On my very first birthday, I accidentally decided the fate of my life.
It was an age-old Chinese tradition: You place a baby in the middle of a floor strewn with different objects, and the first three objects the clueless infant picks are sure signs of his or her future career. Pretty...
Sep 30 2010 - 1:15pm
The last time I saw him, he was setting a copy of the Hong Kong Macau Michelin Guide on fire. It was not particularly tough looking since he was doing it with a crème brulée torch over a nonstick frying pan. But if you knew Dan, you’d know he wasn’t trying to make a joint...
Sep 22 2010 - 11:58am
The first thing I ever made in culinary school was an apple tart. It was a simple sweet dough shell, spread with a layer of apple compote, and topped with thin apple slices. It also happened to be the biggest pain in the ass.
Two people cut themselves that day. One person cried. And these were all...
Sep 16 2010 - 11:00pm
The person who first invented must’ve been a genius—and crazy. But the best things in life—and on the plate—always come with a little bit of both. What’s crazy about lardo should be obvious—it doesn’t take a Latin major to deduce from the etymological root...
Sep 9 2010 - 11:00pm
At times like this, it’s hard not to feel proud to be Chinese. Here at Taipei’s National Palace Museum, the two most famous standouts of the collection, inarguably, are: the jadeite cabbage and the meat-shaped stone.
That’s pretty unbeatable. The Greeks embraced the human form in...
Sep 2 2010 - 11:00pm
The best tip I ever got about smuggling food through the airport came from a pilot.
“College t-shirts,” said Tim. “Dress in head-to-toe college gear. Preferably sporting the name of one of those schools in the American heartland. University of Illinois, that’s a good one....
Aug 26 2010 - 11:00pm
There’s a certain box of chocolates that I’ve been saving for a special day. But with flavors like durian and tom yum soup, it was hard to find a suitable occasion for breaking it open. Three months passed as the box beckoned from my kitchen counter, and then something wonderful...
Aug 19 2010 - 11:00pm
It was the third time this month I had taken someone to Manor Restaurant, one of my favorite alternatives to Tsui Wah, for a late night meal, and every one of them had said the same thing: if they were to ever start a fast food chain, they would populate the world with a dish called "gum chin...
Aug 12 2010 - 11:00pm
While putting together the obligatory wedding PowerPoint, Alison phoned me, frantic. “Amy, I don’t have a single photo of you,” she said in disbelief. “What I do have, are photos of food.”
The other wedding guests are going to question just how close we are. Alison had...
Aug 5 2010 - 11:00pm
We set him up. D was asleep when Cayis and I received the email from the hotel asking us to indicate our preferences prior to our arrival in Bali. And so we did what any bored friend waiting for the other to wake up would’ve done in a situation like this: we filled in his information for him...
Jul 29 2010 - 11:00pm
