Before I get started with this place, let me just say that it was the best wine experience we had on our entire trip. There is a very important distinction between the Michelin Star system and the Wine Spectator Award system. With Wine Spectator, there are three levels, Award of Excellence, which is like a […]Read Post ›
So, for the actual ‘day of’ my 40th birthday, I could not imagine going anywhere other than the restaurant that set the standard for me at the peak of my Gastronautic traveling apex, five years ago from today. It was my first hard core-full blown, no holds barred Michelin tour de force through France and […]Read Post ›
The thought that comes to mind when I think of this place is like a dinner at The Versailles in Paris. Like we were in a scene from the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons. Just sheer over the top Russian oligarch’s living room dining. Though the food was more classic and less creative, the ingredients did […]Read Post ›
So this place was our base camp for the Reims trip, even though we went other places on other nights, I figured we’d stay here so as to get an inside track with recommendations on where to go, hookups on champagne tours, etc, but that was all useless. Though this strategy works better in Japan, […]Read Post ›
Just look at these clouds, it was like we were in a painting. It was hot and muggy but what a cute city center to walk around in. It’s a big city in France but feels more like a ‘little big city’ in the US, comparable to some of the hipster neighborhood in Philadelphia for […]Read Post ›
Thanks to Julia from Moet and Hennesey we were able to book a last minute tour of the Champagne House as well as the Cave with a tasting at the end. Several of the tastings were good older vintages, the other 2 were their flagship non-vintage rose and blanc de blanc. It’s really difficult to […]Read Post ›
So I basically went to the Michelin guide website and pulled up the map function to look at all the restaurants that pop up as little icons along the region of France covering the French Alps, the champagne region, and Paris. I then drew a line from where I started to where I wanted […]Read Post ›
Though the UK was fun, I couldn’t really call it a complete 40th birthday celebration without a visit to France and our first visit to the French Alps. This Michelin studded tour-de-force started off in Geneva. On our first trip to France, back in 2013, we drove from Provence to Bordeaux to Paris. I highly […]Read Post ›
So we are back in London to finish off our UK tour. We ended our trip in a restaurant that is like a speakeasy at the back of another nice gastropub kind of place where they serve gourmet hot dogs paired with champagne. Reservations require waking up at the crack of dawn once a month […]Read Post ›
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not some sort of baller at the Saudi, Chinese, or Russian oligarch level, but I can hang for at least a few days at this level. I’ve been to a lot of nice hotels. When I travel to a big metropolitan city in another country, I like to go all […]Read Post ›
los pansionistas 