BAR BOULUD You’ll notice the new restaurant in the Mandarin Oriental Hotel has a New York feel and that’s because it was first conceived for the Big Apple by French chef Daniel Boulud. But it ended up in London after Boulud’s almost three decades of living in the great American metropolis where he was awarded [...]

CARETTE 25 Place des Vosges Carette is a legendary patisserie and it recently opened a second home in the urban wonder that is the Place des Vosges. Fashion designer Givenchy’s newphew, Hubert de Givenchy, designed the new space, mixing Art Deco and Louis XIII details. It’s a classically elegant space, although most choose the tables [...]

After our lists of the hottest spots in Paris, London, and New York, we’ve now gone around Lisbon to check out what’s new — as always incognito to bring you our independent report on what we find is hot and worthy for the savvy urban traveler. BRASSERIE ROSSIO GOURMET The just-opened Altis Avenida Hotel faces [...]

Valentine’s Day may be over but that doesn’t mean the gift of chocolate to someone you love or to yourself should have to wait another year. In London you can have a sweet day every day at the new William Curley patisserie in the Belgravia neighborhood. Curley is an award-winning chocolatier and this is his [...]

When European cafés became the preferred hangouts of their city’s intellectuals in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, they turned into cultural institutions with ornate, palatial interiors. Many if not most of them remain open today, although the main visitors are now tourists guided by their guidebooks. Those cafés are now essentially museums where [...]

Usually museum or gallery cafés serve as places for refreshments or a light meal after a visit to the exhibitions.  They are in most cases a complement to the art experience and not destinations in themselves. However, Saatchi Gallery in London is an exception. Its annex, Gallery Mess, now offers a café, restaurant, and bar [...]

Instead of announcing something new as this blog usually does, today we’re highlighting one of Tel Aviv’s best cafés not yet part of our Tel Aviv city guide. It’s a French and Austrian-inspired patisserie offering mouth-watering cakes, hand-made chocolates, and savory pastries using top quality ingredients in their recipes brought straight from France by the [...]