Lung King Heen (Weekday Dim Sum Lunch), IFC, Hong Kong (Alissa and Don Eat Asia)

During our honeymoon, Alissa and I had the great pleasure of dining at Caprice, the then 3 Michelin Starred restaurant located in the Four Season Hotel in Hong Kong. Almost two years on, our dinner at Caprice remains one of the best meals of our lives, with the excellent standard of cooking equalled by some of the finest service we have ever experienced in a fine dining restaurant. With such fond memories of our meal at the Four Seasons, Alissa and I had often wondered about Lung King Heen - the hotel's 3 Michelin Starred Chinese restaurant - especially since it was the place where Mak Kwai Pui worked as a Dim Sum Chef before going on to open Tim Ho Wan. Particularly keen to try the restaurant's Dim Sum selection, Alissa and I made a lunch reservation at the first Cantonese restaurant to ever be awarded the top star rating.

Nahm, Bangkok, Thailand (Alissa and Don Eat Asia)

To say that Alissa and I are fans of David Thompson would be an understatement. Earlier this year, Alissa, my parents and I cooked a Banquet Menu from Thompson's Thai Food Cookbook (as well as Grilled Pork Skewers and Mango Sticky Rice from Thai Street Food) and it was one of the best Thai meals we've had the pleasure of eating. I thoroughly recommend both books as essential reading for Thai Food enthusiasts; Thompson's encyclopedic knowledge of Thai cuisine results in recipes that are at once familiar and yet unusual as they revive recipes and versions of recipes from centuries ago.

Gaggan, Bangkok, Thailand (Alissa and Don Eat Asia)

"Oh shit... Gaggan is #1!"

Such began my panic in March for a meal that was at that stage 6 months into the future. Having originally planned for a holiday to Japan with stopovers in Bangkok and Hong Kong, only to have our Bangkok time extended (and Japan leg cancelled) on the strength of Nahm and Gaggan's ascendency to the upper echelons of the restaurant world, a table at Gaggan was one of the highest priorities of our trip. I'm pretty organised when it comes to reservations, and had already planned a rough schedule for our holiday when the news broke that Gaggan - the Progressive Indian restaurant in Bangkok of all places - had beaten such luminaries as last year's winner Nahm and perennial favourite Narisawa to be voted Asia's Best Restaurant (later coming in at #10 on the World list). Having had some experience with how tough this kind of reservation can be once a restaurant gets this level of good press - booking a table at Attica when it came #21 in the world was hard enough - I immediately got onto Gaggan's website reservation system and made a booking. Thankfully, it was a fairly painless process and Alissa and I managed to secure a table for our visit in September.

Sepia, Sydney, New South Wales (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

2015 really seems to be Martin Benn's year. After years making his mark as the Head Chef of Tetsuya's, Sepia - the 3-Hatted restaurant owned by Benn and his wife Vicki Wild - has been named Sydney's best restaurant 3 times in the Good Food Guide in its 6 years of existence, and was voted by a panel of critics, fellow chefs and restaurateurs as the best in the country. Winning the One To Watch Award from San Pellegrino's World's 50 Best Restaurants will undoubtedly mean Sepia's stature is likely to grow internationally, so our eating excursion to Sydney seemed eminently well timed to dine at what is undoubtedly Australia's restaurant of the moment.

Cafe Paci, Darlinghurst, New South Wales (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Alissa and I almost had an opportunity to try the food of Pasi Patanen back when we first started the Ministry of Gluttony. Fresh from our honeymoon eating our way around Asia, we took a brief break from the gluttony upon our return to Perth, before deciding to try the Tuesday night experimental dinner at Co-Op Dining in East Perth as an early Valentine's Day meal. At the end of the meal, we were alerted to the fact that the Tuesday after was going to feature a Riesling Rocks event dinner, with Pasi Patanen flying over to collaborate with Co-Op's chef Kiran Mainwaring for a special one-off menu paired with Riesling - our favourite white varietal. Having spent most of our money overseas and having just dined at Co-Op, it was a bit too soon for a return visit, however reading up about Patanen and his semi-permanent pop-up restaurant left me very intrigued. Located in a building that was former Mexican restaurant Cafe Pacifico, Pasi simply dropped the 'fico' and rechristened it Cafe Paci - a wildly experimental and relatively affordable degustation restaurant. It was only meant to last a year, however when we discovered Cafe Paci was still going strong it became one of the first restaurants that we booked for our Sydney trip.

LuMi, Pyrmont, New South Wales (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Although there has been a fair amount of cross-pollination of French and Japanese cuisines in a fine dining context, the crossover potential of Japanese and Italian cooking is relatively underexplored. Inherent conservatism and striving for authenticity may have kept playing around with Italian food off limits for a long time, however the strong focus on umami in both cooking traditions make many Italian and Japanese culinary ideas strongly compatible. 

With Modernists like Massimo Bottura having shown that one can be at once progressive while deeply respectful of cultural heritage from within Italy, its been interesting reading about a similarly progressive and open style of Italian cuisine developing here in Australia. Only having been open since September last year, LuMi and its head chef Federico Zanellato have already become critical darlings for the restaurant's innovative Japanese influenced take on Modern Italian. With Zanellato's resume including stints at such culinary meccas as La Pergola, Ryugin, Noma and Attica, LuMi was high on our list of places to check out while on a culinary tour of Sydney - so much so, that it ended up being our dinner on the Sunday of our arrival.

Attica, Ripponlea, Victoria (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

When it comes to restaurant reservations, I'm a pretty organised guy. For our honeymoon, I secured tables at all the more difficult to book restaurants months in advance; the then (3 Star-Michelin) Caprice in Hong Kong was secured 6 months ahead, Otto e Mezzo Bombana and Iggy's reservations booked within the first week of their booking windows being opened for the dates we wanted. I even kept a file with all our 20+ reservation confirmation emails printed out just in case we confused times or a restaurant forgot to take our booking down properly. What can I say; I'm a planner by profession.

So when I realised I'd missed the first two days to book a table at Attica, I was filled with a deep foreboding that we'd totally missed out on getting a table for our Melbourne trip - even with a range of dates for the restaurant to select from. The third day in a reservation window for a table 3 months away should not normally be this hard to secure, but such is the frenzy since Attica's incredibly successful 2013; voted #21 in the world on the S Pellegrino List, The Good Food Guide's 2014 Restaurant of the Year and a Chef of the Year win for Head Chef Ben Shewry. David Chang recently went so far as to say Shewry is doing 'god's work in Melbourne', so actually getting a reservation at Attica is kind of a big deal. With all this hype, most of the dates I had wanted were totally booked out, and the only date available did not have a table for two.
"What do you have?"
"We have a table for 4 or for 6."
"Okay, I'll take the four."
"You know you won't be able to split it..."
"That's okay... we'll make it work!"

Vue de Monde, Melbourne, Victoria (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

Vue de Monde has been on our restaurant wishlist for sometime. Alissa had been wanting to go since her friends raved about it years ago, and after I enjoyed an impressive meal at the more casual and traditional Bistro Vue, I really wanted to see for myself how good Shannon Bennett's flagship restaurant was. With this in mind, it should not be surprising that a reservation at Vue de Monde was high on our list of priorities when planning our first trip to Melbourne together, with our reservation made before we even booked our flights over.

Restaurant Amusé, East Perth, Western Australia (Alissa and Don Eat Australia)

There was a time not so long ago when the 'best' restaurants in Perth were dated, white glove service, expensive destinations that were more about stunning views and location rather than genuinely good or innovative food. Dining at these kind of restaurants was (and is) more a signifier of status rather than taste, and these restaurants operated with an air of geography-based entitlement that meant they didn't have to be contemporary or innovative. Of course, many of the best restaurants in Perth do still follow the classic approach of an opulent design aesthetic to project a sense of classiness, but its no longer a prerequisite for success, with the most extreme example of the new good food paradigm being Restaurant Amusé in East Perth - quite possibly the best restaurant in Perth.

Iggy's, Orchard Rd, Singapore (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 22, Part 1)

I don't generally eat beef. I mean, if I accidentally order it or if I'm served it I will eat it but in general its not a regular part of my diet. I gave up eating beef about 3-4 years ago after reading about the environmental impact of cattle farming and not wanting to give up all meat decided that beef was an easy one for me to cut out. Perhaps its because it was never my favourite I seldom miss eating beef, especially since I've taken a strong liking to kangaroo as my bovine analogue of choice. For this trip I knew there were going to be times where beef would be on set menus or were integral parts of an authentic dish (as in Satay Perut), so I decided that I would partake in beef in those circumstances.

Why do I start with a long spiel about beef eating? Because if ever there was an argument that I should be eating beef, Iggy's definitely makes a strong case.

Caprice, Four Seasons Hong Kong (Alissa and Don Eat Asia Day 3, Part 3)

Living in a country without a Michelin Guide, the idea of dining at a 3-Michelin Starred restaurant can seem like an unattainable holy grail. Sure, we've got some truly exceptional restaurants in Australia but the allure of the prestigious Michelin Star remains. So when we realised that Hong Kong had a guide with a few Three Star restaurants, it was inevitable that we'd have to make a gastronomic pilgrimage to at least one of them. Almost immediately I was drawn to Caprice - the French restaurant  headed up by chef Vincent Thierry (formerly of Le Cinq) and located in the luxurious Four Seasons Hotel. Listed as the No. 12 Restaurant in S. Pellegrino's Best Restaurants in Asia (and no. 73 in the world) and No. 20 in the world on the Elite Traveler list, the consensus seemed to support my immediate impression and I made reservations almost 6 months ahead.