On our last night in Hirafu we decided to venture into Kutchan and go to the highly recommended Torimatsu yakitori restaurant. This is a real local joint and as soon as we walked in were the talk of the restaurant – we even got sent a few sakes just for amusing the crowd!   

There is a menu in English which really helps but it is best to communicate with the love of food. The grill is the hero here, and there is a list of all the fish that has been picked up at the local market that morning.

Our dry chilled sake arrived and was poured into a large cup filled to the top and overflowed into a saucer, it is the way the local drink it and tonight we are in for a lot of fun as well as good food and drink.

Seated at the counter, I can’t take my eyes of the grill master. It is great thing to watch as the room fills with smoke and he twirls and moves sticks up and down the grill, at one stage a whole bunch of small whole fish in cages are cooked for a large table of local business guys. Everyone at the counter is amused and bewildered at us being there and enjoying the food so much. We start with a complimentary dashi soup with shredded egg. It is delicate and delicious, the salmon and local mackerel is beautiful sashimi with the freshness of the fish screaming out. The tofu with shaved bonito and horseradish with slices of spring onion and a little soy is wonderful – I love the silky, creamy taste of the tofu made on the premises.

The Maitake mushrooms are a favourite of Sam and mine, just sautéed they taste so pure and balanced and once finished I longed for another plate, but we had ordered heaps of food. I loved the small chunks of delicate cucumber with a sweet taste and amazing crunch, paired beautifully with  nutty and salty miso. The chicken and pork yakitori were good and smoky but the stand out for me was the local sausage, this was the best I had tried on the trip. The chicken wings were great to pick up and chew with your fingers dripping with juice, smoky, crisp and melting flesh between the bones, I love it!  The grilled onions with shaved bonito were so sweet, a local specialty here and I would love a salad of them just dressed with extra virgin olive oil and Fourm vinegar to go with any summer BBQ. The skate wing was our last dish and by this stage about three cups of sake had gone down, we were really into the smoky roar of the local crowd drinking eating and having fun. We shredded the sweet delicate fish off the cartilage, and although our tummies were bulging, we were having such a great time and wanted more. Luckily sanity prevailed and we arranged a taxi and the bill, it was crazy cheap.  All that food and sake for less than $100, it was so much fun, we will be back for sure.

Just outside the ski town of Annupuri is the Rakuichi Soba restaurant. This quaint chalet is home to a fantastic noodle experience. You enter and remove your shoes  and don slippers before entering the dining room and sitting at the counter with the menu in Japanese cut into a timber plank. With us speaking no Japanese and them having very little English it is a challenge, but a fun one that ends with you having an amazing meal, worth the effort I would say.

The charming and gracious Midori Rai helps you with your selection, Sam ordered soba with Broth, I the Duck Soba, we split a vegetable tempura to start, a beer for me and a jug of chilled sake for Sam.   Once you place your order chef and master Soba maker Tatsuru Rai takes a small amount of dough out of a large bowl and begins to roll the dough at first like you would pastry and then he wraps it around the timber Dahl and rolls it continuing changing the direction until he has a perfect thin square, then he rolls it and with the knife cuts it into perfect soba nobles, the noodles are placed in a sieve and shaken to remover extra flour.

We then had our tempura of chestnut, eggplant, snow pea, shitake, lotus root, sweet potato and green bean, it was light and delicious and every vegetable had a different texture and taste. The noodles and their broth were both exquisite, soft and tender yet with a biet you only get from fresh made noodles. This is a place where the owners put their charm and skill into every experience. Sam and I will be dreaming of this place until next year, when we will be back without a doubt!!

Took a few hours off the slops today as it was pissing down with snow, tomorrow should be a cracker.

We decided to get a taxi to Niseko and go to the Hilton’s Rera sushi bar . Rumour is its the best Sushi bar in the area, it is true. We sat down at the counter for a very entertaining hour and ate great sushi.

When they pull out a block of toro it is really hard to say no, this fish was amazing - fatt and lush with a great flavour all melting in your mouth as you bit into it. The tuna was great as were the other fish. King salmon around here eats beautifully raw and the squid was no slouch either. The cook Hokkaido crab was awesome too.

I love sushi when you feel every grain of rice, but it all hangs together as you use your hands to eat all the great fish, washed down with a little Kokushi Retsu dry sake. What a great lunch. I thoroughly recommend it.

Last week, Phil Wood, Executive Chef of Rockpool and I were in LA to do a lunch for Qantas and NSW Tourism. We were lucky enough to be helped by Rory Hermann and his amazing team at Bouchon Bistro, but more about that in a later blog. This is all about the beautiful food we ate at Thomas Keller’s brand new Bouchon Bistro in Beverly Hills, where Rory is Executive Chef. 

This is a stunning, classic looking restaurant that has a wonderful feel about it when sitting there and enjoying a meal. The detail and well crafted finishes make this a special place. Add to that the buzz of lots of people enjoying the ambience, food, wine and service and this really is a great experience. 

The restaurant menu features classic after classic, that Thomas and Rorys’ team have cooked with such passion and craft that it transcends your expectations of a bistro or brassiere. It is opulent and sophisticated, and as usual, everything you would expect from a Thomas Keller restaurant. The guys here are doing approachable food amazingly well. This is the type of food that you could eat every day and keep coming back for more. 

We started with a wonderfully fresh grand platter of seafood, moved on to a generous plate of charcuterie, a blend of house made and best hams in the world, a lush salmon rillette, a light and delicious white bean puree, some gorgeous foie gras, the texture that only Thomas seems to get with pistachio cream, followed by roast figs, sunchokes and blood orange, then a crisp skin snapper cooked to perfection, and to finish, a pave of lam leg with roasted vegetables and panisse. Well we thought we were finished, then Scott the pastry chef spoiled us further with a number of incredibly textured and flavoured sweet treats. Among them, crème caramel, pot a crèmes, chocolate slice, lemon tart, doughnuts and chocolate bouchons. A truly wonderful and indulgent meal – completely looked after by great friends. 

The next day, we returned for a quick lunch before setting off for a function I needed to speak at in Newport…a bowl of mussels with saffron and chips and one of the specialties, Roast chicken. As expected, it was yummy and once again displayed the quality at work in the kitchen.

Hirafu and Hanazono are two of the best places to ski on earth. They are on the Island of Hokkaido. The winds blow off Siberia over the sea and dump crisp dry snow on the island almost nightly. The view from the plane landing on snow-covered Sapporo was spectacular. I had never seen blue ocean giving way to white snow and a city underneath before.  

We were so lucky to find Suiboku to stay in – a marvellous modern and comfortable block of luxury apartments in Hirafu. They were so comfortable that we never wanted to leave; lucky the snow was so good it lured us out daily. The town is well serviced by bars and restaurants and the food is fantastic but more about that in a restaurant blog I will post later.

More on the snow though… it is so dry you can’t even make snowballs and we were skiing in fresh powder on groomed runs and off piste tree runs most days. The kids loved the ski school and sledding every afternoon.

The onsen culture is well and truly entrenched in the area and in Suiboku, we were lucky enough to enjoy a beautiful private onsen in our apartment; the whole family could relax in it each evening as we looked out over spectacular Mt Yotie, the volcano. Of course, there are lots of onsens in the village and around the local towns as well. We had such a great time the whole family is heading back next January.

For the last few years Sam and I have visited our favourite cheap and cheerful place in Paris is Le Comptoir religiously, the food is simple and really well cooked.  There is a more sophisticated set dinner menu, but we love to sit there at lunch, watch Paris go by and eat beautiful well crafted food. The terrines and other charcutrie are amazing. Suckling pig with lentils and lamb rack with peppers are also simple perfectly cooked and wonderful.

Drink simple wine and relax, then after lunch go for a walk in the nearby Luxemburg gardens…plus the shopping is great in the area as well. In a city where not everywhere you eat is going to be good, this is highly recommended. I believe if you stay in house the breakfasts are delicious and the rooms comfortable, it certainly is in a smart part of town.  

Heston Blumenthal is not only one of the greatest and most curious cooks on earth, but he is also one of the best guys on the planet. Along with Thomas Keller, we do “The Ultimate Dinner” together in Sydney for The Starlight Children’s Foundation and the last two have been a blast. I have been to his wonderful restaurant just outside of London, in Bray, three times, I have been lucky and had the guided tour of the lab where lots of experiments take place. Here is a restaurant where every detail is looked after. It is a charming 1500’s building with a very Heston feel inside, by that I mean comfortable and really hospitable, the staff are full of his enthusiasm and you get the feeling that you are sitting down to something really exciting and rare the minute you arrive….and you are!

The 4 to 5 hour dining experience starts out with a beautiful turn of lime meringue frozen in liquid nitrogen and dusted with green tea. You are instructed to pop the whole thing in your mouth and it explodes with flavour and smoke comes out your nose…your palate is awake and ready for more. Nothing on this long journey is what it seems, but what is wonderful is not only is it entertaining and exciting, but importantly it tastes great. From the lime grove to the red cabbage gazpacho, the snail porridge, the jelly of quail and crayfish crème – it is amazing and delicious, then foie gras and the crazily good mock turtle soup.

From there, onto sounds of the sea – an i-pod is given to each guest to listen to the sea and gulls to get you more in the mood for your raw seafood plate complete with beach! Salmon poached in liquorice is delicate and at the same time very complex as is the Anjou pigeon.

Dessert is a blast and the flavour great and the gags keep coming with the “not so full English breakfast” – parsnips masquerading as corn flakes, the famous and rightly so bacon and egg ice cream and finishing with the hot and cold tea. This is Heston at his most whimsical and playful. The meal doesn’t stop there. It is truly a fantastic experience, take the wine match and let the somms do their stuff.

Phil Howard’s The Square restaurant is my favourite fine dinner in London. He changes the menu often to reflect the seasons and his food is really well crafted, with only the best quality ingredients used.

We would have had lots more shots of food only Sam and I left our camera in a taxi in Paris and lost all of our holiday and dinner snaps to a nasty cab driver.

Back to the restaurant, the well renowned gnocchi and scampi dish is famous for good reason, and my eel salad with lots of beautiful flavours and textures was one of my favourite dishes of 2008. As it was September when we visited I had to have Grouse and wasn’t disappointed.  Sam’s turbot was cooked to a moment and so moist and delicious, I love this king of flat fish.

We skipped dessert on that trip and went straight to nougat and coffee as we were doing more stars that day.

On other visits the pastry section has been on fire. There is a great wine list and knowledgeable staff.  A fantastic front of house team finishes off a well rounded restaurant experience. I always wonder why this isn’t a three star restaurant, as to me it ticks all the boxes!

L’Arpege is one of my favourite restaurants in the world.

I first went there in January 1993 with Ken Hom and had a wonderful meal. I will never forget that veal cutlet for 2 people carved at the table and a beautiful celeriac gratin. In those days the menu had side dishes to go with mains, I started out that meal with the legendary egg and maple syrup and had one of my all time favourite entrees of veal sweetbreads with truffle and chestnuts. I love being in Paris in truffle season and this dish was so good that over my next 4 visits I started with the very same marvellous sweet bread dish.

I was there the night in April 1996 when Alain Passard received his third Michelin star, he was a very happy man indeed. I have dined there a total of 14 times over the ensuing years so you might guess that it is a favourite. I love the total focus on produce, most of the vegetables come from his garden outside Paris and the preparation is completely simple, but at the same time complex, but don’t try this at home folks, it really requires great understanding to pull out the flavours.  

I was lucky enough to visit 3 times this year, one lunch and two dinners. Lots of the menu is vegetable based. On my last visit I ate peas, strawberries and basil with a light onion cream sauce, it should have been crazy but was one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten, the key being the peas straight from the garden that morning.

Most of the mains come out roasted, are presented whole, then come back to the table after being carved in the kitchen and paired with seasonal vegetables and a delicious sauce. I love the roast lobster or the lobster with sweet and sour raw turnips, either is a cracker. Fish roasted whole on the bone is wonderful and moist and the chicken cooked in vine leaves divine. The cheese in incredible - the old vintage Comte from 04 was so deep with flavour. Alain is famous for the sweet tomato dessert, but my two favourites are the Mille Feuille that is so light you can eat the largest slab without any problem and the apple tart with every rosette made from pure apple. 

You may have guessed that I’m fond of this restaurant, it is my absolute favourite in Paris.

Some years ago Andoni Luis of Mugaritz fame told me it was a chef’s responsiblity to record his travels and influences with photos and words. Since that time I have always photographed everything of interest that I have done or eaten.

It is an amazing way to look back at interesting meals and times from not only travelling but also at home in my own restaurants in Sydney. I was just going through some old shots and noticed these wonderful dishes from the French Laundry. I have been lucky enough to eat at this great restaurant several times, but these photographs are from my last two visits.

Thomas is not only a great man but he runs one of the world’s very best restaurants, well several actually, but let’s focus on “The French Laundry”, with its blue door, wonderful kitchen garden over the road and most importantly, great kitchen staff and some of the very best service you will get anywhere in the world. You start out with a myriad of appetizers, the famous Salmon tartare in pretty cones, the amazing please- can- I- have- one –every- day ‘oysters and pearls’ (love caviar), truffle custards, the list goes on, then into lovely salads, foie gras, lobster cooked sous vide, chicken, quail and beef and quite often a pigeon dish.

Desserts and cheese courses don’t disappoint either. This is wonderful produce driven food cooked with marvellous technique and delivered with such generous and hospitable service that a trip to the Napa is a must. All the shots of these wonderful dishes were taken over a couple of meals, so don’t expect it all when you dine there, however you will be blown away by the number and quality of the dishes, plus a whole vegetarian menu is on offer. On one visit Sam, my wife, was pregnant so she chose it and we spent the whole meal fighting over her dishes as they were so delicious.