The land of seafood, sushi and scenery gains another gastronomical advantage. After a five-year hiatus, Michelin inspectors returned to the second largest island of Japan in search of new dining destinations worthy of being admitted into the exclusive starred club. The result? Two new three Michelin-starred restaurants from the island of Hokkaido.
Michelin published a one-off guide for the island in 2012. Overall, the 2017 edition of the guide features 22 new Michelin-starred restaurants. Amongst these include Hanakoji Sawada, which serves a seasonal Japanese menu. The restaurant was promoted from its two-star standing to three stars. The 36-seat restaurant is located in the city of Sapporo.
Sushi Miyakawa now also boasts a triple-starred ranking. Three Michelin stars denote “exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey,” while two stars represent “excellent cooking, worth a detour.” A single star denotes “a very good restaurant in its category. Other notable new entries include Tempura araki, which received two stars, and Koyon Yamahisa, which unlocked its first star.
The Hokkaido Michelin guide 2017 launches officially on May 19.
Breguet recently relocated its flagship within Marina Bay Sands and while renovation works were in progress, the star of the casino-resort dimmed ever so slightly, until last May 2017, Breguet celebrated the grand re-opening of its boutique at a new location with the Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands.
Guests and clients were invited to experience the new store concept of the Breguet flagship – an expansive 134 sq m boutique compared to the earlier Breguet boutique (also located within Marina Bay Sands) with 115 sq m. The re-invigorated temple to watchmaking now stands as one of two Breguet boutiques within Southeast Asia, the other, 350km north in Kuala Lumpur.
Dr. Chettha Songthaveepol having his hands-on experience at Breguet Marina Bay Sands with the fully functional —engine-turning machine (also known as a machine à guillocher).
Re-Opened Breguet Singapore boutique at Marina Bay Sands
At least 60 VIP guests joined Breguet and Swatch Group Singapore and Malaysia Management executives at the ribbon-cutting ceremony which combined an exhibit of traditional fine Swiss watchmaking with East-meets-West cultural performances, namely, a lion dance which ushered good fortune for the official opening and classical violin accompaniment provided by up-and-coming Ukrainian violinist Orest Smovzh, who serenaded watch collectors and brand lovers.
Breguet also took the opportunity to showcase its artistic craftsmanship with a demonstration at the antique guillochage machine from 1905, which will remain a mainstay in the new boutique.
Classic elegance met classic timepieces in a sophisticated setting which allowed clients to appreciate fine Breguet watchmaking in luxurious walnut settees whilst enjoying a bit of watch geekery when they spy the signature Breguet Clous de Paris engine-turned engravings on the glass walls scattered throughout the boutique.
In case you missed the Breguet Singapore flagship boutique exhibits…
For this occasion, Breguet Marina Bay Sands played host to an exceptional collection of antique pocket watches from Breguet’s museum to the delight of the many connoisseurs at the event.
At Breguet Marina Bay Sands was the quarter repeating pocket watch N° 2952, made for the Turkish market in 1817.From left: N° 4265 Simple, flat twin barrel watch and N° 5084 Simple watch, both exemplars of heritage Breguet watchmaking
A brand signature, guilloché patterning derives its strong associations thanks to founder Abraham-Louis Breguet who began fitting his watches with guilloché silver or gold dials of his own design in 1786. Under him, guilloché became an art form, with hand-engraved lines and hollowed-out areas of the dial reserved for indications such as the power reserve, the moon’s phases and the subdial for the seconds.
Breguet’s 1799 montre a tact, covered in brilliant blue enamel is so named for the “tact” which allows the owner to “feel” for time discretely by running his thumb along the arrow and to which “nub” hour index it is pointing to on the mid-case.
You can visit the re-opened Breguet Marina Bay Sands boutique at: #B2-236 The Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands, 2 Bayfront Avenue, Singapore 018972
The principality in the South of France yet again provided a stunning backdrop for what is to many the most glamorous race on the F1 calendar. Seventy-five years on the race that has been described as ‘special’ by everyone from Hollywood A-listers to racing legends continued to charm fans and audiences in a way only Monaco can. To kick off the week of parties and celebrations – literally – the AS Monaco stadium hosted the World Stars friendly Football match. The match featured an eclectic mix of past and present F1 drivers including Felipe Massa, Mika Häkkinen, Carlos Sainz and Daniel Ricciardo as the ‘Piloti’ team who pit their skills against the AS Star Team captained by H.S.H. Prince Albert II. It was action packed with loads of thrills on the field that saw the AS Star Team emerge as winners. Felipe Massa, who captained the Piloti team, was very happy to be able to contribute to the game and for a good cause. His son Feliphino was also seen playing on the sidelines and posing for pictures with his proud father. Mika Häkkinen was so involved in the game that he split his pair of football boots only to rush to the locker room, grab a new pair and get back out on the field again.
Felipe Massa
Daniel Ricciardo
Mika Häkkinen
Prince Albert of Monaco
As the glistening super yachts began to fill the ports and the supercars revved up the Riviera, the Fairmont hotel’s latest conception, Nikki Beach, a rooftop bar, was the perfect place to sit back, cocktail in hand and catch the gorgeous Monaco sunset. Red Bull, famed for its energy station, a giant floating party palace set right in Port Hercule played host to some of the biggest A-list celebrities including José Mourinho, George Lucas and Geri Halliwell. The Energy Station, famed for hosting some of the best and wildest parties of the weekend, lived up to its reputation with a media event on Thursday night that featured guest DJ appearances against the backdrop of the Red Bull swimming pool. Friday rolled around and the weekend came into full swing. Back at the Red Bull party, dozens of ardent fans greeted Sir Jackie Stewart who dropped by for interviews and to check out the action on the upper deck.
Sir Jackie Stewart
Chris Hemsworth
The Monaco Grand Prix weekend also kicks off Amber Lounge the ritziest party of them all. Sonia Irvine, the queen of the glitziest string of parties on the F1 calendar put on a truly show-stopping Amber Fashion show. This year’s fashion show provided a generous platform to raise awareness and funds in aid of Race Against Dementia, Sir Jackie Stewart’s foundation racing against the clock to find and develop a cure for dementia. The evening raised over for the charity, featured celebrities including Pamela Anderson, Kate Upton and Liam Cunningham with performances by Chris Willis. The current crop of F1 drivers made their mark on the runway too with Marcus Ericsson, Esteban Ocon and Pascal Wehrlein looking sharp strutting down the runway. The night ended with a decadent dinner, amongst star-studded company and great wine.
Kate Upton and Carmen Jorda
Saturday’s qualifying saw Kimi Räikkönen take pole position ahead of his fellow Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel and for once in a very long while, the Finn nicknamed ‘The Ice Man’ let out a brief smile during the post-qualifying press conference. Amongst the glistening super yachts in the harbour, few came close to Tag Heuer‘s massive four-deck yacht that featured a DJ, a scrumptious Japanese spread and of course, champagne. The evening soiree was attended by Hollywood’s elite including Chris Hemsworth, Matt Damon and Liam Cunningham. The Game of Thrones actor made it a point to pose for pictures and sign autographs while sipping champagne. Luxury nightclub Twiga, owned by former Renault team boss Flavio Briatore saw a stellar line-up of acts from Bob Sinclair to the F1 OAK (One of A Kind) party featuring DJ Magnum and equally magnum bottles of Dom Perignon champagne.
Sunday’s sunrise brought with it new hopes for Ferrari who had not won in Monaco. The Prancing Horses had pocket aces as Räikkönen and Sebastian Vettel were one and two on the grid respectively. In what is probably the most star-studded pre-race grid at any F1 race, everyone converged on the track to soak in the atmosphere. Adrianna Lima, the gorgeous Victoria Secret angel was seen posing with Carmen Jorda. As the five red lights went out on yet another edition of the Monaco Grand Prix was underway. Lewis Hamilton started in fourteenth place but put a stellar performance to finish seventh, his lowest classification since the Shanghai race last year. McLaren‘s Jenson Button who stood in for Fernando Alonso made headlines on the track as he dived in for an overtake and clipped Pascal Wehrlein’s car causing the German’s car to turn on its side. The German was pronounced fit after a medical check. Daniel Ricciardo finished third for the second time in two races owning to Valtteri Bottas starting -and finishing the race in fourth place. In the end thanks to a well-timed pit stop Vettel managed to come out ahead of his teammate and take the chequered flag. To close off a brilliant race weekend the drivers, celebrities and racing aficionados spent the evening at Amber Lounge.
Millions of tourists visited Egypt every year to see its Giza Pyramids — the only surviving monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — and its ancient pharaonic temples and relics. Egyptian archaeologists have discovered 17 mummies in desert catacombs in Minya province, an unprecedented find for the area south of Cairo, the antiquities ministry announced on May 13.
Archaeologists found the non-royal mummies in a series of corridors after following the trail of burial shafts in the Touna-Gabal district of the central Egyptian province, the ministry said in a statement. Along with the mummies, they found a golden sheet and two papyri in Demotic — an ancient Egyptian script — as well as a number of sarcophogi made of limestone and clay. There were also animal and bird coffins, the ministry said. But the mummies have not yet been dated.
The ministry said they belonged to the Late Period, which spanned almost 300 years up to Alexander the Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 BC. But a spokeswoman told AFP they could also date from the Ptolemaic Dynasty, founded by Alexander the Great’s general Ptolemy. The discovery of the non-royal mummies is considered unprecedented because it is the first such find in the area, officials said at the site.
Egyptologist Salah al-Kholi told a news conference held near the desert site that the discovery was “the first human necropolis found in central Egypt with so many mummies”. It could herald even more discoveries in the area, he said.
The discovery was “important, unprecedented,” Mohamed Hamza, director of excavations for Cairo University said. The site is close to an ancient animal cemetery. “The discovery is still at its beginning,” Antiquities Minister Khaled al-Enany told reporters. It was the second discovery of mummies announced with much fanfare by the government in less than a month.
In April, the ministry invited reporters to the southern city of Luxor to unveil eight mummies discovered in a 3,500-year-old tomb belonging to a nobleman. For the cash-strapped Egyptian government, the discoveries are a boon from the country’s glorious past as it struggles to attract tourists scared off by a series of Islamist militant attacks.
“Antiquities are the soft power that distinguishes Egypt,” Enany said. “News of antiquities are the things that attract the world to Egypt.”
Millions of tourists visited Egypt every year to see its Giza Pyramids — the only surviving monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World — and its ancient pharaonic temples and relics. But a popular uprising in 2011 that overthrew veteran strongman Hosni Mubarak ushered in years of unrest that battered the economy and drove away tourists.
Visitors of The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios Hollywood will be offered a nocturnal experience this summer that will shine a new light on Hogwarts under the cloak of night. As night falls on Hogsmeade Village, visitors will be treated to a new special effects and light show that will be projected against Hogwarts Castle.
Set against a musical arrangement by composer to the stars John Williams—whose soundtrack credits include the Harry Potter movies, “Jaws,” “E.T.” “Star Wars” “Indiana Jones” —”The Nighttime Lights at Hogwarts Castle” will showcase the four houses of Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin. The new show will be projected multiple times a night, beginning from June 23.
The thrill ride “Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey,” which combines action sequences with a robotic ride system, was also upgraded from 3D to 4K-HD for a more hyper-realistic experience, at 120 frames per second.
The ride will take guests through the corridors of Hogwarts, Dumbledore’s office, the Gryffindor common room, and above the castle grounds.
That’s the true hallmark of a top restaurant today, says Steve Plotnicki, a former music executive turned food blogger whose restaurant ranking Opinionated About Dining (OAD) solicits the input of the culinary elite around the world.
Because the best restaurants understand that it’s no longer enough to serve an impeccably turned out meal, he said in an interview ahead of the unveiling of the OAD’s Top 100+ European Restaurants 2017 in Paris this week.
Today’s globe-trotting diners are savvier and more sophisticated than ever before, while theatrical dining and performance art are no longer surprising or novel. To up the ante, the most attentive restaurants are doing their homework and establishing a customised dining experience for guests.
“If you look at the top 50 restaurants on OAD and the World’s 50 Best, I’ll bet that they’re all Googling their customers beforehand,” he said.
For the customer, that means a more personalised experience in which the chef or server may be able to recommend a pork dish if the diner has expressed a love for all things porcine online, or exchange pleasantries about the guest’s hometown.
To illustrate his point, Plotnicki refers back to a meal in which 46 OAD members were invited to dine at Noma in Copenhagen last year before it shuttered. Noma owes much of its fame to having topped the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list four times.
A few days before, chef Rene Redzepi, a celebrity name in the world of contemporary gastronomy, emailed Plotnicki asking for short bios on every single guest.
“He wanted to talk to them at the table when he visited them, showing that he had some knowledge about them,” Plotnicki explained.
“To me, that marks a change in the way restaurants operate.”
Plotnicki is a walking encyclopaedia of food who can rhyme off the meals he’s eaten along with the year, much like a culinary discography.
In order to illustrate his analogies, he often uses musical references, a relic of his days as a music executive whose claim to fame is having discovered Run-DMC.
During a discussion about French chef Alain Passard‘s influence — whose Paris restaurant Arpege topped OAD’s top European restaurant’s list this year, for the second time — Plotnicki credits the chef for influencing generations of some of today’s top-ranked chefs, including Ferran Adria.
It’s like listening to rock ‘n roll, he says. “I hear so many instances of music that come straight from the Beatles. And in the Beatles, you hear Beethoven.”
He also uses music to illustrate a less flattering portrait of gastronomy in France today, where chefs haven’t evolved from playing the same classical tune — classical French cooking — they’ve been playing for years.
“France is very insulated from the rest of the world. Most French chefs cook in a classic style. It may be very good. But it’s not very influential. They’re quite provincial that way,” he says.
To add to his classical music analogy, he adds: “It’s like being in Jamaica and hearing only reggae music.”
Nevertheless, Plotnicki speaks fondly of France’s gastronomic heritage, which he credits for having first opened his eyes to the power of good food.
When asked to share his most memorable food epiphany, he reaches back to the year 1982 — one of several moments archived in his personal culinary discography — and speaks euphorically about an egg caviar he had at a Joel Robuchon restaurant; a lobster bisque “that must have had a whole stick of butter floating in there” and steak frites at Bofinger, where he learned the correct way to eat steak (quiveringly rare).
“That trip changed the way I approached food. Food was no longer just a necessity. Food was pleasurable,” he said.
“All of a sudden eating well was something you could do for every meal. It went beyond eating for necessity and turned into eating for pleasure. That was a great moment of conversion.”
But after decades of playing the same tune, France’s reputation as the temple of Haute gastronomy has been eclipsed by more audacious countries and chefs and risks becoming irrelevant.
“Today, influence is the single-most important component for a chef. It never used to be. It used to be that the best chef was the chef who makes the best roast chicken. But most diners are looking for something more than that. They want something unique.”
