https://www.scmp.com/rss/323466/feed en https://assets.i-scmp.com/static/img/icons/scmp-meta-1200x630.png https://www.scmp.com Penlaos ranks among the newest, cheapest and most unlikely places recognised in the Michelin Guide Thailand 2024. Hidden in the elephant-dotted hills of northeast Thailand, it offers 300 covers, and a choice of 200 dishes, and has 70 front-of-house staff. Most guests dine in its warehouse-like interior, a gargantuan space decorated with Laotian bunting, which flaps in a tornado of giant fans. The cuisine at Penlaos is from the Isaan region, as Thailand’s northeast is called. Dishes are made with... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3250579/michelin-rated-restaurant-tour-thailand-penlaos-isaan-2-star-baan-tepa-mauro-colaegrecos-cote-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3250579/michelin-rated-restaurant-tour-thailand-penlaos-isaan-2-star-baan-tepa-mauro-colaegrecos-cote-and?utm_source=rss_feed Sat, 03 Feb 2024 03:15:15 +0000 My €5.90 (US$6.50) Ovni burger at L’Après M was created by three-Michelin-star restaurant chef Gérald Passedat, and it shows. Each locally sourced ingredient at this fast food joint sings, from the organic lettuce grown on an urban farm, to the rosemary snagged from the car park. The pink meat inside the patty – still beautifully rare – explodes with flavour like a bovine beef bomb. L’Après M’s golden arches may look familiar. That’s because the restaurant was, until recently, a drive-through... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3230509/marseilles-exciting-dining-scene-prison-restaurant-ex-mcdonalds-drive-through-and-high-end-food?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/3230509/marseilles-exciting-dining-scene-prison-restaurant-ex-mcdonalds-drive-through-and-high-end-food?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 10 Aug 2023 11:15:10 +0000 To meet Georgia’s most acclaimed winemaker, I have driven through deciduous rainforest and semi-desert scrub. “In western Georgia we have clay over limestone, plus granite in the north and volcanic rock in the south,” explains John Wurdeman of Pheasant’s Tears vineyards. “Combine this terroir with 525 grape varieties across varying altitudes, and you have the world’s most diverse winemaking area.” Quite simply, the birthplace of viticulture is a boozy Garden of Eden. To take advantage of the... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2154773/georgias-8000-year-wine-history-and-natural-wine-revolution?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2154773/georgias-8000-year-wine-history-and-natural-wine-revolution?utm_source=rss_feed Wed, 11 Jul 2018 12:30:30 +0000 Chalong Bay Rum distillery offers a lesson in Phuket flavours. Trays of cinnamon, limes and holy basil are about to be infused into the island’s award-winning rum. Bulbous glass bottles, each numbered by hand, await distribution to France, Australia and Hong Kong. Distillery owners Marine Lucchini and Thibault Spithakis, now both 31 years old, started the business aged 25. “We were working in finance in Paris and thought, ‘Why wait until we are 40? If we start the distillery now, we [will] have... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2141287/thailands-boutique-rums-leave-global-industry-wanting-more?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2141287/thailands-boutique-rums-leave-global-industry-wanting-more?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 12 Apr 2018 12:15:45 +0000 I’m swimming in an Olympic pool ringed by an amphitheatre of jungle. Above this emerald forest, a tropical storm darkens the dusk, then slashes it with lighting bolts. Monkeys howl, and twilight birds chorus. But still I race on to the tick-tick-tick of a giant Seiko clock. That is because there’s a gold medal winner swimming in the lane adjacent. Thanyapura, an Olympic village nestled in Thai rainforest 20 minutes from Phuket Airport, is a training ground for the stars. Case in point: in... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2131009/why-phuket-draws-top-sports-stars-training-cyclists-maria?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/travel-leisure/article/2131009/why-phuket-draws-top-sports-stars-training-cyclists-maria?utm_source=rss_feed Mon, 29 Jan 2018 10:17:27 +0000 Three-Michelin-star chef Gérald Passedat gazes over the Mediterranean from his Marseilles restaurant, Le Petit Nice. “Bouillabaisse was originally a poor dish for poor people,” he explains. “The ingredients come from there.” Passedet gestures to the lapping sea below his restaurant terrace, where you can find rascasse (scorpion fish), cigale de mer (slipper lobsters) and étrille (velvet crabs). In centuries past, these hard-to-sell sea creatures were landed in the southern French city’s Vieux... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2125842/marseilles-beloved-bouillabaisse-gets-update-burgers-and-milk?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2125842/marseilles-beloved-bouillabaisse-gets-update-burgers-and-milk?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 28 Dec 2017 12:46:08 +0000 From 1945 to 1991 Albania was the Mediterranean’s hermit kingdom. After the second world war, the country, led by Enver Hoxha, became a hardline communist state. His goal was for the country to be completely self-sufficient – all food was rationed, collectivised and canned. Fishing was discouraged because boats were considered a way to escape. Cookbooks were burnt and traditional recipes were lost. Its coastline’s juicy Adriatic prawns – beloved in neighbouring Italy and Greece – were presumed... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2115969/albanias-food-revolution-unique-ingredients-lost-wines-and?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2115969/albanias-food-revolution-unique-ingredients-lost-wines-and?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 19 Oct 2017 11:48:40 +0000 The arrival at Nice airport was something of a ceremony for food writer Julia Child. As she wrote to her fellow cookbook author, Mary Frances Kennedy Fisher: “This has become our ritual gear-shift from the USA.” In the 1960s and 1970s, both writers were at the peak of their powers – the most famous foodie names in the Western world. It was only natural that both gravitated to the planet’s most fabulous culinary corner: the south of France. Television chef Jacques Pepin on 40 years of teaching... https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2029493/footsteps-food-writer-mfk-fisher-provence-culinary-trail?utm_source=rss_feed https://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/food-drink/article/2029493/footsteps-food-writer-mfk-fisher-provence-culinary-trail?utm_source=rss_feed Thu, 20 Oct 2016 09:03:40 +0000