From Roppongi to the 101st floor of Hong Kong's ICC
Good news for Hong Kong foodies: triple Michelin starred RyuGin from Roppongi, Tokyo, has landed in the landmark ICC. Chef Seiji Yamamoto has transferred his top apprentice Hideaki Sato and five chefs from the Tokyo original to head RyuGin’s first overseas branch. Diners can try the famed 10-course Kaiseki menu ($1,980 per pax), which offers traditional dishes like premium monkfish liver from Hokkaido and special miso sauce (pictured below) alongside molecular dishes like the chef signature “-196 degree candy strawberry served with +99 degree strawberry jam”. All premium ingredients are flown directly from Japan, plus there are exclusive Japanese liquors hand selected by the in-house sommelier. Mmm… Kanpai, we say!
Best bring your appetite, as you've 8 more courses to go!
RyuGin Hong Kong. 101/F, ICC, 1 Austin Rd West, Kowloon. T: +852 2302 0222.
LUXE Link Roundup: optical illusions in New York, floating beds in Singapore, and hidden treasures in Hong Kong
BY The LUXE Editors
Panda-monium
Welcome back to our weekly LUXE Links, in which we source some of the week’s best reads from around the web and around the world. This week, optical illusions in New York, Dover Street Market hits Tokyo, and floating beds in Singapore. Get clickin’, chickens!
Now you see him, now you don’t–finding human chameleon Liu Bolin at this must-hit exhib in NYC [We Jet Set]
Inside Singapore’s New Majestic Hotel, featuring floating beds and outdoor tubs [Hotel Chatter]
Eight hidden dining and retail treasures to seek out in hectic Hong Kong [Coolhunting]
Hello, hotel room: behind the “Do Not Disturb” sign at two new European photo exhibs [Tablet Talk]
Kawakubo brings Dover Street Market to Tokyo, causes a fashion Commes-motion, sets sight on New York next [T Magazine]
In The Huffington Post: A Word from Grant Thatcher, Regional Chairman for The S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants
BY The LUXE Editors
Amber, Hong Kong's first restaurant to grace the top 50
Dear hearts, long-time readers will already know that LUXE‘s founder and Publishing Editor, Grant Thatcher, is also the Chairman of the Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan Academy panel for the S. Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants Academy. But for the poppets who are new to LUXEtasy.com, Grant has whipped up a quick blog for The Huffington Post to take us through the eating, drinking, and voting process for the W50Best as votes start coming in for the 2012 list, to be announced next April. So, which restaurants do you think should be included?
Big city lights
Dear globetrotting hearts, in case you’ve been stuck under a rock and missed the memo, LUXE has partnered up with Singapore Airlines to bring you a monthly travel column on their brand new silverkris.com website as well as the inflight mag (which can also be viewed in full online), and share how to spend 24 LUXE hours in some of our favourite cities.
This month, we turn the spotlight on LUXE’s home city, Hong Kong, for a round-the-clock sensory adventure. Whether you’re in search of Michelin-starred fine diners or hawker stalls, the latest designer fashion or bargain-priced samples, art and culture or the great outdoors, Hong Kong packs it all in, and we’ve compiled our faves into a neat one-day itinerary especially for you, Leggy Lovely.
What’s more, silverkris.com readers get an exclusive promo code to score 15% off LUXE guides and boxsets. Get ready, jet set, go!
Nei Ho! Hello Hong Kong!
What a week it’s been! As you savvy dahlings will know, we’ve just launched the first guide of our Little LUXE series for glam families on the go, Little LUXE Hong Kong, so naturally, our minds are bobbing happily in the Fragrant Harbour, like that junk boat. Well, not literally. Hong Kong is also LUXE’s home turf, so if you look really, really closely, you might see us sipping champers in our building. Yum sing, big ears!
For more fab snaps from the LUXE team’s travels around the world, check out this album on our Facebook page.
The LUXElife Q&A
Matt's dream coming true at Yardbird
If you think everything tastes like chicken at Yardbird, you’re pretty much right. Matt Abergel, who trained under Masayoshi Takayama at three-Michelin-starred Masa in New York, before heading up the kitchen at the Hong Kong outpost of Zuma, has opened the Fragrant Harbour’s coolest restaurant so far this year. It’s a neck-to-tail yakitori joint dedicated to the humble chook, with the focus of Tokyo’s famed Birdland, plus a big dose of New York-style, sass and fun thanks to its industrial shophouse interiors and hostess with the mostest Lindsay Jang. This is one piece of fowl play we’re happy to support, but be prepared to wait, it’s been rammed since opening and takes no reservations. Here, Matt talks chicken with LUXE, and tells us what Yardbird is about, the challenges of opening a restaurant, and his favourite places to dine and drink in Hong Kong and beyond.
'Ello sailor
From catwalk to high street, everybody is sporting sailor stripes this season, and Hong Kong, never one to miss a trend, is no exception. Doing it better than most, is concept store Kapok’s curators of cool, who’ve sailed across Victoria Harbour to Kowloon with their new nautically themed store, Sailor. Just in time for junk season, too. Now, where’s Roger, the cabin boy?
Hey Michael, what's cookin?
Michael White, the big guy from America’s Midwest turned Italian super chef, recently opened Al Molo, on Hong Kong‘s harbourfront, his first restaurant outside of New York. In this interview with LUXE, the master of pasta and owner of Marea and Ai Fiori, a couple of New York’s finest restaurants, tells us about his new venture, his impressions of Hong Kong, his favourite haunts in NYC and HKG and what food makes him gag.
Hawker chic
Cha chaan teng are an indelible, much-loved old school institution on Hong Kong‘s restaurant scene, as much a part of the city’s fabric as designer labels and real estate, and far more affordable. These fast and furious, all-day, east-meets-west “tea diners” serve anything from sarnies with scrambled egg and luncheon meat (that’s spam to you and me), to rice with meat sauce, albeit usually with a good pinch of MSG, to yin yeung (coffee and tea together, with milk). But Cantopop is doing things differently and making it more accessible to the uninitiated in the process. Helmed by Margaret Xu, Hong Kong pioneer of organic, locavore eating, who already owns private kitchen Yin Yang, and backed by the boys from Ital-American osteria Posto Pubblico, this is cha chaan teng 2.0.
Just hanging around
OMG, squeal! The most darling nursery-loft in town, Petit Bazaar, just got bigger and better with a new, candy colourburst of a flagship in bustling Wan Chai on Hong Kong Island. With 3,000 square feet of space spread over two floors, this “kids’ concept store” stocks just about anything your precious petits chéris could ever want. Are they going to be spoilt or what?
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