Foodle

“No meio de tantos restaurantes que brilham por fora e se repetem por dentro, o Esporão faz o oposto: brilha por dentro, com uma cozinha que não tem necessidade de se anunciar porque está fundamentada em algo muito mais profundo que o imediatismo de um aplauso.”

Descobre a experiência completa na Herdade do Esporão — da primeira folha de hortelã ao silêncio final do prato vazio.
O artigo já está online em Flavors & Senses.
Link no perfil.
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“𝘈𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦, 𝘌𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘳ã𝘰 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘵𝘦: 𝘪𝘵 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯, 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘢 𝘬𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴 𝘳𝘰𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘮𝘶𝘤𝘩 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘤𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦.”

𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘏𝘦𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘥𝘦 𝘥𝘰 𝘌𝘴𝘱𝘰𝘳ã𝘰 — 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘧 𝘵𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘤𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘯 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦. 𝘍𝘶𝘭𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘍𝘭𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘳𝘴 & 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦𝘴. 𝘓𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘪𝘯 𝘣𝘪𝘰.

#flavorsandsenses #esporao #foodreels #finedining #mystorywithmichelin #alentejo #visitalentejo #foodies #gastronomia #foodcritic #gastronomy #herdadedoesporao #slowfood #farmtotable Less

I’ll write more about Vicky Lau’s restaurants in The Vancouver Sun and The Province but meanwhile, here’s a look of my dinner at her Hong Kong restaurant, Mora. I was super interested and curious as it’s a one-Michelin star/Green star restaurant built around tofu and soy products. Whaaat?! Yep. Soy milk. Yuba. Bean curd skin. Edamame. Miso. She makes her own soy milk and guess where she gets her non-GMO, organic soy beans? 🇨🇦!
It’s an inventive menu with bold flavour boosters enlivening the mellow soy products. It’s a soy love story.

#soybeans #tofu #hongkongrestaurants #Michelinhongkong

@discoverhongkong Less

Hong Kong’s Wing took #3 spot at the recent Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2025 and ranked #20 in the World’s Best 50 Restaurants 2024. Wing really soars high, showing off the evolution of Chinese cuisine. Chef owner Vicky Cheng, Hong Kong born, raised in Canada, has worked in esteemed kitchens such as Restaurant Daniel (Boulud), and Canada’s Auberge du Pommier and Canoe. While at his one-star VEA restaurant, upstairs from Wing, French techniques are boss to Chinese ingredients, at Wing, it’s a homecoming to his Chinese roots, using ingredients such as dried seafoods, discovering they’re like fine wines, developing flavours as they age. And those local fruits and blueberries from Hong Kong, were a-maz-ing! More on Cheng in an upcoming column, but check out the food and the photo of Cheng, holding a very large and costly dried fish maw.

*Smoked eggplant, marinated vinegar
*Drunken South African abalone
*Firefly squid, Yunnan chili, bull kelp
*Chili oyster, housemate golden crystal egg

*Double boiled baby lamb soup, morel mushrooms
*Silver pomfret, mandarin peel, fermented black bean
*Fragrant Chili Alaskan king crab, crispy cheung fun
*Baby pigeon, sugar cane
*Stir-fried white asparagus, shrimp paste, cured pork
*Sea cucumber (from dried) spring roll
*Fish maw (from dried), yellow fungus, abalone sauce, rice

*Snow gum, coconut sorbet, osmanthus
*Mignardise

@discoverhongkong #hongkongfood #hongkongrestaurants #modernhongkongkitchen #[instagram] Less

This fried chickpea patty burger @houseofveganfood is a thing of beauty and I love the avocado for contrast. One of the most filling and satisfying veggie burgers in town. Now I just need to convince somebody to take the chickpea thing one step further and make a full-on falafel burger... #dallaseats #dallasfood #veggieburger Less

At some point, you’ll move past the stuffy decor at @restaurant_petrus , a restaurant on the 56th floor of the Island Shangri-La, in Hong Kong. The views are sweeping, but so is Uwe Opocensky’s cooking. A recent carte-blanche lunch featured easy-listening dishes with a studied degree of reinvention: tomato salad with a quenelle of near-frozen burrata and bright pesto; sweet white asparagus with blood-orange sabayon; uniformly-pink baby lamb from the Pyrenees, atop a glossy sauce accompanied by soft artichoke and a meld of peas that held their snap. A tad less daring than the menu from a year prior, but no less gratifying.

In this day and age, nostalgia sells — especially if served at a Supreme Court house with all the fixings intact, inclusive of a trapdoor where prisoners would emerge from their cell and a perch where judges sporting powdered wigs admonish you from above. This is @themagistracyhongkong , where the chef Alwyn Williams, aptly, holds court and renders food that I remember well from his days cooking at the Westbury Hotel, in London. There are clever concessions to terroir: a more curry-forward dressed crab over crumpet; the use of Cantonese chicken in a puff-pastry — a play on pot pie; and steamed cod. But my favorite is his glorious, unadulterated sticky toffee pudding, followed by the ‘family’ salad (puffed grains, frisbee, apple, sultanas), which reminded me why sweeter salads can really work.

My trip ended unceremoniously with dinner at @ando.hkg , an underrated gem run by a humble, unassuming, wildly-talented chef in Agustin Balbi and an ace of a sommelier, Carlito Chiu. Not because the food wasn’t up to par — quite the opposite — but because I was near comatose midway through dinner from food-poisoning (unrelated meal). While the slide photo is of a beautiful morel, Balbi’s best dish is his least photogenic: arroz caldoso, a brothy rice dish made with Yumeprika rice and Spanish baby squid. I’ll be back.
🙏 @geoffreywu for paving the way.

🍽️ Mar ‘25 Less

Eating at Sin Huat is like an experience in Medusa’s cave—except whatever lurks within cooks and (truly) means well. You must not stare at nor refuse any recommendations from the restaurant’s chef, Danny Lee. You shouldn’t make a fuss if dishes take hours to come because they’re cooked to order, by table. You smile. And obey. On a muggy weekend night, I joined a group of submissive diners (names withheld for safety), for his vaunted crab bee hoon. Three bright red crab shells, fire-kissed, crowned atop more crab, nubs of sweet roe, and the vermicelli that has absorbed it all. The ratio of crab to noodles will disrupt the rhythm in which you consume this beast of a dish, but make no mistake: you must eat it quickly.

Yes, there are other highlights. The toothsome parrot fish; those gently chewy snails; and the beautiful platter of scallops, which resemble still life, in the flesh, by David Hockney — if he OD’ed on bivalves.

At @liufusifangcai , a private kitchen run by Henry Lau, you might struggle to find a favorite because there are many. His lard-slicked hokkien mee is a quiet bastion of smoke and char — but it’s his black pepper crab that’ll find converts among jaded crab hounds. This one has a ferile, if slightly gentle, heat that swells your lips and a sweetness that recalls molasses. When it all comes together — plump, sweet meat and that bright gravy — it could make you weep.

In time, I’ll grow to appreciate the crowd that lines up for Outram park’s ferociously dark plates of kway teow that brim with cockles (an acquired taste) — but I’ll recommend Da Dong Prawn Noodles without reservation. Sze-Liang, a purist, insists: get two small bowls — one bee hoon soup; another dry kway teow, so you may experience the unadulterated noodles rubbed judiciously with those prawn accoutrements, alongside the clear but potent prawn stock. This is the way.
🙏 @veronicaphua , @szeliang888 , @eechong & @chanksters . Less