Europe Tickets » Europe Restaurant Reviews

How British cook Rachel Khoo got a taste for life in Paris

musiclover — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:43:38 +0000

Brought up by an expat Austrian mother and a Chinese-Malaysian father, it’s perhaps no wonder that Rachel Khoo one day decided to make a go of life abroad. The vivacious former PR girl left London on a whim to enroll in a patisserie course in Paris in 2006 and, as she puts it, “have a bit of an adventure”. Fast-forward six years, and she’s not only had an adventure; she’s also become something of a celebrity along the way.

Khoo’s career began to take off when she landed a deal for a cookbook with Penguin, and realised she needed an audience to test her recipes on. A pop-up restaurant in her pint-sized Paris flat seemed a sensible solution, and before long, she was being deluged with dinner requests from people all over the world. Now, the 31-year-old has got her own BBC TV show, The Little Paris Kitchen, where she dishes up jazzed-up French food in her miniscule kitchen, trying to avoid knocking over all her crockery in the process.

The show paints a romantic image of life in Paris, filled with shots of Khoo wandering around picturesque markets in a variety of beguiling vintage frocks, but the expat is quick to admit that she wasn’t always so at home in the city. For years, she balanced honing her cookery skills with work as an au pair and in a department store. It wasn’t till she began working in a cookshop-cum-café – where she ran baking classes teaching affluent French ladies the art of the cupcake and meringue – that she really began to feel comfortable.

“The show tends to concentrate on the good things, but the first two years were pretty tough,” she says. “My French was very basic – I don’t know if you can even call it French. And I didn’t have any friends or family there.

“As a newcomer to the city, it’s very difficult to meet Parisians; you can meet plenty of expats, but they all seem to leave after three months. It took a while till my French was good enough that I could settle into the Parisian way of life.“

Dolce Hotels and Resorts UK bookings up 45%

musiclover — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:16:50 +0000

Dolce Hotels and Resorts has announced a 45% increase in UK outbound conference and meetings bookings across its portfolio of properties in Europe and North America, demonstrating a growing confidence from the UK outbound market and a return to better budgets for 2011.
The latest figures, announced at Dolce’s UK Showcase Event, show a 50% increase in bookings to Europe and a 25% increase in bookings to North America from the UK during 2009/10 compared to the previous year. This figure is set to increase in 2011 with the group already seeing an increased interest in bookings this year.
Dolce’s Chief Revenue Officer, Barry Goldstein comments: “It’s really encouraging to see such a marked increase in bookings coming from the UK. Whilst our customers from the UK are still cautious, we are starting to see healthy signs of improvement with bookings up and more leads coming through than we saw in the same period of the previous year. This underlines a growing trend that for the right venue and product, people are willing to spend money to know they will deliver event success.”
This recent news underlines the business’ continued success in attracting the UK outbound market, who on the first signs of a return to better budgets, choose to take their business to Dolce venues. “The UK is a crucial territory for the Dolce brand, we work with many businesses across Britain to bring their meetings and events into Europe and to the US,” adds Goldstein.
Dolce announced the latest results at its bi-annual UK showcase event which took place last night at the exclusive London restaurant, Avenue aimed at event agencies, planners and corporates. The event also saw Goldstein outline the brands’ vision for the future, including its renewed focus on quality food and beverage for delegates and the company’s latest technological solutions that demonstrate its commitment to raising service levels to meeting and event planners and ensuring group guests a superior event experience.

Guests were also treated to a preview of Dolce’s new New Urban Hotel Model in Downtown Indianapolis due to open late 2012, adding to the group’s latest openings at Munich, Seaview, Silverado and Ravella at Lake Las Vegas.

Dolce Hotels and Resorts, a privately held operator of 27 upscale hotels, resorts and conference hotels in North America and Europe founded in 1981, is majority-owned by Broadreach Capital Partners. The company, headquartered in Rockleigh, N.J., employs more than 4,000 worldwide.
Dolce’s portfolio includes properties in Connecticut, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Ontario, Texas, Nevada, Belgium, France, Spain and Germany.
As a leader in the meetings industry, Dolce hosts some 30,000 events and 4 million group clients globally every year. The company’s founder pioneered the conference center concept and Complete Meeting Package, both now embraced as standards by the International Association of Conference Centres.
The company’s vision is to create inspiring environments that bring people together, and its mission is to delight its guests, challenge its associates, reward its owners and serve as a role model in its communities.

Seoul Gomtang: Delicious Korean Soul Food

musiclover — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 21:35:42 +0000

When Mrs. Kim Kamnang, the chef and owner of Seoul Gomtang in Oakland, was a child, her grandmother always cooked and she always watched. Her grandmother was an expert in Korean cuisine. As she grew up, her grandmother taught her extensively how to cook traditional Korean dishes, from meat dishes, stews, soups, pancakes, and bibimbop to casseroles. When Mrs. Kim got married she used all her culinary talents to make good food for her family. At that time she had never imagined that she would end up feeding her fellow countrymen in Oakland some of the best Korean food outside of Korea. Later, she was even more surprised to learn that her warm and nutritious food was as appealing to non-Koreans.

Six years ago Mrs. Kim arrived in the United States with the wish to educate her younger daughter in the American education system, a system that is much less demanding than the Korean one. She did not want her younger child to suffer from the very competitive Korean education system. With her talent and extra time afforded with her daughter in school, she opened her restaurant in Oakland. Mrs. Kim’s restaurant specializes in Gomtang, a type of beef bone soup that looks very much like Vietnamese Pho.

The restaurant serves boiled beef bone soup and dishes made with beef bone soup. Seoul Gomtang is small with about 15 tables. But after six years, she makes more profit than many large and upscale restaurants in the neighborhood. And, the word has spread about how delicious her food is. Her cuisine is good to the last bite, or the last drop. Once people have eaten there they keep returning again and again. Seoul Gomtang has accumulated so many return customers that there are many people coming in to eat as early as 11 a.m., while other restaurants have not even opened yet.

On a Sunday at 8 p.m., the restaurant was packed. So many customers were there that the staff appeared to be a little bit overwhelmed. Korean restaurant owners have a saying: “The food does not lie; if the food is good, customers will come.”

If you ask me what is good there, I would say everything they serve is quite excellent. The dishes may look like food from any other Korean restaurant. But as you eat them you begin to realize bit by bit that they are delicious, and you find yourself enjoying every last bite. This restaurant serves food prepared really well and with heart and soul.

The bestselling menu item is Gomtang. This dish closely resembles Vietnamese Pho, and has noodles. But the flavor is very different from that of Pho. Gomtang can be considered Korean soul food.