MAGAZINE CONTENTS
Cover Stories
28 food and the city
In the kitchens of New York’s very best restaurants, god is in the details. Meet the chefs of four hot spots contending for the mantle of New York’s most transcendent fine dining experience: Aquavit, Le Cirque, The Modern and Per Se.
62 signatures
the eighth world wonder
What does it take to bring a superstar chef who has cooked for celebrities like Monica Belluci from Milan to Singapore? A lifetime of sacrifice, says Giacomo Gallina.
122 roundtrip
chile fire
This skinny bean of a country has so much of spirit in its belly, it’ll take months to absorb and digest all it has to offer.
Features
34 horizons philadelphia - a city reborn
Ten years ago it was a run-down city best known for Independence Hall and for being the setting for the Rocky films. Since then Philadelphia has reinvented itself as a hip new tourist destination with great shops and eating places that go far beyond traditional cheese steaks.
42 California cuisine
Forget about France, haute cuisine and Michelin Stars, Napa Valley has quiety established itself as the new gourmet capital of the world. Drawn by the fine wines produced here, Napa has become home to a variety of famous chefs and their restaurants.
48 secret hollywood
West Hollywood is a playground for fun-seekers and trendsetters in the glittery shadow of the world’s leading movie industry. Visitors will find plenty of restaurants, pubs and a score of music and comedy clubs all on or around the Sunset Strip.
Dining and Drinking
54 Bon Appetit
hauter than hot!
A pick of sizzling designs for the kitchen that will turn up the temperature in no time.
66 Season’s Best
healthier harvest
Tucking into a host of cholestoerol-laden prawn dishes may seem indulgent, but you might just be doing yourself a favour eating this new variety of prawns bred without antibiotics.
70 Chef to Chef
green peace
While vegetarianism may not be for everyone, there are more food options for those who choose the lifestyle or desire to eat healthier. Chefs share their ways to go green.
78 Kitchen Confidential
a fertile culinary playground?
Already a familiar name in Europe, the elite Relais & Chateaux collection is stepping up its presence in the region
with the release of its first Asia Pacific directory this year—yet another clear signal that we are ready to engage the international culinary realm.
86 Nuances
sipping on sunshine
There’s no better way to cool off in the scorching heat than with the multiplicity of taste and styles offered by summer liqueurs.
travel and living
100 High Living
living it up at sea
With superyachts making waves on the seascape, we get you closer to this whole new luxurious way of life.
104 Essentials
wispy wonders
The cult of chiffon has this in common with religion—the invisible is as important as the visible.
114 Epicurious
Private reserve
Time was when Privé presented a carte du jour with nine prestige cuvées from the glorious 1996 vintage, attracting gastronomes who cherished exquisite food and wines of the greatest expression from the extraordinary Champagne region of France.
117 Chef d’Oeuvre
gracious living
Situated in the heart of Passy quarter in Paris is Hotel Gavarni, an incredibly charming hotel that offers a haven of peace and refinement.
120 Getaway
in search of arcadia
Travellers wanting to get off the beaten track will be gratified to chance upon their over own slice of bucolic haven characterized by Turi Beach Resort.
regulars
12 Editor’s Note
15 To the Market
17 Aperitif
19 Insider
21 Top Tables
80 Cooks Books
82 Tipple Talk
96 Worldly Pleasures
112 Escapes
130 Calendar of Events
132 Out on the Town
134 Stockists
136 Finishing Touch
America Coming (Again)!
There is hardly a shortage of food experts and authorities in America—indeed, it can be said there is hardly a shortage of anything in the bounteous US of A—who can readily expound the history and intricacies of food in the country. But one of the most publicized food authorities who is allied to America’s gastronomic treasures must be the late James Beard whose beginnings in the Pacific Northwest to his professional coming of age in New York is known to just about everybody who qualifies as a reasonably serious cook.
For more than four decades, the influential culinary potentate offered recipes and advice that collectively is nothing short of encyclopedic. Among his most memorable writings, portions of which are harvested for his cookbooks, are his reminiscences of his boyhood days, recalling the joys of family summers and his mother’s sure hand in the kitchen, which would have a thundering influence in his lifework. More resounding still, to me at least, was his exposition of an American attitude towards food.
Beard grew up in the kitchen and the scent of food was like perfume which stayed with him all his life. His mother ran a small residential hotel in Portland, Oregon, and eating was in his family. They were three distinct personalities—his mother, father and him, and they all liked food cooked in a different way. Let, his mother’s Chinese cook at the hotel, spoiled them, really, because he would take a dish and do it separately for each of them.
At the turn of the century, Beard’s mother already had an international approach to food that would be revolutionary even by the standards of the last ten years. She was of English and Welsh background, and the majority of her kitchen staff was Chinese with intermittent French head chefs. Portland, at that time, was clearly too small to contain the “Gallic temperaments” of the latter, so after a few months, they would leave, but their technique and style would have been perfectly mastered by the Chinese. The food was sort of the precursor of America’s “new cuisine”, a combination of quick sautés, French sauces and American ingredients.
There are, of course, many dishes that could be considered completely American. Indian pudding is one, and it’s coming into vogue again. Then we often forget that layer cakes (particularly baking powder layer cakes), cream pies (just as the Europeans always had tarts and the English originated apple pie and many deep-pie dishes), New England clam chowder and California’s cioppino were developed in USA. And what could be more American than barbecues?
Towards the end of his life, Beard was asked what the dominating factor in American cuisine is, and his reply was the many ethnic groups, each of which brought its own ideas of food to the country. The pioneers lived off the land they travelled and necessity sired invention. When they first settled here, they often could not find the ingredients they were used to, so they adapted their dishes and invented new ones, using whatever was available.
This American tale is not entirely unique to the USA alone. Everywhere in this increasingly globalised world, as people become neighbourly and exchange ideas about all sorts of things—commerce, language, culture, art—they exchange ideas about food, too.
Enjoy the issue!
Leena Ng
Editor
*In the showcase of Coquelicots table linens in ‘Worldly Pleasures’, Wine & Dine April 2008, the brand should be spelt D.Porthault.
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