Category: Chefs

MOzen Lunch

MOzen sits on the third floor of the Mandarin Oriental and serves as a three meal a day restaurant for the hotel’s well-heeled patrons.

Chef Shawn Armstrong oversees an operation that’s as adept at turning out superior sushi as it is an authentic lamb curry or first rate braised short ribs and pork bellies.

He and his staff have to be the culinary equivalent of a utility infielder because they never know what Arab potentate, Chinese high roller or Japanese mogul might stroll through the doors at any minute.

After two meals here (breakfast and lunch), we’ve yet to find a flaw in any of the food (except for sous vide-ing the meat – something we can excuse in a busy hotel restaurant)….and the elegant/intimate setting and the view and the service might put it at the top of all the three-meal-a-day hotel restaurants in town.

Once we have dinner here, we’ll let you know.

Korean Eats with Thomas Keller

First came the KNPR interview (to be broadcast next week), then came the photo op, and finally, Slapsie Maxie figured chowing down on a dozen plates from the Greenland Korean Market’s new food court would be just what America’s most acclaimed chef would be in the mood for.

And so he was.

And thus were a multitude of plates were rendered, and laid before him.

And lo did he express thanks, and consume them with relish.

And verily did he proclaim the pepper chicken too laden with starch, and the kal-bi and cake of mung bean to be of the highest quality.

Words of praise were given and prayers answered and thus did it come to pass that hunger was abated.

And it was good.

So sayeth Thomas The Great.