Is there a certain charm, a certain magic to feeling like one is in France, when one is really in Shanghai? A French chef, a French hostess (his wife) and a French owner, walking the boards in a 44-seat varnished wood and glowing copper-toned restaurant in the middle of the ... Read more »

Karaku's chef Toyoichiro Seki stands behind the counter in his head-to-toe black chef's uniform. He passes his hand over the bubbling oil in the wok. "What temperature do you fry the tempura at?" I ask. "Oh, I have never used a thermometer," he laughs good-naturedly at the preposterous ... Read more »

It's 8:15pm on a Wednesday night. A crowd of mid-level office types sits in a shabby entry hallway to a cavernous restaurant with a gray tile floor below, and fluorescent lights above. An amateurish mural of Sichuan-style floral paper cuts adorns the wall. The waitresses wear frayed brown ... Read more »

Eating out was an occasion that elicited extreme excitement when I was growing up in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My parents would take me to Charlie's, a dimly-lit working class joint near Harvard Square with dark red vinyl booths. We ate immense portions of Greek salad, pork chops and chicken wings ... Read more »

CW Beijing's dining columnist reflects on dining between cities

After visiting several of your city's great restaurants, I was impressed by the stress placed on intimacy and warmth in enhancing the dining experience. Beijing continues to pride itself on the size of its skyscrapers and the width of ... Read more »

"We're experimenting with some of Heston Blumenthal's approaches to French fries," Eric Johnson, chef partner of Jean-Georges, told me a few months ago. "Come in anytime, our kitchen is your kitchen," he said. I did not need any more prompting. Heston Blumenthal is the chef extraordinaire at three-Michelin-starred ... Read more »

According to a report from the Journal of Food Safety, all of China is going to the hospital in a hand basket, and it's a wonder we've even survived this long. We chopstick-using, communal-dish-sharing, germ-spreading devotees are guilty of ruthless, non-stop, everyday "double dipping." Astonishingly, this food safety ... Read more »

Is your diet legal? Sometimes I wish mine wasn't: USDA and Japanese beef, some of my favorites, are black market foods in China. And Russian sturgeon fishing is currently banned, so if you see Russian caviar on the menu, it's poached. But rare foods are rarely cheap, and ... Read more »

Whether or not a "woman's place is in the kitchen" depends on which kitchen you are talking about. At home, women are often the cooks, although in women-wear-the-pants Shanghai homes, men are frequent partners at the stove. However, in the professional kitchen, and specifically in the "hot kitchen" (the ... Read more »

I have thought of Zhang Tao frequently in the years since I met him in 2004. The website that he launched in April 2003 has steadily grown to become my indispensable resource for dining information. Dianping.com is now the largest restaurant review site in China with over six million ... Read more »

I smiled to myself when I learned that a handful of Australian restaurants have recently sprung up in Shanghai. Clearly my latest eating quest had been determined: to investigate, in a most earnest manner, the Aussie cuisine oeuvre. I started with Kakadu (Australian), a new restaurant featuring aboriginal ingredients from ... Read more »