Just back from New York!

I spent a few days in New York for the James Beard Foundation Awards – a wonderful trip, as you can see from the photo! (Here‘s a link to the relevant article in Lucky Peach.) It was fantastic to run into so many good friends, and the weather was New York at its shining, brilliant best.

The most beautiful building, glimpsed through Gramercy Park

Foodwise: delicious crisp tofu and bulgogi beef sliders at a newish Korean place, Danji; an utterly perfect, simple lunch at the Gramercy Tavern; and a lavish, dreamlike brunch for Daniel Boulud’s 20th New York anniversary. Oh, and I cooked a Sichuanese feast for the friends who put me up, with fresh produce from Chinatown. (And apart from the food, it would almost be worth going to New York

just to have another look at the portrait of Sir Thomas More by Hans Holbein in the Frick Collection.)