The Miele Guide

Julie Wong, The Miele Guide’s contributing editor for Malaysia is not only the editor of Flavours, a food and wine magazine but also an accomplished food writer who has several food books under her belt. The Star Guide to Malaysian Street Food, which Julie edited, was nominated for Best Food Guide at the Le Cordon Bleu World Media Awards in 2007. She also worked on a cookbook entitled Nonya Flavours: A complete Guide to Penang Straits Chinese Cuisine.

Q: How did you come to be in this field of food writing?
A: By default really. I was putting together a monthly women’s magazine for The Star when the newspaper company acquired Flavours. As I had magazine experience, and liked food and cooking, I was offered the job of running the magazine. The job grew on me and gave me the opportunity to develop something I liked.

Q: Who or what were your major influences?
A: Ironically, it was my mom’s cooking which sparked my interest in food. She was such an uninspired cook that we all vouched to learn to cook and feed ourselves properly. My older sister became an enthusiastic cook and recipe collector, and she in turn, kindled the passion for food in me. Today, I am inspired by all sorts of things. While I can’t name a particular chef, I’d say cookbooks, as well as people who cook with love and integrity really inspire me. A great meal or even a beautiful gadget can inspire me to spend time in the kitchen, too.

Q: What is your most memorable food project to date?
A: I take on only interesting or necessary projects so each one is meaningful to me. The most memorable one would always be the latest project I’m working on because when a new one comes along, I quickly lose interest in the projects that I have completed. Especially when the new one absorbs all my energy! For now, it is a 300-page food guide to Perak.

Q: What measures do you take to ensure that you are always on top of the dining and culinary scene?
A: Eating vigorously and always eating critically. Traveling is important to open up the mind and palate. I also network with foodies, chefs and those in the industry. I never stop learning. Discovering new tastes and ingredients or acquiring new cooking skills – these feed the passion. The Internet is also a fantastic resource for food knowledge.

Q: Is there a book that you’ve always wanted to write but haven’t had the chance to as yet?
A: There are many books begging to be written. We live in a region where food writing is still in its infancy. There are hardly any books on Malaysian food history or food culture. I have been told that for Malaysian cuisine to move forward, we first need to codify our food so that we have a standard reference – something similar to what the encyclopedic Larousse Gastronomique is to French cuisine. That would be the mother of all books to attempt. I would also like to complete what we have started with Nonya Flavours: The Complete Guide to Penang Straits Chinese Cuisine. The sequel would focus on the Peranakan cuisines of the Malaccan nonyas, the Kelantanese nonyas and then the food of the Peranakan communities in other parts of Asia such as Thailand and Indonesia. Together, they will be a useful compendium to Peranakan food in the region.

One of the key aims of The Miele Guide is to showcase Asia and Asian cuisine. We believe that to be able to continually raise the bar on our region’s restaurant scene, it is vital to continue investing in education that not only cultivates professionalism in the industry, but nurtures, propagates and rejuvenates the cuisines of our part of the world. The At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy is a Singapore-based culinary school that has been working towards achieving this. The academy focuses on training chefs for the contemporary global market. This means that the school works hard to balance knowledge of both Asian and European cuisines in a curriculum that prepares and trains students to be exceptional chefs no matter where their jobs take them. In other words, the academy aims to cultivate global chefs.

When Mrs. Kwan Lui, the founder of the academy, first started the school in 2001, her intention was to teach, to share and to advance the integrity of cuisines. The very fact that there is very little professional culinary education in Asia compelled her to start the school. Of course, her extensive experience in the food and beverage industry, managing her family’s food business as well as her own line of spice pastes called Asian Home Gourmet, made her the perfect person to spearhead such an enterprise.

Mrs. Lui strives to equip students at the academy with the means to carve their identities not just as certified professionals but most importantly as global chefs. “We deliver the GlobalChef pathway in our pedagogy, in our students’ development, and in graduate placements,” she says.

The school executes the GlobalChef pathway through an emphasis of an all-rounded culinary education that includes training in Eastern and Western culinary heritages, herbs and spices, and Old and New World cuisines and practices. All the programmes offered by the school feature a work and study rotation.

The At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy has three professional diplomas: the Advanced Culinary Placement Diploma (ACP), the Diploma in Culinary Craft & Service Excellence (DCCSE) and the Diploma in Pastry & Baking Arts (DIPB). The ACP is jointly offered with Johnson & Wales, a top American university.

“Through our programmes, budding young chefs-to-be can look forward to a challenging journey which requires not only passion but also a level of maturity and tenacity to become a successful global chef,” says Christophe Megel, CEO of At-Sunrice. The former executive chef of the Ritz Carlton, Millenia Singapore has had an illustrious international culinary career and he brings inspiring drive and passion to his role in At-Sunrice. His mission, he explains, is to cultivate global chefs in a living environment of culinary authenticity.

The Miele Guide is pleased to be working with the academy through The Miele Guide Culinary Scholarship Programme. Our collaboration is the result of a shared belief in providing a value-added education in the culinary arts that enables aspiring chefs to realize their dreams.

“The At-Sunrice vision is to advance culinary art. The Miele Guide-At-Sunrice Scholarships will help those who are deeply motivated to pursue the chef profession,” says Mr Megel.

Download the scholarship application form here.

For more information on the At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy, visit their website here.

The Bocuse d’Or is a prestigious bi-annual international culinary contest that pits the world’s top culinary talents against one another. It has often been described as the Olympics for the culinary world and competitors are usually so devoted to their craft that they take a leave of absence just to rehearse and prepare for the competition. Some countries pick their representatives two years ahead of the contest in order to give them adequate time to train for it. The Japanese actually broadcast the two-day competition on national television and Iceland charters a plane decorated with the signature colours of the Bocuse d’Or to fly its team into Lyon!

Every Bocuse d’Or has a different theme which is revealed ahead of time. Competitors are required to prepare a meat dish as well as a fish dish for 14 persons in 5 hours and 30 minutes in front of an audience of over a thousand cheering fans. For the 2009 competition, the theme ingredients are Aberdeen Angus Scotch beef, Norwegian fresh cod, Norwegian hand-picked scallops and Norwegian wild prawns. Celebrity chef Daniel Boulud will preside over the jury of 24 chefs as President of Honour.

This year, an exciting new regional selection–the Bocuse d’Or Asia–was launched. Held in Pudong, Shanghai in May this year, the inaugural event welcomed entrants from ten Asian countries who competed for the honour of participating in the international competition next year. Only the top four would make the trip to Lyon in 2009. The countries that took part were China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Lebanon, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam.

To date, only one Asian chef has ever won an award at the Bocuse d’Or. That was back in 1989 when Singaporean chef William Wai took home the bronze trophy. In 2009, four promising chefs will represent Asia at the Bocuse d’Or finals: Yasuji Sasaki (Japan), Farouk B. Othman (Malaysia), Jason Tan (Singapore) and Lee Jun-Hi (South Korea). We spoke with Farouk Othman, Jason Tan and Lee Jun-Hi who are already hard at work preparing for the finals next year.

Farouk Othman, Chef de Tournant, The Westin Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Farouk attributes his success at Bocuse d’Or Asia (he won the silver trophy) to the coaching he received from his mentor Chef David King. Farouk underwent a rigorous series of trials that helped him to get accustomed to the intensity of the competition. “I approached each trial like it was the real thing,” says the 30-year-old. “I had to cook at unfamiliar facilities, basically other fully-equipped restaurant kitchens, and we had the media come in to take photos while I was cooking—it was like an internal set up of the actual Bocuse d’Or. This happened twice a week and got more frequent as the date of the competition drew nearer.”

Through the trials, Farouk was able to familiarise himself with the complexities and challenges of cooking in an unfamiliar kitchen for the first time. They also helped him to get a better sense of time management, especially when it came to setting up and cooking in front of an audience. “It simply got better with each practice,” the Malaysian chef admits.

When asked what his secret weapon will be Farouk reveals that he believes being Asian bestows him with the ability to bring something different to the kitchen. “I am proud of our food culture in Malaysia. It is essential to ensure that the originality of our very own culinary traditions is preserved.”

Farouk has already embarked on preparations for the grand showdown in Lyon and is aiming for nothing less than gold. “I will spend at least 20 hours a week preparing for the trials and menu,” the ambitious chef says. “As we get closer to January, I will devote even more hours to preparing for the competition. It’s only gold we’re looking for and we will achieve nothing less than perfection in Lyon!”

Jason Tan, Chef de Cuisine, Julien Bompard at The Ascott, Singapore
Jason considers it an honour to be representing Singapore at the Bocuse d’Or world finals and is grateful for the support of his mentor Chef Julien Bompard. “Throughout my career, Chef Julien has constantly given me opportunities to excel,” he says. “He offered me the chance of a lifetime by giving me a job at Robuchon a Galera in Macau and has encouraged me to take part in the Bocuse d'Or.”

Trained in French cuisine, Jason says he opted to “combine the essence of Asian ingredients with French techniques” in a bid to showcase Asian flavour in his competition dishes at Bocuse d’Or Asia. To refine his dishes, he conducted multiple tastings in order to ensure that the flavours combined and harmonised well.

However, Jason maintains that discipline is the key to success in the kitchen. “I worked with Chef Francky Semblat at Robuchon a Galera,” says the humble 25-year-old. “Through him, I have acquired the discipline and spirit of working in a Michelin-starred French kitchen”.

“In Lyon, my menu will focus more on French and European cuisine,” the chef divulges. “But maybe I will throw in a touch of an Asian twist”.

Lee Ji-Hun, Commis II, The Millennium Seoul Hilton, Korea
It has been a lifelong dream of Ji-Hun’s to compete at such a highly regarded international competition alongside the world’s greatest chefs. He is also very excited about the finals next year because he is also the first Korean chef to compete at the Bocuse d’Or.

Determined to do his country proud, the 32 year-old chef as has spent 6 months practising under conditions similar to that of the actual competition. Furthermore, he has devoted time to researching and analysing previous editions of the Bocuse d’Or in the hope that the added background knowledge will hold him in good stead. “On top of that, I think constant practice will only lead to success,” says Ji-Hun.

We wish all four chefs who will be representing Asia at the Bocuse d’Or finals in Lyon next year all the very best. Perhaps 2009 will see an Asian chef win top honours at this spectacular international competition.

We are very pleased to announce the first two scholarships under The Miele Guide Culinary Scholarship Programme. Our decision to invest part of the proceeds from the sales of The Miele Guide into funding culinary scholarships stems from our acknowledgement that the skills of a chef have to be methodically learnt and then further honed.

We hope that with our scholarships, we will help passionate young Asian talents to acquire knowledge and new skills in an environment conducive to learning under the tutelage of experienced professionals. We also hope that the scholarships will focus attention on the chef profession within Asia. While we are well aware of the accomplishments of celebrity chefs from the rest of the world, we have yet to truly celebrate the talents of our own.

Admittedly, spending a year in culinary school doesn’t turn one into a full-fledged chef. But when such an opportunity is presented to an ambitious young person hungry to learn, we believe that the experience will help extend his or her culinary reach. By encouraging each aspiring chef and giving him or her a chance to study at a respected culinary institution of learning, our aim is for each scholarship recipient to eventually be better able to contribute to our growing Asian dining scene and propel it to ever greater heights.

Ultimately, the goal of creating The Miele Guide is to encourage growth and development in the Asian restaurant industry. We want to create a way to recognise the hard work and achievements of the people who keep it vibrant, viable and exciting. Through these scholarships (and we hope to add more scholarships to our programme as we grow), we seek to keep nurturing ever more such individuals who will continue to make Asia the finest place in the world to dine in.

Rashmi Uday Singh, The Miele Guide’s contributing editor for India is a celebrated food writer who has authored 18 books including “Around the World in 80 Plates” which won her the prestigious World Gourmand Cookbook Award. She’s not only a food columnist at the Times of India but also a consulting food editor for Femina, a woman’s magazine in India. Her highly popular Good Food Guide (to Mumbai) has also gained her a large following, leading her to publish several other editions.

Rashmi has been equally successful with her food and travel show “Foodie Fundas with Rashmi” and “Health Today” television series in India. Trained in law and management, Rashmi worked as a Deputy Commissioner with the prestigious Indian Revenue Service for 15 years before deciding to pursue her gastronomic interest in print and broadcast television.

Q: Are there any really exciting or dynamic trends that have emerged in the Indian restaurant scene in the past five to ten years?
A: It gets more exciting every year. I could reel out a long list of adjectives to describe how big India's big city's restaurant scene is becoming or I could pull out every workable synonym for "rocking". Or I could tell you about a falafel chain from New York, Budapest, and Israel opening in Mumbai and making "falafel history" by creating "Jain falafel” and "thika falafel". On the other end of the spectrum, we have the sexy Chinese restaurant-syndrome" arriving in India. Brand new restaurants oozing glamour, sprawl invitingly and single-mindedly seduce all your senses.

Restaurants are popping up like monsoon mushrooms, where chefs are becoming celebrities and celebrities, chefs. Jewish to Japanese, Saag to Sushi - it's all getting served. Restaurant menus are morphing, and so are those of caterers and dessert makers. The neighbouring grocery store is routinely stocking olives and iceberg lettuce is your friendly vegetable vendor's staple. Restaurants are expanding their menus and spaces to let in the world, coffee bars are popping up. While no French restaurant has opened yet, notice how the East is continuing to give us inspiration, with Japanese, Korean and even Vietnamese menus. Sushi has become even more fashionable. Restaurants continue to be theatres of Page 3 activity. That has had no effect, however, on the Indo-Chinese (Chin-dian) menu from being omnipresent everywhere. Old favourites continue to dig their heels in and briskly serve Chicken Makhanwalla, Idli-Dosas, Gassis and Channa Bhaturas. Have we arrived? No way. Gourmet Mecca? Not yet. We are on the way.

Believe me, it is a tough job to take my place in Mumbai's lily pond and tell the princes apart from the frogs, the good eateries from the lousy ones. The result? I have to kiss many a frog before finding the prince. And I have been doing so for over twenty years.

Q: In some countries, chefs are trying to create modern versions of their local cuisine. Is this happening in India? Is there a Modern Indian cuisine emerging?
A: There is not too much of innovation in terms of modern Indian cuisine. A few chefs are trying their hand at lighter styles and plated presentations and some kind of fusion cooking too but nothing of any significance.

Q: What makes Indian cuisine unique, vis a vis other famous cuisines?
A: Indian cuisine has an amazing and fascinatingly delectable history - even Megasthenes was impressed with our cuisine. Silk routes, spice routes have all criss-crossed over the millennia. Greeks, Chinese, Arabs, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Persians brought unique edible gifts in their dowry (that's the only way of looking at it). Way before that our holy texts waxed lyrical in eloquence about it. Ayurveda (the science of life) focuses on food. Food is philosophy. It is therapy. And each region is distinct and even within each region there is a mosaic of cooking styles and recipes.

Q: Is there any particular dish that you think exemplifies the essence of Indian food?
A: Chew on this - there is nothing like 'Indian Cuisine'. Each state, each culture, each geographical region has its unique recipes. While the South uses coconuts in almost every dish, the North will never use them. Mustard seeds are basic to the Eastern styles of cooking while in the North they use only the shoots and make classic vegetables that every hot-blooded Punjabi lusts for. Like the language, culture and clothes that changes so dramatically as one moves across India, so does the food. Food which is familiar and comfortable in Kashmir is totally alien to the Tamilian from Chennai. It is important to understand this fundamental fact. Obviously then no single dish can exemplify our cuisine.

Margaux Salcedo, The Miele Guide’s contributing editor for the Philippines, is a food writer at the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Since 2005, she has had a regular restaurant column in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

Before becoming a food writer, the multi-talented lady was a newscaster for five years while she was a law student. Margaux gave up both her media and legal careers after hibernating in Bulacan for six months. “During this time,” she says, “my grand aunt Nana Meng taught me how to appreciate slow cooked provincial food. This led me to start a native hot chocolate business [called Nana Meng] with my mom, and this eventually got me into food writing.”

In 2004, she joined an essay writing contest in the hopes of including Nana Meng in a book that was to be published about Filipino slow food (entitled Slow Food, it was published by Anvil Publishing in 2005). Her essay made it and the rest, as they say, is history.

Q: Hi Margaux, first of all, can you please give us a crash course on Filipino cuisine?
A: The Philippines has been a melting pot of cultures so our cuisine reflects this. We were a colony of Spain for over 300 years before being sold to the Americans and then occupied by the Japanese. We also have Malay roots and a great population of Chinese immigrants. So, Filipino food is a blend of all these influences. A dish introduced by the colonisers would be given a local flavour and made our own.

Take, for instance, the lechon (spit-roasted pig). The concept of the lechon was introduced to us by the Spanish, who serve a specialty called 'cochinillo', which uses a suckling pig. Here we use a full grown pig for the lechon, which is placed on a spit and roasted over charcoal. For a local flavour, the pig's skin is brushed with local soft drinks (Sarsi is a favorite brand) or soy sauce (depending on the province). Different provinces claim to have the best lechon, which is a staple during special occasions, especially during fiestas.

Another Spanish-influenced delicacy is our hot chocolate. From our Spanish colonisers, we learned to appreciate very thick hot chocolate that would be served in a demitasse cup. However, we could not afford so much cocoa so we started using peanuts as a thickener. Today, we appreciate our peanut-flavoured tsokolate which we can truly call our own.

A dish possibly influenced by the Americans may be the Filipino beef steak, although this dish has become so Filipino it has lost its American heritage completely. Our beef steak or 'bistek' uses a tender cut of beef (sirloin or tenderloin), is seasoned with soy sauce and served with onions as garnish.

Pancit is an example of a Filipino dish of Chinese origin. Derived from the word pian i sit, which translates to "something cooked fast," this dish has taken on many Filipino forms: bihon, canton, habhab, luglog, malabon, molo, and palabok, to name the more popular ones.

These are essentially rice noodles fried with soy sauce and calamansi and garnished with meat and chopped vegetables. Tradition dictates that you eat this on your birthday as the noodles represent long life.

Filipino dishes, unlike other Asian cuisines, are more inclined to be sweet and salty rather than sour or spicy. Favourite ingredients are soy sauce, as with adobo and bistek, or peanut sauce, as with kare kare. We pair almost everything with rice and love having soy sauce or fish sauce or shrimp paste (bagoong) on the side to balance flavours with.

The best discussion on Filipino food that I have read is by food author Doreen Fernandez. NYU has been kind enough to share it on through this link.

Q: What is the dining scene in the Philippines like? Are there certain cities that are considered big foodie cities?
A: These are exciting times in the Philippine dining scene. In the ’80s there were maybe five good restaurants that you could name off the top of your head. Today, different cities have their own competitive restaurants, including cities in nearby provinces such as Baguio or Tagaytay. There are also a lot of up-and-coming chefs who have either worked or trained in cooking schools or four star restaurants abroad who are coming back home to share what they've learned and open their own restaurants.

The primary food enclave would still be the commercial district, Makati, where most of the established restaurants are located. However, there are also very competitive restaurants in Quezon City, which is a twenty to thirty minute drive from Makati, and in Alabang (also a twenty to thirty minute drive from Makati City but in the other direction). Taguig City, where a lot high rises are being developed now, is also fast becoming a bit of a food district.

In the early ’90s, the impression was that to be a fine dining restaurant you would have to serve either a French, Italian or Spanish menu. Back then, you would never find Filipino food served in a decent restaurant setting; you would have to find it in someone's home or in a cafeteria on the street. There were only two Filipino restaurants that stood out and these portrayed a barrio or a farm setting, with the customers eating with their hands, and the setting was very casual.

Fortunately, this is no longer the case in the Philippines today. In every mall or avenue of restaurants, you will most likely find a Filipino restaurant among the choices of restaurants to dine at. For example, in Serendra in the city of Taguig, where a cluster of restaurants is located, there is Abe, a restaurant dedicated to Pampangeno food (food from the province of Pampanga); in Westgate in the town of Alabang, another food destination, there is Kanin Club, which is also devoted to Filipino food; in the Tomas Morato area in Quezon City, another restaurant hub, there is Bagoong Club, also a Filipino restaurant.

There are also a few restaurants that serve Filipino fusion cuisine. Bistro Filipino, a well received restaurant at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig City serves Filipino-French cuisine while La Cocina de Tita Moning serves Spanish-Filipino food using heritage recipes.

Q: What are the top three dishes a first-time visitor to the Philippines should taste?
A: My top three would include: (1) Kare kare, which is a stew of oxtail, beef, tripe and some vegetables in peanut sauce, tempered with shrimp paste and appreciated with white rice. This introduces the foreigner to our bold flavours. A good kare kare should have very tender meat, peanut sauce that will wake you up, and must be served with very good, salty bagoong (shrimp paste). (2) Lechon, because this is pig like you've never tasted before. A good lechon would have a slightly thick but very crispy skin with very soft fat still stuck to it; we like to peel those off the pig and munch on its crunch, dipping them into a liver-based gravy. The meat is then chopped and this is eaten with rice. It's sinful. You may have to pray ten Hail Marys as penance after bingeing on this. (3) Filipino hot chocolate, to give the Filipino breakfast or merienda experience. This is appreciated with pandesal (little Filipino bread buns that are slightly toasted) and kesong puti (white carabao cheese sometimes called buffalo mozzarella) or suman (sticky rice stick) with coconut jam. This is different because it's a hot chocolate that uses cocoa with all its butter fat and has a peanut-y flavour. Imagine having Reese's chocolate made into a hot chocolate drink.

Q: Who, in your opinion, is doing exciting things in the kitchen in the Philippines and why?
A: The chefs/restaurateurs that come to mind are: (1) Margarita Fores, who is known in the country for having introduced Italian gourmet dining. She is the country's leading restaurateur/caterer and she is always coming up with exciting flavours that integrate Filipino flavours with continental concepts, such as her Cerveza Negra Ice Cream (Cerveza Negra is a dark beer - our closest drink to Guinness) or her apahap (Philippine seabass) bouillabaisse. (2) Rolando Laudico who owns the restaurant Bistro Filipino. It's a casual dining affair but with very creative Filipino-French creations such as his milk fish soufflé, which uses smoked milk fish (bangus) and queso de bola.(3) Ed Quimson. Ed Quimson is on a slow food crusade so while others are experimenting with mixing Filipino flavours for a globalised world, Chef Ed is delivering meals that his grandmother taught him, cooked the very slow and laborious way. He jumps from one restaurant to another but if you can catch him, you will immediately feel his passion for slow food, like his lengua, which uses a tomato sauce that takes two weeks to prepare. He is currently the chef for Petra and Pilar, a glamorised canteen serving Filipino food.

Q: Is there anything you'd like to see change and/or grow in the restaurant scene in the Philippines?
A: The first thing would be service. Although Filipinos are very hospitable and the guest would hardly have a problem asking a waiter for specific requests, waiters are generally unable to explain to the curious customer the intricacies of a fancy dish. Unlike, for example, in Opia (Hong Kong) where a waiter will take pains to guide the guest on how to best appreciate what is served, or even in bistros like Pastis or Balthazar (New York) where you will learn the origins of, say, the fish in your dish from the pretty waitress upon inquiry, you're pretty much on your own here, leaving you to wonder what made your particular order unique.

The second is with respect to wine. The wine lists here are limited and there is no restaurant with a truly educated sommelier. But there's a trend now toward wine appreciation so hopefully in the near future we will have better guides to food and wine pairing.

The third is to see restaurants become more competitive, to inspire the creation of a truly five-star experience. Sometimes a restaurant would have the most creative recipes but with mediocre service. Or they hit ambiance and service but are inconsistent in terms of taste. This is because in some restaurants the executive chef, who would be part owner, is not always around, leaving the recipes to the rest of the kitchen staff. Or sometimes the turnover of kitchen staff is so high that the dishes suffer while the new staff are learning the ropes. This is a problem almost all restaurants here suffer from. It must be corrected, because there is so much potential and talent in today's Philippine restaurant industry.

Q: Finally, what prompted you to become a food writer?
A: I was a writer before I became a foodie (in fact I still hesitate to call myself a foodie). I wrote primarily for television news and for a law journal. I lived on instant noodles and stopped eating meat in 1996 (I only started eating meat again in 2006 when it started to seriously get in the way of assessing the quality of a restaurant's wagyu). But in 2002 I gave up that life and lived in the province (Bulacan) where my grandaunt showed me the joys of wonderful home cooked food such as sinampalukan (tamarind-based fish stew), pindang (dried carabao meat) and lengua (ox tongue).I especially fell in love with Filipino merienda fare, particularly hot chocolate paired with pandesal (bread) and coconut jam or carabao cheese. After this hibernation in the province, I lived in New York for a short while where my friends exposed me to New York restaurants and taught me to appreciate foie gras (used to not like it), Kobe beef burgers, and warm chocolate cakes. I contributed stories about New York restaurants to the Philippine Daily Inquirer from New York, my first article being on Cendrillon, a Filipino restaurant on Mercer Street in Soho. I joined the Philippine Daily Inquirer as a food columnist a year after, reviewing Philippine restaurants.

Jarrett Wrisley, one of The Miele Guide’s Contributing Editors, has been living in Shanghai for the past 5 years. He began his food writing career at that's Shanghai, a local expat magazine, and later helped start the city's first English weekly, 8 Days/SH, where he eagerly picked apart the city's dining scene. Now a freelance writer, he has written about food, travel and other subjects for DestinAsian Magazine, The South China Morning Post, National Geographic, Time Out, Travel + Leisure and other publications in Asia and abroad.

Q: Hi Jarrett, let’s start off with a simple question. What most excites you about eating out in China today?
A: I think that the evolution of Chinese restaurants—not necessarily the food, which remains relatively static—is what excites me most. It’s really encouraging to see restaurants offering better service, modern décor, and more exacting cooking here. Chinese food has a reputation as a hurried, humble kind of cuisine. Chinese take-out in the West has painted a sloppy image of Chinese food in many people’s minds. But it’s not entirely undeserved: For too long restaurants here have been happy to serve mediocre food, fast and cheap, to the masses. But that is really changing now.

Q: Is the dining scene for locals very different from the scene geared towards expats?
A: Yes, it is, although as young people here are exposed to foreign travel and tastes, and outsiders in China become more interested in Chinese food culture, I’m seeing a lot more crossing over than a few years before. Five years ago in Shanghai, if you walked into an Italian restaurant or a Japanese one, you’d see mostly people from that place. Now, the Chinese are more adventurous eaters, and they’re keen to try new food, open a bottle of wine, and pick up a fork. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there are too many Chinese restaurants that are inaccessible to most foreign people—due to Chinese-only menus, language, and even hygiene. In these places you only see locals and maybe the occasional foodie or old China hand. A great formula for success here (and a bafflingly simple one) is to open restaurants that serve authentic Chinese food in a clean environment, with a wine list, cold beer and an English menu. Places like Guyi, Crystal Jade, and Ding Tai Fung have done this and are packed every night with a mixed crowd. I think the restaurant market needs to look to places like these, and incorporate the best aspects of the local and expat dining scenes, to really become a mature market.

Q: You’ve acted as guide to some of the most famous food writers in from the United States and Europe. What do you think about the representation of Chinese food in Western media? And what would you do to make it better (if it needs to be better)?
A: Hmmm. That’s a tough question. I do think there is plenty of room for improvement. Without sounding bitter, I think that magazine editors in far flung places would do better hiring local food writers in many instances rather than sending someone over who knows very little about the place, the eating culture, or the people, to piece together a story in a short period of time. When this style of reporting happens you generally end up with a story that reveals a Shanghai or Beijing food scene with measured predictability; though there are a few writers who have dropped in and done a very good job of reporting about how people eat here, what they eat, and why. Food writing in many instances has sort of devolved into guidebook-style writing, which editors seem to want these days. It’s fast and easy go-here-eat-that reporting; but food writing should be more than a list of hot restaurants and a description of who is eating in them. In terms of Chinese food’s representation in the media, I think that writers often play up the oddness of the ingredients (chicken hearts, beef tendon, pig ears) without really explaining why people eat these things, or considering that Westerners used to use the whole of an animal only a few decades ago. Many still do. This whole “adventure eating” style of food writing is really redundant and unimaginative. But people enjoy reading it I suppose.

Q: Are there any chefs in China and from China that to you are really pushing the culinary envelope?
A: Yes, there are a handful, but we could use some more. I am based in Shanghai, so that’s the restaurant scene that I’m most familiar with. It’s impossible not to mention Jereme Leung (Chef/Owner of Three on the Bund’s Whampoa Club) when it comes to innovation – I think he’s done more to raise the bar for Chinese restaurants in the Mainland than anyone else. What Jereme’s doing is not revolutionary, it’s shrewd and very simple – take classic dishes and incorporate new cooking techniques, and make it look good on the plate. His attention to detail and openness to outside ideas is something other local chefs here should take note of. But rather than see chefs in the mainland toying with molecular stuff and fusion, I think that perfecting the classics and really presenting them nicely is a good way to push the envelope here. Another favourite chef of mine, Tony Lu at Fu 1088, cooks traditional Shanghainese and Yangzhou food but he does it with the precision and focus of a Western fine dining kitchen. That is revolutionary, in a sense.

Q: Finally, what first got you interested in food?
A: From a young age I was an avid fan of restaurants. I could rattle off (and still can) everything that I’d eaten months or years ago and where and how it tasted. For some reason, my brain really liked storing this kind of information—cataloging my meals and remembering the tastes and sensations of eating. Around 8 or 9 years old, I really became interested in cooking, working alongside my mother, and I became really absorbed in cookbooks. But my dream was to be a writer. I sort of connected the two by accident, after arriving in China. I applied for a job as a food writer at a local magazine here and later realized that it was the perfect job for me (though I never expected to end up writing about food). I got lucky.

Mr. J.C. Okazawa, a member of the panel that helped create the shortlist of restaurants on our voting page, is one of Japan’s most accomplished food critics. Over the past 5 years, he has published 10 restaurant guide books. The Shominchelin is his latest endeavour, an alternative to the Tokyo Michelin Guide that rates and promotes moderately priced restaurants. The guide was written for locals and foreigners keen on finding great food at good prices.

Q: How did the Shominchelin guide come about?
A: The restaurants introduced in the Michelin Guide Tokyo Edition are all too expensive. I thought most of the general public would not be able to try them, so last November I came up with the idea for an affordable food guide and contacted Graphsha Inc. about publishing the book as soon as possible.

I wrote the guide myself. Of course, I had visited all of the restaurants at least once. When I was writing, I also needed to visit several restaurants again and I needed help from some friends to visit some of them anonymously.

Q: What were the main criteria for the guide?
A: Taste was the most important factor and I set a limit for the price of meals. Of course, cleanliness, service, atmosphere were all important elements too.

Q: How would you define good food?
A: Good tasting food can be found all over the world. If you need me to literally define ‘good food’, I think it is food that thrills people. However, I’ve rarely had this kind of experience in my life.

Q: Why do you think food is taken so seriously in Japan?
A: Japanese people are keen to eat food that is fresh and pure. Japan is blessed with a rich and natural environment which brings great food each season. Recently I worked with an American woman and we went to Hokkaido together. She was amazed with the grand beauty of Hokkaido and Japan. She said that her country’s definition of good food is steak and potatoes or king salmon from British Columbia. Some people say that today's food trends in Japan are manipulated by the media, which is true but they keep promoting food and traveling because these two factors do boost tourism.

Q: How do you feel about the current state of Japan’s evolving food habits?
A: I am really concerned about it. We have many issues about food, for example, the rate of food self-sufficiency, but I feel one of the worst issues is the Americanization of food. Mothers who don't cook well often give their children hamburgers and French fries. The uniformed food style is also a problem, like a big fast food chain. Since the number of these lower quality chain shops and restaurants are increasing, restaurants that offer really good food are disappearing.

Q: What is the best meal you've ever had?
A: The best meal I had was nigiri sushi (hand shaped sushi) at Bentenyama Miyako Sushi in Asakusa, Tokyo. I can't forget the taste of the flatfish with sea kelp, spotted shad (kohada) and conger eel (anago).That was in 1978. Today the 5th generation chef manages the shop but the sushi I had then was made by the previous 4th generation chef.