What makes a good sushi restaurant great? Excellent fish and seafood? Chef’s experience, skills and obsession with consistency? Takashi Saito seems to correspond all these criteria, but it’s much more than that. Saito-san hits the perfect gustative balance in each morsel he produces, taste and texture-wise. Joel Robuchon called Sushi…

Matsukawa is an introduction only kaiseki restaurant, considered by many, notably tabelog.com users, as the best in Tokyo. A friend of mine invited me there, but had last minute plan changes and I ended up going to Matsukawa alone. He warned me about two things before transferring his reservation on…

To paraphrase the old saying, if the sea won’t come to a Japanese sushi chef, the sushi chef will go to the sea. This is certainly true in the case of 3 Michelin starred chef from Tokyo Toru Okuda, who just opened an intimate, “Edo-mae” style sushi- ya next to…

Sushi Tetsu is considered the best sushi-ya in London and the hardest to get in. (At least for now, before Araki, a 9 seat sushi shop by 3 Michelin star chef from Tokyo opens later this fall.) The seven seat counter restaurant is owned by a young man from Japan…

While jumping shrimps, as seen at Noma few years ago, are not really my cup of tea, scallops, still being alive once served raw, is what you should normally expect from you scallops. Mikael Jonsson from Hedone is one of those products obsessed chefs, who will go to great lengths…

Ever since I tried Heston Blumenthal’s spin-off restaurant at Mandarin Oriental hotel, I was quite sceptical about what he was doing. Thanks to a dear friend, who was brave enough to wait for one hour on a phone, simultaneously click on The Fat Duck’s online reservations, and, finally reserve two…

Sushi gods have been particularly gracious to the Parisians recently. We have 3 Michelin star chef from Tokyo Toru Okuda, who last autumn opened a kaiseki restaurant near Champs Elysees (the omakase meal also includes a sushi course), we have Jin, high end sushi shop run by a young chef…

Gerald Passédat comes from old restaurateurs family in Marseille. His 3 Michelin starred restaurant Le Petit Nice Passédat has been frequented by seafood fanatics for decades and has become a symbol of high end Marseillaise cuisine. Of course, there you will find the famous bouillabaisse, fish stew once eaten by…

36-year-old Arnaud Donckele is one of the youngest chefs to receive three Michelin stars. (at 35) After making a few stops at France’s best restaurants like Michel Guérard’s, Louis XV and Lasserre, the Normandy native has finally settled down at Résidence de La Pinède in Saint Tropez. The classic and…

Different from New York, Los Angeles or some other megacities outside of Japan, Paris has never been the best place to have top-notch sushi. Here, you will find plenty of unimaginative sushi belt restaurants or takeaways, but usually, their quality is poor and they have little in common with Japan.…