of food critics, chefs, restaurateurs and highly regarded ‘gastronomes’ each of whom has seven votes," it said.

"Of the seven votes, at least three of which must be used to recognize restaurants outside of their region. At least 10 panelists from each region change each year," it added.

Nationally, Spain and the United States tied with three restaurants each in the top 10, though Spain's El Celler de Can Roca in Girona came second and Mugaritz in San Sebastian placed third. In all, the United States had eight eateries in the top 50 and Spainhad five.

The Chefs' Choice award, voted for by the World's 50 Best chefs, was presented to Andoni Luis Aduriz of Mugaritz, which was devastated by a fire two years ago. Spanish winners also included Arzak at no. 8, whose joint Head Chef Elena Arzak was awarded the Veuve Clicquot World's Best Female Chef award.

Eight US restaurants made the top 50 list this year, the highest of which was New Yorkbased Per Se, owned by chef Thomas Keller, who was rewarded the Best Restaurant in North America and the S.Pellegrino Lifetime Achievement accolade after spending each of the past 10 years of the awards on the list under one guise or another.

Noma makes systematic use of beers and ales, fruit juices and fruit-based vinegars for its sauces and soups rather than wine, and allows vegetables, herbs, spices and wild plants in season to play a prominent role in its cooking.

"We feel that the cooking at Noma is fairly ambitious but then again, Nordic cuisine must possess a certain purity," Noma says on its website.

Noma's chef Redzepi serves a new kind of Nordic cuisine such as musk ox and smoked marrow, sea urchin and dill or beef cheek and pear.

The 34-year-old chef is an ambassador for the New Nordic Food programme set up by theNordic Council of Ministers and has headed the restaurant since its 2003 opening.

The Noma approach to cooking is concentrated on obtaining the best raw materials from the Nordic region such as Icelandic skyr curd, halibut, Greenland musk ox and berries.

"Noma is not about olive oil, foie gras, sun-dried tomatoes and black olives. On the contrary, we've been busy exploring the Nordic regions discovering outstanding foods and bringing them back to Denmark," Noma said on its website.

"This goes for very costly ingredients but also for more disregarded, modest ingredients such as grains and pulses, which you'll taste here in new and unexpected contexts," it said.

The two Michelin star restaurant does its own smoking, salting, pickling, drying, grilling and baking, prepares its own vinegars and concocts its own distilled spirits such as its own eaux de vies.
- with a report from Reuters, VVP, GMA News

source: gmanetwork.com

The World's No.1 Restaurant

MANILA, Philippines — Epicureans around the world have set their eyes and taste buds on this new haven.

No, sir. It is not in Spain or Tokyo or Paris. Say, goodbye, for now to El Bulli, Nuvo, and to the three 3-star restaurants owned by French chef Alain Ducasse.

Then where is this new revered dining place? It is in Copenhagen, Denmark, and it is called Noma. It opened only in 2003.

This Nordic haven is owned by a young Danish chef named Rene Redzepi, and he is only 34 years old.

“The man runs the best restaurant in the world,” commends TIME magazine of March 26, 2012.

In the world of Epicureans, if a restaurant is rated No. 1, it follows that its chef achieves the same ranking.

Top chefs around the world concede Noma is the best and the finest dining enclave on this planet today. And yet only a handful have ever dined there.

The few who have been privileged to sit at a table and savor its imaginative but ingeniously Danish cuisine are the pillars of international dining connoisseurs’ league, and, of course, the moneyed set.

TIME says Noma occupies the top spot on the world’s 50 best restaurants list published every year by the respected international RESTAURANT magazine.

Again, what makes it the hallowed dining establishment in the world today?

The answer is simple: Noma serves only foods that are truly Nordic, which means the raw food, ingredients, and anything else that is goes into the casserole are essentially Danish. The exceptional talent of chef Redzepi seals in the internationally acclaimed cuisine.

Ironically, it was only in 2003 that Danes realized their cuisine is exceptionally delicious and it did not take long for the rest of the world to agree. That year Noma opened for business.

On the trivia side, I was curious what the US news weekly mentioned in its cover story of Noma and Redzepi. Two Nordic dishes are similar to what some regional Filipino restaurants serve.

For example, Noma has Danish ants and cured bear meat; our Pinoy restos offer the breakfast fare beef tapa, while a few – notably, the Cabalen chain – serve the crispy Capangpangan camaru or those chirping ricefield crickets.

Today Noma’s tables are fully booked three months in advance. That means any gourmand anywhere in the world whose pockets are bulging with cash, and desirous of dining at the Copenhagen establishment can start making reservations now for a table in August.

source: mb.com.ph