Milk plus: Milk, drops of Moscato grappa , vanilla
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My first stop on a recent trip to Alba was another visit to ⭐️⭐️⭐️ Piazza Duomo. This really is one of my favourite three star restaurants in the world. It totally lived up to my expectations. With the Korean style parade of dishes that swamps your table before the menu even starts I can’t think of another restaurant anywhere that has a better introduction to the meal. Highly recommended.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
OAD - 21
W50Best - 29
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Brioche façon tropézienne/sardine/lard de colonatta
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Another fantastic meal at ⭐️⭐️ AM par Alexandre Mazzia in Marseille a couple of weeks ago. I love this restaurant and it reminds me of David Toutain’s cooking in Paris in that it is just so incredibly tasty. Dish after dish after dish of carefully thought about and married ingredients and flavours making it probably my favourite spot to eat up this end of the coast.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️⭐️
OAD - 163
W50Best - ‘discovery’
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Last but not least this incredible grand Marnier soufflé
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Dinner a couple of weeks ago at ⭐️ Le Restaurant des Rois @lareservebeaulieu at Hotel La Rèserve de Beaulieu. I’m pretty sure the chef has changed here since my last visit and that certainly shows. Not that I didn’t enjoy my last visit but the bar has definitely been raised. With two tasting menus available I rolled the dice and opted for the Menu “Blue Homard” but also added the sweetbread dish from the other menu because, well why wouldn’t you🤷🏼‍♂️? I say rolled the dice because I’m not really a lobster fanatic by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a shame but I think the only reason that I usually shy away from lobster dishes is because the good ones are few and far between as it’s an ingredient that is so easily mishandled. But I was in safe hands here.
Recommended if you are in the area.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️
OAD -
W50Best -
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Red fruits, cantaloupe melon & sorbet made from oranges from the garden
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A lovely lunch last week at recently opened @ristorante_casabuono just a short drive up the Roia valley from Ventimiglia in the Trucco region of Italy. I have @steveplotnicki to thank (again) for nudging me in this direction.
It’s a tiny place really with just a few tables in front of the open kitchen where husband and wife team Antonio Buono cooking and Valentina taking care of the guests.
An A La Carte menu of just 5 dishes that changes daily depending on what’s good at the market that morning is proposed, but the sensible way to go is to spend €40 and have every dish in a slightly smaller portion.
With that and a bottle of wine you will escape for well under €100 for homely but expertly cooked market cuisine that draws on the Ligurian terroir and the chefs cultural background.
Both Antonio and Valentina were part of the team at W50B No 1 restaurant @restaurantmirazur when they achieved their third star and it shows in the precision of the cooking and the friendly professionalism of the service.
Speaking of friendly service, having crossed the border from Uber-everywhere France to Uber-less Italy, they were unable to raise a taxi for me so took no hesitation in giving me a ride back to the station with the chef.
Really a must visit if you are in the area.
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Michelin Guide -
OAD -
W50Best -
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Chocolate mousse with citron du Pays
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(This post comes with a health warning as there are videos of the cutest little pet piggy 🐷 snuffling around, plus a couple of very chilled out dawgs so your heart may explode with love. You have been warned. )
4 meals over the past month at @lesbacchanales_vence where chef and generally lovely person @christodufau has altered the style of cooking from my last visits a couple of years ago and in such a good way.
I say ‘lovely guy’ because he really is. Well known and well liked throughout the industry and especially in Denmark where he worked for 9 years. I mean (gratuitous #humblebrag coming up), I had posted on Instagram stories that Les Bacchanales was my next meal while on the way to the meal and while I was sat enjoying the meal, Rene Redzepi messages me ..... “Please say hi to Christophe from me”.
So I think it’s clear that there is a lot of love for the guy.
The food is delicious, as it has always been, and designed to be shared with friends, hence why I kept coming back with friends. Christophe is now cooking outside using a wood burning oven and I think I saw a smoker in the back of this very rustic al fresco kitchen right next to the restaurant which exists on a leafy patio between the house and a kitchen garden.
Miss Eva, the pet pig will wander around the place weaving through the tables and the legs of the dinners. You’ll hear her coming.
Highly recommended if you are on the Côte d’Azur. Go and spend a leisurely lunchtime enjoying the good food, wine and the company of Miss Eva...oh and Christophe of course !😬
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Michelin Guide - 🍽
OAD -
W50Best -
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Cheese 🧀 🐭
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Dinner the other week at ⭐️ @restaurant_alliance in Paris. This was one of those meals where I know it was good, great even, but it was too understated for my taste. Maybe to do with the chef, @omiyatoshitaka, hailing from Japan. I say that because I have had similar meals from Japanese chefs. This is in no way intended to be a negative review by the way. The meals that I speak of shared the same characteristics in that they were so nuanced in their flavour profiles, so pure in their clarity. The ingredients were laid bare and naked on the plate with little to distract from the core ingredient. BUT, the flavours and textures were there in the background, propping up the main ingredient, prodding and coaxing it forward onto the centre stage where it belongs and where it can shine.
I don’t know if this is a Japanese thing, I suspect it is, that they focus so much on perfection and refinement (in everything they do, not just cooking) that a dish can get stripped back so much that the flavours become beyond subtle. Perhaps I’m over thinking it 🤷🏼‍♂️. Anyway, I was left waiting for a dish that would smack me about the chops a little bit but I was found wanting.
There is a strong tradition of Japanese chefs cooking exceptional French cuisine in Paris and this is a good example.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️
OAD - 83
W50Best -
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‘La framboise Tulameen’ Champagne sabayon. Raspberry & cardamom sorbet
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‘The Calisson’ lemon, roasted almonds and miso sorbet

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My last meal in Paris the other week was at @lareserveparis La Reserve Hotel in their courtyard restaurant La Pagode de Cos. The restaurant Le Gabriel, where chef @jeromebanctel Jérôme Banctel achieved two ⭐️⭐️ Michelin after just one year of opening was closed that day but thanks to a friend (you know who you are CM😉🙏🏻), I was able to try a few of the dishes from the Le Gabriel menu although in understandably more simplified versions. Understandably simplified because of course Le Gabriel was closed, but that kitchen exists within the La Reserve hotel so they very generously indulged me before my flight.
Based on the dishes I had, I would put Le Gabriel near the top of my to do list for my next Paris tour.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️⭐️
OAD - 92 (Classical list)
W50Best - ‘Discovery’
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Next stop in Paris the other week was to one of the city’s newest ⭐️ additions to the guide Michelin, @linnocence_paris L’Innocence. A teeny tiny little place with an open kitchen to match. From this tiny kitchen, chefs @annelegran Anne Legrand and @cliomodaffari Clio Modaffari cook a mainly plant based menu in two sittings for the 16 or so guests that can fit in to this tiny room (a couple of tables were left empty on our visit to maintain social distancing).
They focus on the seasons using the best produce from small suppliers and producers.
With manager Jonathan Caron taking care of us and the rest of the guests this was a truly enjoyable and pleasantly relaxing evening, and fantastic value for money as well. Please visit them the next time you are in Paris.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️
OAD -
W50Best -
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#achefabroad #itravelforfood #foodie #foodies #foodporn #foodpic #foodpics #finedining #michelindining #eats #instafoodie #michelinstar #oad #worlds50bestrestaurants #worlds50best #eater #iphonexsmax #michelinguide #foodlepro #influencer #oadtop100 @theworlds50best #parisfoodie #eaterparis #linnocenceparis Less

Pistachio - avocado

Cherry & chocolate

Cauliflower - coconut
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Probably my favourite meal from last week’s Paris trip was as I had expected it to be at ⭐️⭐️ @david_toutain .In 2017 I did my first gastronomic trip to Paris and specifically targeted a lot of the grand three star temples of gastronomy like Arpège, Guy Savoy, Le Cinq and Alléno and some more classical places like Tour d’Argent among others. With this brief in mind I had asked my fellow food geeks for their recommendations and I can’t remember who, but amongst that eye wateringly expensive list, someone very firmly prodded me and ordered me to visit the then one star restaurant David Toutain. And for the last three years I have been itching to get back and relive what was by far the best meal of that trip (IMO).
They did not disappoint and the second star is well deserved. The thing that stands out for me about the food here is that it makes me smile. It makes me happy. It evokes an emotional response (in a good way). I eat out a lot and that is a rare thing to achieve (especially twice in a row). This isn’t a ‘fine dining’ thing, it’s a good food thing. Sometimes that moment of bliss is in part driven by an experience, like having caviar on the top of a mountain with your lover or boiled ham with pressure-cooked-to-death veg cooked by your grandmother.
But to be able to deliver that moment of bliss based purely on the food on the plate is truly a gift. I know it’s subjective, and what gives a diner goose bumps on one plate may have another diner yawning. David Toutain’s food gives me goose bumps.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️⭐️
OAD - 80
W50Best - ‘Discovery’
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Chocolate mousse, creme anglais infused with gochujang
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A very nice lunch in Paris last week at @bruno_verjus Table restaurant where I got my favourite seat in any restaurant. Plonk me on a stool just across the bench from a bustling kitchen, feed me tasty food and keep the wine flowing and I am as happy as a pig in poop drinking a nice Burgundy.
It seems like very honest and what seems to be almost improvisational cooking here. Some have compared Bruno’s style to that of Mikael Jonsson of the incredible and much missed Hedone in London. I can see the similarities as I watch Bruno conducting this service. He hangs back and talks to friends and fellow chefs (Atsushi Tanaka of AT is in for lunch I see) but then dives into the kitchen to taste, adjust, advise, complain, compliment, scold in a Fatherly fashion and now and again take complete control of a single dish as he did with my main course. He keeps a good eye on all the diners catching our eyes every now and again and giving an approving nod to indicate “that dish we just gave you is as tasty as fuck” to which we all duly respond with a reciprocal and more urgent nod to reply “This dish you just gave me is tasty as fuck Bruno”.
The sommelier explains to me that he is never 100% sure which dishes Verjus will decide to send to a particular diner (it is an A La Carte menu but an ‘off-menu’ degustation is available) and on two occasions I ended up double parked when the som had to swiftly find another wine to go along with the last minute dish having already poured a wine for the dish he had thought was coming out. This led to a very generous wine pairing 🥴
I believe that Verjus and Jonsson share another similarity in that neither started out as a chef but were professionals in other fields. Jonsson being a lawyer and Verjus a food critic (I may be wrong).
Either way, having now watched two chefs like this cook, there is a definite identifiable style that I believe I can spot. The service in both restaurants is a little like jazz... very good jazz.
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Michelin Guide - ⭐️
OAD - 99
W50Best - ‘Discovery’
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