It's a London Life

The last time I went to Paris on the Eurostar (about 4 years ago) I ate a fantastic dinner at a restaurant in St Germain called 'Ze Kitchen Galeri' notable both for what it wasn't: old-fashioned, posh, expensive (due to the favourable exchange rate) as well as for what it was: precise, skilled, & perhaps a little playful rather than pretentious. Since then the chef, William Leduil, has picked up a Michelin star and Ze Kitchen seems to be firing on all cylinders. Another Frenchman who seems to be firing on all cylinders is Vincent Cassel, star of new French gangster flick 'Mesrine: Killer Instinct'. With ingredients including Cassel, Gerard Depardieu, Ludovine Sagnier, Cécile De France & a liberal sprinkling of facial hair, wigs, guns, gangsters, torture & sick humour ("What do you call an Arab in a trash can? A waste, you can get three in there ..."), director Jean-François Richet ceates a fantastic visual feast. Playful rather then pretentiou...

Kaiseki is the big thing in New York cuisine right now, and the biggest name in Kaiseki cuisine is Yoshihiro Murata, the head chef and owner of Kikunoi, a Kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto held in high esteem by both Ferran Adria & Matsuhisa Nobu. Whilst slowly working my way through the very enjoyable Japanese foodie travelogue 'Sushi & Beyond' by Michael Booth I came across this philosophical gem by Murata Murata about the diffference between Japanese & French food: "In haute cuisine you cook by adding or layering flavours of different ingredients in complex ways; in Japan, and in particular Kyoto where we cook mostly with vegetables, the aim is to extract the essential flavour of each ingredient by removing those we don't particularly want, like bitterness. Japanese cuisine is a cuisine of subtraction. " A very interesting concept which you can apply to any creative art? An English version of the Kikunoi website Michael Booth's very informative Ja...