Dineocrat in Paris Video Highlights

Here's a short video I made of some of the Paris dining highlights, with some scenes of the city thrown in (for context and atmosphere). I've already posted pictures from Agapé Substance and Akrame, while those from others will be up on the blog soon.

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Spiral - Fine Buffet Food at Sofitel Manila

Buffets were my nightmares. Seriously. My first experiences of them were back in the late 80's, in the form of American all-you-can-eat chains and the Vegas strip. Thoughts of these fluorescent-bathed establishments deliver to my mind plates of dark-edged lettuce, grease-laden meatballs and all-you-can-eat spaghetti with dubious meat sauce. Little did I know back then that these were merely temporary outposts for the 250-pound men and women on the express road to 500 pounds. But even Vegas has upped the ante of dining, upgrading its hotels to dizzyingly ostentatious luxury and, consequently its amenities to match, including its buffets and more formal sit-down restaurants. When I went back to Manila for good, one of the first places my family took me to was the strikingly modern Sofitel Manila , which houses the Spiral buffet restaurant (and a small casino). After several more visits, my nightmares, I could honestly say, are gone. Even after having eaten at the new-Vegas buffets, ...

Salumeria Roscioli, Rome

Salumeria Roscioli in Rome is a narrow restaurant in a chic area of the city, on the Via dei Giubbonari. After window shopping at the trendy boutiques along the street, we headed to the restaurant for our meal for the night. You enter through a deli/salumeria/wine bar with an amazing selection of products, and arrive in the back where there are small tables for dinner. There's also a downstairs, in the wine cave, with a few slightly bigger tables for larger parties. Flawlessly presented with deceptive simplicity, the food was quite good. There were, however, no surprises with the ingredients or preparations, though both were first-rate. What you will get, however, is a breathtakingly deep wine selection and incredible variety of salumi, as well as the precise but simple cooking of the chef. Prego? Below, two views of some of the the wines and liqueurs for sale in the vineria. If you have a table against the wall, most likely one of these monsters would be above your ...

L'Antico Borgo Ristorante, Civitella in Val di Chiana, Italy

We were lost, hopelessly, almost irretrievably lost. My friend from California had been driving us around for several hours, all three of us having gotten very little rest after our arrival in Rome. At that point, we had been up almost 48 hours with hardly a wink on the planes we took. We were searching for Civitella in Val di Chiana, a tiny little town in the hills above the Tuscan city of Arrezzo and it was a task more difficult than we thought. The directions we received were not very clear and it didn't help our cause that the signs around this area of Italy weren't very clear, either. Once you leave the city, the Tuscan towns pretty much all look the same. Pretty, but identical. And even when we stopped to ask for directions, the language barrier was worse than we had anticipated. Hours later, our Italian friend finally decided to meet us at a nearby hotel, easier to find than the bed and breakfast in which we were to stay. By the time we checked in to Antico Borgo—the B...

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