Tonight, I scored a point for the home team. And by home team, I’m referring to those of us who still eat crap foods.
Our opposition consists of the ever-growing segment of consumers obsessed with healthy culinary habits. But in this instance, I’m referring to a specific variety of the health-obsessed: the raw foodie. My new friend Anthony is a raw foodist. He is also a model with a campaign that’s presently being broadcast on a larger-than-life billboard in Times Square in New York. So the odds were against me as we argued about the benefits of raw foods.

The thing that scares me about tattoos isn’t just the fact that they’re permanent. It’s also because they’re a mass invitation for the world to judge you. People aren’t satisfied with the fact that you’ve simply chosen a pretty design for yourself; they want some deeply significant back story behind it.

There’s really no other way to put this: The best thing I’ve eaten in recent months was the Fergus, which I ate with the (actual) Fergus.
The singular Fergus Fung is the man that makes up one-half of the WOM Guide, Hong Kong’s answer to the Zagat long before Zagat ventured over here and fizzled. And so I asked him the broken-record-question that I’m sure plagues his daily existence: “What restaurants should I go to?”

The doctor’s orders were to quit my job.
Those weren’t his words exactly, but he certainly gave me plenty of reasons to start daydreaming about my life as a cartoonist, or some other less life-threatening vocation.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here. The whole thing had started off on a much more reassuring note. I had signed my name onto the emergency waitlist at the gastrointestinal specialist because for three days straight, it felt like someone was repeatedly punching my stomach from the inside at regular intervals.

Once upon a time, the French reigned as kings of the culinary world. These days, they get a lot of crap from Spain-loving enthusiasts on one end, and those who swear that the Chinese invented everything to begin with on the other.

He tells me his first memory of food is foie gras—homemade by his grandmother from their ducks on a farm in Landes, a southwestern province of France. Perhaps if more people gave their children goose liver in lieu of canned baby food, they would all grow up to have the palate of Alain Ducasse.

We interrupt our regular program to bring you a little something from the past...
A few weeks ago, I wrote a heated (but honest) diatribe attacking Coca-Cola’s limited edition product, “The Super Chill.” In some mad-scientist product developer’s mind, it was supposed to be an instantly iced coke slurpee; in reality, we all know that it was a wimpy, stale-tasting version of Coke.
This is the story of the series of events that unfolded shortly after:

There are many birthday cakes being served this year with 60 candles on top. And this month, three “birthday boys” miraculously reunited to meet with me, of all people—Chef Nobu Matsuhisa (who turned 60 this year) was visiting his restaurant at the InterContinental Hotel (also turning 60) in the same month as the Chinese Communist Party’s 60th National Day. I’d like to think cosmic fate brought us all together. Or maybe I was a wee bit of a stalker and asked to be notified the minute Nobu-san lands in Hong Kong.

In the food world, there is a thin line dividing the weird from the wonderful. And when I’m on duty to be judge, jury, and executioner, if you cross that line to the wrong side, there’ll be punishment in my merciless rants.

By the time you read this, it’ll be too late.
Sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, but I felt like I was sworn to an unspoken pact of secrecy. While you may think that its human nature to instantaneously blabber about juicy news, when a real golden nugget lands on your lap, people tend to zip it.