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Exploring the restaurant industry from the inside out
Berries and Spice is a space dedicated to the restaurant industry, to professional chefs and restaurant managers. You will find business insights, trend reports, recipes, interviews and more, all with a focus on culinary innovation.
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Ioana Negulescu
641 Following
3K Followers
There are two types of people in the world based on their relationship with food: those who eat to live, and those who live to eat. It's hard to make those who eat to live understand the pleasures of fine dining and why someone would go to a Michelin star restaurant and spend so much money on a meal. 45 4
Although I loved every single dish of the tasting menu at Frenchie, this was perhaps the one that stood out the most: stone bass, clams, cauliflower, pickled mussels, vadouvan. It may be because I cannot resist any fish and seafood dish, but as we all know, taste is subjective and it comes down to personal preferences. My dinner there, in the lovely company of fellow passionate gastronomer @mintandrosemary was marvellous. Every dish was well crafted, every ingredient perfectly cooked. Frenchie takes contemporary French food to a high level and you can experience that throughout the entire menu, whether it is a refreshing oyster, a perfectly smooth fragrant foie gras, or this dish, which had a balance of richness, sweetness, savoriness and acidity that ticked all the boxes for me. Thank you Andra for showing me such a beautiful place in London, and I can't wait until our next culinary adventure! 101 6
I've only got a couple of weeks left until I'm back in Vienna. But until then, I plan to spend as many of my weekends enjoying the sun and good food at @mosia_corbeanca. @bogdandoltu took this serene piece of heaven right outside busy Bucharest, and transformed it into a gourmet getaway, perfect for warm sunny days. Aside from their weekday evening hours, they're open every Saturday and Sunday from 10 am until 10 pm, so grab your car or an Uber and pop by! 99 5
I read a lot about how the perceived flavour of a dish can change through the various elements bringing it together. And here, I'm not talking about ingredients, but the way it is presented, the plate it sits on, the cutlery you eat with, the chair you sit on. I'm often hard to please in restaurants, since my attention to detail outside of the food often distracts me and can make or break my experience. Here, NOUA, the contemporary Romanian restaurant that chef Alex Petricean opened a week ago, brought playfulness and a little adventure to their selection of 6 Romanian snacks. ➡️ Each of them comes on a wooden piece of a large puzzle, representing a region of the country. As the guest, you get to guess where the puzzle piece fits. One snack at a time, you build the puzzle, only to be left with a beautiful map of Romania. ➡️ From a customer experience point of view, this idea is brilliant and can have such a strong impact upon your perception of the food and the experience. It allows the guests to interact with the food and with each other, it enables them to reflect upon each of the snacks and its origin, it makes them think about familiar flavours, share stories, laugh, all while educating them in a playful way. Chapeau @darty_chef for this idea! And swipe to see the beautiful end result! ⏭️ 126 6
Dining with friends and family who are not as particular about food and restaurants as I am is always a challenge. I, of course, put everything under scrutiny and pay attention to the smallest of details, and, at the end, start discussing it. It often sounds like a critique and I am often told 'Ioana, but it wasn't that bad, was it?'. Of course not. If I dislike a restaurant, I will make it clear. If I just debate various aspects, then it means I myself am trying to process the experience. And, let's be honest, perfection is hard to achieve. If I think about past restaurant experiences, I don't think any was 100% spot on to my tastes and expectations. Because restaurant experiences are influenced by a multitude of factors, be it your mood, your level of tiredness, the comfort of the chair, the atmosphere, the sounds, the plates, personal preferences, the staff (whose mood can also vary due to tiredness or personal circumstances, etc.). The latest article I wrote on the blog is not a restaurant review. It is just my lunch at Ikoyi London, as I experienced it myself, paying attention to various aspects that are important to me. It's slightly different to previous content, but it's a perspective I wish to explore more in the future. 88 6
This to me was the standout dish from the course tasting menu at @ikoyi_london: iberico pork, served with a silky smooth mandarin purée, a hazelnut & clam sauce, and their signature smoked Jollof rice with crab custard and wild garlic. 🐷🐚🌰🍊🍚🦀🌱 The textures and flavours were so exciting, it was a pleasure to try each individually, all together, and then play on variations of only a couple of elements together. That to me is the ultimate tasting experience, and helps me better understand how various ingredients work together, thus developing my palate. This dish definitely makes it into my top most memorable restaurant dishes, and I am sure their daily variations of this dish are just as exciting too! 118 12

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