An Interview with Ludo Lefebvre

This week on Fine Dining Lovers we spoke with the French born chef Ludo Lefebvre^[1] about his exciting career and the relaunch of his first ever cookbook, Crave: A Feats for the Five Senses.

The chef discussed his early career and what it was like to travel to LA and cook French food in Hollywood.

He also discussed the evolution that’s taken place across the American dining landscape and told us how happy he is that American’s no longer cook just for Thanksgiving.

A Day at the Fish Market

We spent an exiting day at the Katsura fish market ^[2]in Japan’s Kii Peninsula. A place were buyers from all over Japan come to attned the lively auctions and buy some of the best fish on the planet.

We took a tour of this lively market while the auction was in full swing, taking in the atmosphere of the daily event.

We spoke with the manager of the market who has witnessed fish stocks half in 33 years, he explained his fears that they may one day dry up all together.

Also this week

We examined ‘circadian rhythm’^[3] - the body’s internal biological clock and how food can influence our efficiency.

We explored the world of urban gardening^[4] with a wonderful picture gallery and we brought you a wonderful breakdown on Vegan Thanksgiving.

References

1. ^{^} Ludo Lefebvre (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} day at the Katsura fish market (www.finedininglovers.com)
3. ^{^} circadian rhythm’ (www.finedininglovers.com)
4. ^{^} world of urban gardening (www.finedininglovers.com)

The Big Easy, NOLA, The Crescent City, N’awlins. New Orleans^[1] goes by many names, but one of them should be “Food Heaven”. Once you’ve tasted the great Cajun and Creole recipes in Louisiana’s largest city^[2], you’ll know why. New Orleans’ unique cuisine is a result of the coming together of cultures - French, African-American, Italian and more - and whether it’s po’boys or muffuletta sandwiches^[3], spicy jambalaya rice dishes^[4] or wholesome gumbo soups, Bloody Mary cocktails or sugar coated beignets, you’ll certainly be going back for seconds...

START WITH A DRINK
This is New Orleans, after all. Bourbon Street is where many of the city’s favourite bars and drinks can be found. The Hurricane cocktail - so called because it was served in a hurricane lamp-shaped glass - was invented in the 1940s at Pat O’Brien’s, and contains white and dark rum, passionfruit syrup and lemon juice. Head to Galatoire’s for a Bloody Mary with a dash of Tabasco sauce, revered in New Orleans as a classic pick-me-up. But for New Orleans’ official cocktail, the Sazerac - a mix of cognac or whisky with absinthe, sugar and Peychaud’s bitters - pull up a stool at The Sazerac Bar.

Pat O’Brien’s
718 St Peter St, French Qtr, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 525 4823; Website^[5]

Galatoire’s
209 Bourbon Street, French Qtr, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 525 2021; Website^[6]

The Sazerac Bar
Grand Roosevelt Hotel, 123 Baronne St, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 648 1200; Website^[7]

BAG A BEIGNET
After a night out in New Orleans you’ll need a sugar rush to start your day. Beignets are the answer. Brought to Louisiana by the French Acadians, beignets are deep-fried choux pastries, somewhere between a churro and a doughnut. Unlike doughnuts, they are square instead of round and there’s no hole in the middle. Like doughnuts, they are utterly delicious and best tackled with a steaming hot cup of coffee.

New Orleans’ most famous beignets can be found at Cafe Du Monde, where they have been deluged in powdered sugar and served with cups of chicory coffee (café au lait) since 1862^[8]. Alternatively, go direct from the bars of Bourbon Street and catch a late-night beignet at Cafe Beignet set among bronze statues of the likes of Fats Domino and Louis Prima in New Orleans Musical Legends Park. For a savoury twist, head to La Petite Grocery for blue crab beignets with malt vinegar aioli.

Cafe Du Monde
800 Decatur Street, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 525 4544; Website^[9]

Cafe Beignet
311 Bourbon Street, New Orleans
Website^[10]

La Petite Grocery
4238 Magazine Street, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 891 3377; Website^[11]

MARKETS & GROCERIES
It might be packed with tourists, but the French Market is a one stop shop for everything from Cajun spice rubs, to beignet mix. An array of food vendors serve jambalaya, crawfish étouffée, gator on a stick, pralines and more. Every Wednesday, the French Market hosts the Crescent City Farmers Market which has cooking demonstrations, live music and lots of great local produce. Just across the road is Central Grocery, an old-school Italian-American deli, which is home to the muffuletta - a round, flattened sesame-seed bread sandwich stuffed with salami, mortadella, cheese and olive salad.

French Market
1235 N Peters Street, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 596 3420; Website^[12]

Crescent City Farmers Market
Website^[13]

Central Grocery
923 Decatur Street, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 523 1620

HOT STUFF
No table in New Orleans is complete without a bottle or two of hot pepper sauce. Tabasco sauce has been made in Louisiana for some 140 years, and appears in many Cajun and Creole specialities, from gumbo to charbroiled oysters. Just two hours drive from New Orleans, a visit to the Tabasco Factory and Country Store reveals the secrets behind the famous sauce^[14]. But this being New Orleans, there are plenty of alternatives. Pepper Palace has over 1000 varieties of hot sauce, from Jimi Hendrix VooDoo Chile peach habanero sauce, to Flashbang Hot Sauce, which comes inside its own hand grenade. For the truly insane, there’s the Hottest Sauce in the Universe - 2nd Dimension, which comes with all kinds of health warnings, and can only be bought after signing a disclaimer.

Tabasco Factory and Country Store
Avery Island, New Iberia
Tel. +1 (337) 365 8173; Website^[15]

Pepper Palace
835 Decatur Street, French Qtr
Tel. + (504) 655 6843; Website^[16]

I’M JUST A PO'BOY
This is no ordinary sandwich. The po’boy is made with French bread - ideally baked locally by the Leidenheimer Baking Co. - that’s as crispy on the outside as it’s fluffy on the inside; filled with meat or fish, salad, pickles and mayo. It’s as New Orleans as jazz music and Mardi Gras, and is said to date back to the Streetcar strikes of 1929, when a local restaurant owned by Bennie and Clovis Martin fed striking workers or “poor boys” for free.

While traditional po’boys are stuffed with deep fried shrimp, crawfish or oysters, the beauty of the po’boy is that it can be stuffed with anything, as long as it tastes good. Established in 1950, Johnny’s Po’boys claims to be the oldest family run po’boy restaurant in the world, and does a mean hot roast beef po’boy with gravy. Over in Irish Channel there’s Parasol’s, whose seasonal speciality is a deep-fried soft shell crab po’boy. Or go upmarket with a kobe beef cheese burger po’boy at the Hermes Bar at Antoine’s Restaurant.

Johnny’s Po’boys
511 Saint Louis Street, French Qtr
Tel. +1 (504) 524 8129; Website^[17]

Parasol’s
2533 Constance Street, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 302 1549; Website^[18]

Hermes Bar at Antoine’s Restaurant
713 Saint Louis Street, New Orleans
Tel. +1 (504) 581 4422; Website^[19]

References

1. ^{^} New Orleans (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} Cajun and Creole recipes in Louisiana’s largest city (www.finedininglovers.com)
3. ^{^} whether it’s po’boys or muffuletta sandwiches (www.finedininglovers.com)
4. ^{^} spicy jambalaya rice dishes (www.finedininglovers.com)
5. ^{^} Website (www.patobriens.com)
6. ^{^} Website (www.galatoires.com)
7. ^{^} Website (www.therooseveltneworleans.com)
8. ^{^} Cafe Du Monde, where they have been deluged in powdered sugar and served with cups of chicory coffee (café au lait) since 1862 (www.finedininglovers.com)
9. ^{^} Website (www.cafedumonde.com)
10. ^{^} Website (www.cafebeignet.com)
11. ^{^} Website (www.lapetitegrocery.com)
12. ^{^} Website (www.frenchmarket.org)
13. ^{^} Website (www.crescentcityfarmersmarket.org)
14. ^{^} a visit to the Tabasco Factory and Country Store reveals the secrets behind the famous sauce (www.finedininglovers.com)
15. ^{^} Website (www.tabasco.com)
16. ^{^} Website ( www.pepperpalace.com)
17. ^{^} Website (www.johnnyspoboys.com)
18. ^{^} Website (www.parasolsbarandrestaurant.com)
19. ^{^} Website (www.antoines.com)

Montreal^[1]'s Société-Orignal^[2] sells gourmet foraged and artisanal products to chefs throughout North America. It fills a gastronomic niche in Canada and the US, where chefs and diners are clambering for the best ingredients and their intriguing histories. It's hard to find a quality restaurant in Montreal that doesn't feature their elderflower, sea asparagus, or black trumpet mushrooms on its locavore menu.

Société-Orignal partners with more than 30 farmers, foragers, fishermen and families. It divides its extensive product list into animals, fish, dairy products, foraged plants, shoots, leaves, stems, fruits, vegetables, seaweeds and flowers. Some of its most exotic products, including sustainable, cured wild lumpfish caviar and pickled elderberries that taste like grapes, are available directly from their online boutique. Others, including wild cloudberries and yellow alpine strawberries, are more fragile, and are a luxury usually reserved for Montreal.

The company is partnered with fine dining establishments such as Daniel Boulud^[3] and Per Se as well as casual neighbourhood bistros. Here’s what you need to know about some of the company’s most unique ingredients and how some restaurants are using them:

1. IMMATURE ELDERBERRIES
These pickled young, green elderberries are coated in salt before they’re immersed in vinegar. The result smells like the sea and tastes like grapes. At Buca Restaurant in Toronto, chef Rob Gentile uses them in his apple-glazed, hand-stuffed agnolotti. The elderberries help cut through the richness of the dish’s fois gras and braised Quebec wild hare.

2. ICE PLANT
This plant is native to South Africa^[4] but grows wild in Quebec. It has thick leaves that release a gelatinous, thick juice when chewed and tastes like peppermint. Chef Jonathan Lapierre-Réhayem uses it at Laloux restaurant in Montreal in a beet and carrot salad with sea urchin mousse and orange peel purée.

3. SUNFLOWER SEED OIL AND CAMELINA OIL
Sunflower oil is a locally made, sustainable harvested, affordable and mildly nutty alternative to olive oil.  The seeds are dried in cold air “in jute sacks on the roof of a barn,” according to the Société-Orignal website. In spring, the grains are cold-pressed in barrels where gravity naturally decants the oil. The leftover fibre is used to feed the goats from the nearby Petit family farm. M. Petit reduces the goat’s milk to a sweet, creamy jam—Quebec-made dulce de leche. Camelina oil is extracted from the seeds of an ancient plant that’s naturally resistant to genetic modification and natural hazards. The special press developed by the Busine family in the maritime region of Matane, Quebec keeps the temperature below 100F by slowly extracting about one litre of oil per hour. The almond-like flavour of the cold-pressed oil, however, survives at high cooking temperatures, and the oil has a 475F smoking point, making it suitable for high-heat cooking.

4. MARSHMALLOW ROOT
No, marshmallows don’t grow on trees. Neither do they grow in the ground like a potato. But they used to…almost. According to Société-Orignal’s co-founder Alex Cruz, “Marshmallow root mucilage extract was used as a thickener [for marshmallows], hence its name.” Nowadays the root can once again be used to make marshmallows, or to give a marshmallow flavour to sweet and savoury dishes.

5. CLOUDBERRIES
These small berries look like orange raspberries and have the flavour of apricots born in the tropics. In eastern Quebec, where they actually grew up, they’re used in pies and jellies. They’re also common in Newfoundland, where they’re called bakeapples. But at Europea restaurant in Montreal the more-tart-than-sweet berry goes from rustic to upscale in a cannelé pastry that accompanies a dish of pan-seared fois gras stewed in maple bark. The fois gras caramelizes on a hot river stone as a drizzle of ice wine is poured over top for service.

6. CURED WILD LUMPFISH CAVIAR
Wild lumpfish, also called poule de mer and “hen of the sea,” is abundant near the sea beds of coastal Quebec and Newfoundland. This North Atlantic caviar is sustainably fished and is free of synthetic gums and colorants. Only salt and erythorbic acid are added to fix the pH level. The caviar is medium sized, its true colour is grey-yellow, and it has a strong, briny taste.

References

1. ^{^} Montreal (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} Société-Orignal (www.societe-orignal.com)
3. ^{^} Daniel Boulud (www.finedininglovers.com)
4. ^{^} South Africa (www.finedininglovers.com)

Food is an important part of everyday life in Lima, and the gastronomic boom witnessed in the past 10 years across Peru^[1], especially in Lima, has laid way for a variety of restaurants offering a real mix of tasty cuisines.

From the Nikkei at Maido^[2] to a secret Butcher’s Table dinner at Osso^[3], amazing tasting menus at Gaston Acurio's new Astrid Y Gaston restaurant^[4] and the high altitude dining experience^[5] of Virgilio Martinez at Central - the mix of foods, right from the top end - mentioned above, down to street shacks and local taverns - is one of the most vibrant mixes of cuisine, colour and culture anywhere in the world.

With the Latin America’s best chefs currently in Lima for the announcement of Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants List ^[6]- we decided to get off the fine dining track with local chef Rafael Osterling who owns the Rafael (13th on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurant List 2013^[7]) and El Mercado restaurants in Lima.

Working in the energetic city for many years, Osterling has an extensive knowledge of the area and was kind enough to share some insight on some of the top places to enjoy a local bite in Lima.

FAMILY BITES
“It’s a very nice place, quite small in a rough area. Picantere is the name of the houses that serve Chicahora in the Andrean part - an alcohol drink made of fermented corn. So they serve this Chica with a few tradition dishes of the family and there is no sign outside the restaurant, just a flag outside, this red flag.
They sell lots of fish dishes and the nice thing about this place is that they’ll serve you the whole fish and you can say i’ll take some of it fried, some roasted - it’s a really nice concept. The owner also has a restaurant called Fiesta where they serve traditional North Peruvian home cooking.”

Picanteria
Av Isabel La Catolica 1370, Lima
Tel. +51 1 3236957, Website^[8]

Fiesta
Reducto, Lima
Tel. +51 1 2429009, Website^[9]

ONE DISH WONDER
“This place is really cool because they make just one dish again. You have this really nice, fat, grumpy guy cooking and the tables are around him. They just make one dish a day so it’s got to be good. The favourite, classic one is a roast rabbit with cinnamon and orange - it’s very cool.”

Cafe Tostado
Av.Pierola 222, Lima
Tel. +51 12477133

FINGER LICKING LIMA
“This is a very small cantina but they have this one dish that is totally amazing. This small dish of crab chowder, it’s beautiful, you’re constantly sat there licking your fingers with a big beer. Amazing.”

HOME FROM HOME

“It’s a frame of mind - it’s quite an old place, probably about 25 years. It was opened by an Argentinean immigrant and now it;s run by his son. The place is really homely, a nice bar with food. People just want to have a nice relaxed time and to taste great food.”

Canta Rana
Genova 101, Barranco, Perù
Tel. +51 1 2477274, Website^[11]

Curious to know everything about all the best restaurants in Latin America? Here you find Fine Dining Lovers guide to the Latin America 50 Best Restaurant^[12] Awards announced in Lima.

References

1. ^{^} Peru (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} Nikkei at Maido (www.finedininglovers.com)
3. ^{^} Butcher’s Table dinner at Osso (www.finedininglovers.com)
4. ^{^} Astrid Y Gaston restaurant (www.finedininglovers.com)
5. ^{^} high altitude dining experience (www.finedininglovers.com)
6. ^{^} Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurants List (www.finedininglovers.com)
7. ^{^} 13th on Latin America’s 50 Best Restaurant List 2013 (www.finedininglovers.com)
8. ^{^} Website (www.picanteriasdelperu.com)
9. ^{^} Website (www.restaurantfiestagourmet.com)
10. ^{^} Website (plus.google.com)
11. ^{^} Website (plus.google.com)
12. ^{^} Latin America 50 Best Restaurant (www.finedininglovers.com)

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As the dust settles from the buzzing ceremony of Latin America's 50 Best Restaurants List 2014 we take a look at some of the social shouts from the night.

By FDL on September 04, 2014

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References

1. ^{^} Home (www.finedininglovers.com)
2. ^{^} Stories (www.finedininglovers.com)
3. ^{^} Interview With Virgilio Martinez (www.finedininglovers.com)
4. ^{^} See all stories (www.finedininglovers.com)