dine•o•crat

Hong Kong has a unique blend of native vibrancy and colonial history which fascinates me and which I adore. Growing up in the 80s, I was told of Hong Kong as the place to get cheap designer clothing. And everything else, according to that vaguely racist yet catchy song from that era, " Made in Hong Kong ." How obsolete were my ideas! When I finally visited it, it did not live up at all to its neon-legwarmers era reputation. Instead, I was immersed in a frantic, modern cosmopolitanism that rivals that of New York or Paris. Instead of rock-bottom discounts, I was faced with sky-high prices inside gleaming designer stores. I was mesmerized by it almost immediately, from the airport all the way to the city itself. The view of the bay reminds me very much of San Francisco, down to the freeway that cuts through the city, the hills, and the water. This is from an area called North Point, which in turn reminds me of New York's Lower East Side meets Chinatown. It's a dens...

Voilà , pictures of the 7th arrondissement where the restaurant L'Arpège is located. The buildings all look quaintly old, as if by design. Something about the place is ancient yet modern, the arrondissement of Musée Rodin,  Musée d'Orsay and Les Invalides, a quartier close to major tourist spots, including the Eiffel Tower. 3€50 a kilo for tomatoes? Probably reasonably cheap for a place like this. Around the neighborhood, which hums along trying to be oblivious of the touristic throngs around it, the quotidian life is quiet, though like any other big city neighborhood, parking is infernally impossible to find. In fact, my friends and I arrived at L'Arpège a few minutes early and, while waiting outside, saw a car towed very quickly and efficiently. It was a marvel of of technology and elbow grease. Appropriately enough, Rodin's The Gates of Hell is here. The almost uniform paleness (beige-gray) of the neighborhood is sometimes broken up by large, ornate doors pa...

It was another cold and gray February day in Paris. Scarves were out and my dining companions and I were wrapped up like babies in a manger. However, to make up for the gloom, we were on our way to a three-star Michelin restaurant. A block away from the Musée Rodin, in the quaint yet posh 7th arrondissement of Paris , L'Arpège blends in with its surroundings, in an almost nondescript building if not for the restaurant's sign, to which you would have to look up to see. It's not exactly hard to find if you're on foot, but I can imagine that if you were driving, you might miss it. The neighborhood looks very uniformly shabby but chic, with the occasional visual shock of brightly colored doors. Inside the restaurant itself, the decor is minimal and understated, with warm wood walls to emphasize an inviting and refined dining area which was simple and quietly elegant and which gave a white-tablecloth impression sans the stuffiness. I understood the location and decor m...