| • Dear Food Lover |
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| 60 signifies |
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a glorious anniversary, and in June the Thai king celebrated the world's longest reign.
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 Robert and Morrison globetrotted to Bangkok to eyewitness a flotilla of 52 antique royal barges down the mighty Chao Phraya. Hot seats along the riverbank sold out months prior, as hundreds of thousands viewed the spectacle. For those who have seen these regal boats only within the confines of the Royal Barge Museum, this was a chance in a lifetime. |
| Bangkok was a sea of yellow, with golden banners and flowers blooming along the streets and highways, and seemingly everyone donning colored shirts in honor of their king. In Buddhism, the actual day of the week one is born is considered auspicious. Likewise, each day of the week is assigned a color -- in the king's case, yellow for Monday. |
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| The tradition of royal barge processions originated some 200 years ago as a form of naval battle training. Eventually it became ritualized, leading to the highly formal processions today. Most ships are gilded, and all sported in fine livery. For pictures, click here.... |
| On the following night, 25 reigning monarchs feasted at a gala banquet cooked by Oriental Hotel chef Norbert Kostner. The menu included crayfish and crab salad, consommé, steamed tout, veal and apple charlotte, but inexplicably no Thai classics. (Thai chef supremo David Thompson -- ex London's Michelin-starred Nahm and Sydney's Darley Street -- was in town, and would have been perfect to showcase Thai haute gastronomy to the world!) Laudably, local ingredients were sourced from the Royal Project Foundation, an initiative for hill tribes to grow alternative crops to opium. |
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• WHAT'S IN A NAME? |
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| Our upcoming food tour to Myanmar is creating some confusion. Formerly Burma, the large nation to Thailand's Western flank was seemingly, and arbitrarily, renamed Myanmar in 1989. But ask the locals, and they'll politely explain that the term "Myanmar" has been the country's name for centuries. "Burma" designates only the largest majority group in a country of some 50 different nationalities. Other name changes such as Rangoon becoming Yangon, Pagan to Bagan, and Irrawaddy from Ayeryarwaddy are corrections of British mis-spellings and mis-pronunciations. READ MORE… |
| We're offering stop over packages to both Bangkok and Singapore in December and January in conjunction with Burma on a Plate, our food tour to Myanmar 29 Dec. '06-13 Jan. '07. Come celebrate New Year's eve in old Rangoon, and discover the charm of Asia's most unique country. THERE IS STILL SPACE AVAILABLE. TOUR DETAILS CLICK HERE. |
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• SINGAPORE |
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| Bemoaning the state of American food today, The Observer quotes celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain: "If there's hope, and there is, it will come by looking to Singapore. There's a very timid country, with heavy, heavy hygiene regulations, but they have still, somehow, managed to preserve good food: the stuff you will get at the roadside continues to be fantastic." We couldn't agree more… |
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Globetrotting Gourmet® designated Singapore as the hub city for our sell-out Food & Culinary Professionals tour with the American Dietetic Assn in April. Our group feasted at a Darwoodi Bohri Indian banquet in a family home, tasted buah keluak black nuts at the famous Nonya restaurant Blue Ginger, and cooked Laksa at the Raffles Hotel. |
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| Laksa is one of the world's great noodle soups, and The Raffles' sinfully rich secret: add dairy cream to the coconut milk! We also flew to the island resort of Koh Samui for Thai vegetable and fruit carving, and in Bangkok toured that city's largest markets; plus viewed the glories of Angkor in Cambodia. Included were lectures on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and its Thai equivalents. (The rule in both: treat the body holistically, not merely the symptom.) see more pictures |
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| We sampled winning dishes showcased at this year's Hotel & Restaurant trade fair, created by Silk Road in Singapore's Amara hotel. "Stunning" describes the rich shark's fin in a cream-less veloute of pumpkin puree enriched with natural gelatine. Also stellar is their Japanese-inspired balls of rough chopped prawns bound in wasabi mayonnaise, then rolled in fried rice vermicelli mee. singapore.amarahotels.com |
July is Singapore's Food Festival month. From rarefied five-star dining to humble hawker markets alike, this food city's diverse and justifiably famous dishes are on show. Try Singapore pepper crab (we prefer it over soupy chilli crab!), spicy satay, and traditional Indian roti prata and murtabak. The carnival atmosphere continues into August, with a month-long Celebrate Singapore festival, plus a host of activities marking Singapore’s National Day on Aug. 9
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• ON THE PRESS FRONT |
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| Vogue Living features Morrison's trimmings, tassels and textile business in a 3-page article, Jul/Aug '06. "Food is still a passion: Polkinghorne and his partner cookbook writer Robert Carmack, host two gourmet tours to Asia each year. 'We always go to weaving and craft villages too.'" READ MORE>>> |
| Janet Forman profiles Globetrotting Gourmet® in "Extreme Food Vacations" for Restaurant Business magazine, May '06. CLICK HERE |
The travel industry newsletter e-travel blackboard features Globetrotting Gourmet's latest tour to Southeast Asia in their Jun 27 article:
etravelblackboard.com |
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| Robert and Morrison's website www.asianfoodtours.com was awarded recognition in Food Site of the Day in May. This is the second time we've won! |
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• BOOKS |
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 For those |
interested in why the Thai king is so revered, read the just-released The King Never Smiles by Paul M Handley (Yale)
buy on amazon
or William Stevenson's 1996 book The Revolutionary King
buy on amazon |
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While promenading down Bangkok's trendy Sukhumvit soi 55 to the chichi Playground Mall, we incongruously chanced upon Le Gaspacho dix facons de le preparer, or 10 ways |
| to make Gazpacho, by Alberto Herraiz. Its simple, yet stylish, red cover with uncut lime green interior pages is a mere 12 pages, and at €6.50, it's expensive for its weight. Only 1800 copies printed, and there's a complimentary single-subject series, from capers, to orange flower. In French, from Les Editions de l'Epure and Presses du Louvre. You will need a knife to separate the page folds -- which had us recalling 19th century readers decrying the advent of pre-cut pages, claiming they made all books seem used. www.epure-editions.com |
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• I  PHO |
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The Casula Powerhouse Museum in the Sydney suburb of Liverpool seems an unlikely venue to showcase the world's greatest soup. But the museum's one-week exhibition last June has since heralded praise and television offers. Curator Cuong Phu Le compiled a 60 page catalogue, I  Pho that tells you everything you ever will want to know about Vietnam's greatest cultural export, including poems, anecdotes, historical facts, a glossary, and even a recipe. Our only quibble: Andrea Nguyen's recipe from her upcoming Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (Ten Speed Press) omits brown- or bastard cardamom -- a large brown pod the size of a pecan, and totally unlike standard cardamom. We consider it stock essential, and so do most Vietnamese! A$15 or about US$10 from reception@casulapowerhouse.com |
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• HOT LIST |
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| Singapore's New Majestic Hotel is very hot, but we're bemused by the timing of its listing in May's Condé Nast Traveler Hot List. We arrived in early May, and the hotel's grand opening was just the night prior -- and with magazine print leads weeks to months before sale, it seems this hotel jumped the threshold before walking to the altar. Only 22 rooms total, with 6 designed exclusively by leading celebrities. We loved the thematic Work in Progress with it raw wood panelling and architectural diagrams cum art pieces, as well as Pussy Parlour, which presumably needs no further description. The hotel's in-house Majestic Restaurant is not to be missed… newmajestichotel.com |
| Also on the Hot list: The Strand Grill in Yangon. Join our Burma on a Plate tour 29 Dec. to 13 January, and you'll sample it personally. Our write up on One Hotel in Siem, Reap, Cambodia (1st qtr '06 tgtgNewsletter) also presaged Traveler's '06 Hot List. Not only that, we booked our last Nov. Laos Food Sampler tour group at the equally HOT Hotel de la Paix, where chef Paul Hutt at Meric is proclaimed by the magazine as "one of the most inventive chefs in Southeast Asia." No surprise, his restaurant also made the grade. Remember, you read about them all here first! cntraveler.com |
| Bangkok: Surprisingly, the brand new Hilton Millennium did not make this year's Condé Nast list. Towering over the Chao Phraya, the hotel lobby atrium raises some 9 stores, and the hotel's top floor Three Sixty jazz lounge offers an unrivaled circular panorama of Bangkok. Very impressive. |
| Congrats to Bangkok Airways for winning best regional airline for 3 years running! Plus an All-Round service excellence accolade from Skytrax: airlinequality.com |
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| We regularly fly Bangkok Air, plus we've scheduled their flights from Bangkok to Rangoon/Yangon on our upcoming Burma on a Plate food tour later this year. |
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| The National Retail Federation reports that more than 10% of American adults spent their tax refunds on vacations in 2005. If the NRF includes gasoline/petrol in its travel figures, then we suspect 2006 refunds will hardly foot the bill. |
The May '06 National Geographic features Burma and the mighty Irrawaddy River. Click here for the link, and be tempted by the scenery! nationalgeographic.com
The New York Times likewise profiled Myanmar in May:nytimes.com |
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Join us in Asia 2006-07!
Dec. 29 '06 - Jan. 13 '07 New Years Eve in Rangoon
upcoming:
Tokyo & Kyoto, traveling with master Japanese chef Yoshii
register your interests by clicking here... |
| further details on www.asianfoodtours.com |
Cheers,
Robert & Morrison |
Please do not reply directly to this email. Instead, contact us at info@globetrottinggourmet.com |
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