Grüner Veltliner
Twenty Five Lusk, San Francisco, California – Restaurant Review
Ask someone where Lusk Street is in San Francisco and they would probably shrug their shoulders. In fact, I’ve probably walked past this street a dozen times, but this quiet alley in the China Basin neighborhood hides an amazing dining experience.
From the outside the building could be yet another non-descript rehabbed warehouse. With the $15M renovation of this 1917 meatpacking and smokehouse facility the architects have managed to keep the …
Rosewood Sand Hill, Menlo Park, California – Hotel Review
With a series of speaking engagements for my new book on Information Overload planned in Silicon Valley, a colleague recommended the Rosewood Sand Hill and told me it would be different. His remark was a tremendous understatement. I did expect a nice hotel – what I didn’t expect was an amazing resort environment that transported me at the end of each day from the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley …
Ame Restaurant, San Francisco Review
Ame, which opened in 2005 in the St. Regis Hotel in SOMA, is run by Hiro Sone and Lissa Doumani, who also operate the well-known Terra Restaurant in the Napa Valley. The restaurant emphasizes what it calls “New American” cuisine and my meal here was a highlight of my stay in San Francisco.
The St. Regis hotel itself seems to channel art, and what comes out of ame’s kitchen and wine …
Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar, New York
One block from Carnegie Hall in New York, just visited by the Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic), is the Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar. Seasonal provides a year-round taste of Vienna and is representative of the new generation of Viennese restaurants in Austria and elsewhere that have moved away from the formal, dark, and gilded Habsburg era style to elegant and casual dining.
There is ample reason to go to Seasonal for the …
Vienna: Summer and Winter
Vienna, once the capital of an empire of which it was said that the sun never set over it, is now equally as important as the capital of a newly-invigorated Central Europe that bridges East with West.
Spending summer and winter in Vienna, one notices an entirely different, but equally vibrant, energy. I’ve been spending time each year in Vienna since my youth. In 2008, I was in Vienna for a …
Le Ciel, Berchtesgaden, Germany
A twisty drive on the Alpenstraße brings the visitor to Le Ciel, a 12-table restaurant that offers dining at an altitude of 1000 meters at the InterContinental Resort Berchtesgaden. The hotel itself is set on a small plateau overlooking the Nationalpark Berchtesgaden in Berchtesgadener Land, Bayern (Bavaria) adjacent to Salzburg, Austria.
On Christmas Day it had started to snow in the late afternoon and the restaurant’s softly lighted interior seemed all …
