happy holidays!

Just one more sleep and it's Christmas Eve! There's something about a whole lot of glitter that gets me in the holiday mood. I wonder if Santa has me on his nice list this year ... wouldn't be nice to find one of these glittering little somethings under your tree?

Wishing you and yours holidays that positively sparkle!

tank tops / bracelet / clutch / shoes / blouse

online sale alert: kate spade

Currently salivating over these adorable, albeit slightly impractical, items in the massive Kate Spade sale going on in Gilt right now. Sequined duffel bag, anyone?

If you haven't signed up for Gilt yet, click here. Happy shopping!

today i'm loving: the fannings

How gorgeous are the Fanning sisters on W Magazine's December issue?

Forget Christmas trees and sprightly elves ... nothing puts me in a holiday mood like a glitzy magazine cover!

hunter boot sample sale

The Hunter boots sale just started on Gilt! How fast can you click?

If you've been hiding under a rock and haven't signed up for Gilt yet, click here to join.

it's the first of movember

Having been raised by a faithfully mustachioed man, I've always been quite amused by the stuff. It takes commitment to grow a 'stache—just ask my dad who, for all of my 30 years on earth, has been utterly faithful to his chosen facial 'do. A good mustache gives a look of authority and can even strike fear into those who dare cross it's path (just ask my high school suitors who were subjected to some of my dad's infamous mustachioed rages back in the day).

A good 'stache can even change the face of men's health—or at least that's what the Movember movement hopes to accomplish. This quirky campaign was conceptualized as a means of drawing attention and funding to prostate cancer research, and is supported by the Prostate Cancer Foundation and Livestrong. Last year's Mo Bros and Sistas raised a whopping $7.5 million!

To register, visit the Movember website by clicking here. And if you just like crazy mustache art, check out the Etsy stores where I found all sorts of fun stuff pictured above!

Mustache art via Beardowear, jakes90, OnePinkPoppy, sweetperversion and thepixelprince 

drop dead gorgeous

I'm so in love with this Tom Ford window display at Bergdorf Goodman right now. It is an outrageously decadent portrait of delicious exhaustion.  

That's just what I'm feeling right now after a jam-packed, super fun Halloween weekend. The ridiculous snowfall and slush that hit the East Coast on Saturday did not dampen our spirits. Our Halloween party went on as planned and a surprising amount of party-ready friends packed into our downtown apartment for a crazy good time. On Sunday, I got a lovely surprise as my dear friend Zoe called me offering tickets to a soccer match between the New York Red Bulls and the LA Galaxy. Although our home team lost, I finally got to set eyes on Mr. David Beckham who still has some amazing juice in those hunky legs of his.

I am exhausted to the bone but deliciously so. It was a fantastic weekend.

today i'm loving: pink tresses

Ever since I saw Viv at Ish & Chi's lovely pink tips, I've had pink hair on the brain. It could never work for me because a) pink hair doesn't fly in a conservative workplace and b) I would look like a Harajuku girl all day, everyday. But I like to daydream. My dabbling in pink will have to be limited to perhaps a Halloween costume involving pink hair. Or I could just drool over these images from BCBG Holiday catalogue all day ...

trick or treat: les glaceurs

I'm not usually big on Halloween sweets but I gotta say, these spooky cupcakes that my roommate Mitch brought back from Les Glaceurs in Montreal were a pretty great treat!

Our dessert crazy friend Bads, who seemingly makes it her mission to sample every sweet thing that crosses her path, begged Mitch to bring back these cupcakes—and thereby started an inconvenient addiction. The red velvet cupcake had a lot of fans but I fell in love with the marbré au fudge—that would be the cupcake masquerading as a grave, which is made of marbled chocolate and vanilla cake, and topped with cream cheese frosting and a chunk of homemade fudge.

I love how these cupcakes are both delicious and plain adorable! Les Glaceurs designed these just in time for Halloween and makes a host of other designs from Christmas to Hello Kitty themes.

The Les Glaceurs website boasts more intriguing treats like scrumptious looking s'more cupcake and a sinful sounding moist chocolate cake filled with salted caramel and topped with chocolate ganache.

One day I will come for you, mes chéris ...

Les Glaceurs is located at 453, Saint-Sulpice Street, Montreal, QC H2Y 2V8, Canada and at 1245, University, Montreal, QC H3B 3A8, Canada

spooked

I may be a little bit obsessed with Halloween right now. Just a little.

Last year I did some marathon Halloween partying; this year, we're making the party come to us. The lovely roomies and I are in Halloween party planning mode so I've got pumpkins and ghouls on the brain 24/7. I had some work to do tonight but instead I found myself perusing some chillingly amazing pumpkin carvings by Ray Villafane, caramel apples and spider cakes at Williams-Sonoma, and boozy pumpkin milkshakes (among TONS of other Halloween-themed cocktails) by those crazy ladies at Fashionably Bombed. I can hardly wait for the trick or treating to begin!

Are you ready to get spooked?

today i'm loving: bergdorf goodman's shoe obsession

I am just loving this campaign, which puts together two things that I love: shoes and the city of New York!

While I normally eschew shopping for traveling and eating well, a change in season inevitably gets my fashion mojo going. But for now, while I chip at my credit card bill, I'll limit my obsession to Bergdorf Goodman's Shoes About Town page, which collects lovely Instagrams that show Louboutins flitting about the farmers market and snakeskin Gucci platforms parked on Park Avenue. Enjoy the shoe porn!

i heart matilda

The weather has been gray and gloomy in New York lately and it's making me crave color. So I'm really digging these chic separates by I Heart Matilda that come in invigorating, poppy hues.

Sadly (for me and everyone else in the US), I Heart Matilda is a Philippine brand and is not yet available on our side of the world. I know of it because my dear friend, Jessica Gallegos, is one of the amazing women behind it. And I swear I will bug Jess relentlessly, on behalf of America, to please get these cute threads across the Pacific and into our closets.

For those of you in Manila, I Heart Matilda will be at A Trendsetter's Bazaar in Rockwell from October 7-9, 2011. To be kept in the loop of their new collections and where to get their awesome stuff, like their Facebook page by clicking here.

mad eats at madison square eats

Have you ever been faced with so many good food choices that your brain shut down and you ended up eating Cheetos for dinner?

Yeah, me neither.

But I did come pretty close to it Thursday night when I dragged the gang to Madison Square Eats for a post-work noshfest. The night prior, I had such a mad craving for the Vinh Asiadog that I looked up Asiadog locations. I've only ever encountered Asiadog at flea markets, concerts and festivals but to my glee, I found out that they have a regular outpost in Nolita. To my even greater delight, I realized there's a mini food fest beside Madison Square Park called Madison Square Eats that's going on until October 21, 2011, and Asiadog was one of its awesome vendors.

So right after work, we made a beeline for Madison Square Eats. I must have wandered around aimlessly for 10 minutes as I racked my brain on what deserved space in my belly the most. While I thought about it, I had the Sydney from Asiadog and some sort of delicious amber ale fresh from the tap at Cannibal. I thought I could figure out what sort of beer it was by looking at their restaurant menu but holy crap! Have you seen that beer menu?! Go take a look. When I'm done gushing over Madison Square Eats, I am so planning my Cannibal invasion.

The Sydney doesn't compare to the Vinh (which deserves a post all its own) but I wanted to try something new. It was pretty yummy, topped with a refreshing relish of mango, red onion, cucumber, cilantro, peanut and fish sauce. A Thai spin on the New York dog.

Mitch picked the Wangding, topped with pork belly and onions, which looked pretty darn awesome. I'm gonna have to try that next time.

I was extremely tempted to get one of the Red Hook Lobster Pound's lobster rolls but $16 for a roll seemed steep (specially when there's a food fair with stuff like $9 pizzas and $4.50 fancy beef dogs). But they looked amazing! Check out that generously buttered roll just overflowing with massive chunks of lobster.

I got the lobster mac n cheese instead, which was pretty awesome. Basically they take some mac n cheese, toss it with a generous helping of the massive chunks of lobster they use for the rolls, cover the whole shebang with cheese, and then blowtorch the cheese into lovely melted goodness. The blurry, terribly lit picture doesn't do it justice but it's a good use of $9 and great for sharing.

Also vying for stomach space at the fair are Fatty Snack's pork buns. For $9 you get two buns overflowing with pork goodness and a soda. De-lish.

To top it all off, dessert! I tried Mitch's waffle from Wafels & Dinges topped with bananas and smothered in Nutella. Amazeballs of course. Bar Suzette is also at the fair whipping out wonderful crepes, as well as Momofuku Milk Bar, which was already closed by then. The lunch crowd must've cleaned them out!

After all that nomming, it would've been prudent to have some lovely tea from Spices & Tease's amazing selection ...

But of course I didn't do that. I had more beer instead. Nobody's perfect.

I have to say that Madison Square Eats is one of the best food fests I've been too. It's small but the selection of vendors is top-notch. The tables and umbrellas are blanketed in Marimekko prints, which ups the cute factor tenfold. And on the day we went, the crowd was small, chic and friendly. I definitely foresee coming back again and again in the next few weeks! Check it out if you haven't gone yet!

let's do brunch: kittichai

It's been brought to my attention that people who work in kitchens generally loathe brunch. I've been on the receiving end of a disapproving "Oh, you're one of those people" comments followed up with a self-explanatory picture of some cook's tattoo featuring a popular brunch item and the words "Fuck brunch." I sympathize. I would be pissed off too if I had to drag my hungover ass to work on a weekend afternoon to make other hungover bastards some poached eggs.

But I can't help it. I am one of those people. I like brunch. And if it's a boozy brunch, I might even have to use the word love.

I thought my feelings about the Sunday afternoon we spent at Kittichai illustrate my unconditional love for the boozy brunch quite well. It's certainly not the best meal you'll ever have in your life, but there's just *something about unlimited cocktails, food involving eggs and the company of friends that makes me so happy.

*and by something I do mean unlimited bubbly

At Kittichai, $25 gets you a brunch item and unlimited Bloody Marys, bellinis and mimosas. The brunch choices are:

• Smoked salmon, grilled naan bread, classic accompaniments  
• Asian five spice french toast, thai basil and fruit compote
• Kaffir lime leaf pancake soufflé, lemongrass butter
• Eggs benedict, penang curry hollandaise with morning glory 
• Kittichai omelette, thai sour sausage, jumbo lump crab
• Kittichai Pad Thai, shrimp, garlic chive and peanuts

If your main goal is to day drink and maybe have some eggs, go for this option. The servers are excellent at keeping your glasses filled but the food is pretty lackluster. The most enticing thing on our table were the eggs benedict but since Anthony Bourdain has scared me off hollandaise for the rest of my life, I wasn't having it.

While the yellow curry potatoes on the side were tasty, my Kittichai omelette was frankly quite tragic. I've never seen such rubbery eggs outside of an airplane ...

But by then I'd already swigged a lusciously spicy Bloody Mary and a bellini so I really wasn't too upset.

If you're not feeling like too much of a lush, I would suggest foregoing the boozy brunch prix fixe and ordering a la carte. The chili-smoked hanger steak and eggs plus either a Bloody Mary or a Thai iced tea should be a great combo. We ordered the chili-smoked hanger steak to share and I am still salivating at the memory of it.

To cap off our meal, we ordered the banana spring rolls with burnt honey ice cream, which erases all sadness over inadequate omelettes.

With a few strategic a la carte orders and A LOT of bellinis and mimosas, we ended up really enjoying our brunch. See that's how it is with love: you don't need perfection because you will find a way to make it work.

Kittichai is located at 60 Thompson Street, New York, NY. Phone (212) 219-2000 for reservations.

designer for less: missoni for target

It took superhuman self-control but I managed to clear out of the Target website with just two things: the sleeveless shift dress on the left below and those cute printed shorts on the right.

My shipment arrives sometime next week so I'll let you all know what the real deal looks like. The website keeps going down but I had a few precious minutes of good luck at around 1:30pm today. As of that time, there were still a good amount of shift dresses, shorts, skirts and bags. The hoodie above is still haunting me but I decided I don't need to be in head to toe zig zag, do I? The adorable Missoni bike is all but a memory but there are still iPhone cases, homeware and luggage all ready to wreck your budget ...

If you're able to get on, make sure to shop as quickly as possible as the website is still pretty shaky! Good luck!

the plaza food hall by todd english

When we were young, a food hall (or food court, as we call them in the Philippines) was akin to a culinary Switzerland—a place where my parents could take all the kids with dissimilar cravings and feed them without too much drama. All our folks had to do was give us money and we could get whatever it was our tummy desired: pizza, tempura, hamburgers, Mongolian stir-fry, halo-halo. And we could all still sit down at one table and eat as a family. But food halls in the Philippines are very much like their traditional American counterparts: usually located in a shopping mall and chock full of fast food stands—not exactly what one would think of as haute cuisine.

My view of food halls changed somewhat when I got to eat at Marché in Singapore some years ago (funnily enough, Marché actually hails from Switzerland). Built to give you the feeling that you are eating in a European market (or in some parts, a Swiss chalet), the ingredients are fresh and the food just-cooked.

Lately here in New York, the idea of what a food hall is has been turned upside down in my head yet again. In recent months, a few gourmet food halls have popped up in the city that are bears little resemblance to your momma's food court. Last night, I ventured with a big group of friends into The Plaza Food Hall by celebrity chef, Todd English. This food hall boasts eight specialty food stations as well as numerous gourmet delights to tempt any foodie shoppaholic.

My friend Jammy specifically requested the table in the demo kitchen when she made our reservation so our party of 7.25 (myself, three couples and a baby) had plenty of space to devour food in. Boy, did we need that space because we ordered quite a bit of food!

The Restaurant Week menu was available and seemed to be a good deal. The lunch menu includes 4 pieces of fried oysters with caviar creme fraiche, lemon zest and micro cilantro as an appetizer.

Add to that a Bianca pizza and a mini cheese cake for dessert and it's definitely not a bad deal for $24.07. For dinner, they change it up with half a dozen fresh oysters, and a choice between the Bianca pizza or roasted prime rib for the entree, plus the same cheese cake dessert. You could do worse with $35.00.

Seduced with the bounty of choices from the meat and seafood grills, the sushi bar, the dumpling station and the pizza station, we decided to order a la carte. My mom always tells me I shouldn't make decisions about food when I'm starving and she's always right. In a state of starvation, I went with the Food Hall Burger and its half pound american kobe beef pattie, fried onion, grilled bacon, roasted tomato and gorgonzola, all slathered in barbeque sauce.

It was good but the prime rib sliders, described in New York magazine as "piled with ribbons of tender meat, dripped with a rich Fontina dressing, and served on fresh brioche buns", probably would have been a better choice. Three of us ordered this burger and while it did the job, it wasn't the best any of us had ever had.

I didn't dwell on this too much though because the mac n cheese blew my mind. Is there anything better than macaroni, pulled pork and caramelized onions all slathered in melted aged cheddar? Ok lots of things are but none come to mind while you're dishing bite after delicious bite of this goodness into your mouth, I promise.

I had my hands full (literally) with my massive burger plus the mac 'n cheese so I didn't really get to taste everyone else's food. Consider the rest of the post as food porn. Coco and JM ordered the special: a flat bread pizza with pork belly bits, green onion and sriracha.  

Jammy and Sancho ordered one of their favorite pizzas: fig jam, prosciutto and gorgonzola on a rosemary crust.

There were a couple of rolls from the sushi bar on the table, too, but I haven't had a yen for sushi in awhile so I didn't try any of them. Thought they looked pretty (and yes, I'm sorry that's all I have to say about them). Mica had the lobster roll in the picture below while Jammy had the dragon roll further below. 

All in all, a very good meal. It's hard to find a chic place where one can eat good food at reasonable prices, get seated as a fairly large party painlessly and not be rushed out. So I'm grateful to The Plaza Food Hall for providing a bunch of high school friends and their significant others a great spot to catch up over a good meal.

The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English is located at 768 Fifth Avenue (at Central Park South), New York, NY 10019. Phone (212) 986-9260 for reservations.

cocktail hour: angel's share

One of the things that makes summer exciting: the profusion of bright and shiny new summer cocktail menus. As taken as I am with winter-perfect concoctions involving whiskey, egg and spices, there's something exciting about a refreshing tipple made with vibrant summer fruits. A couple of weeks ago, my cousin Melissa and I went to St. Mark's Place to enjoy the grilled goodness at Yakitori Taisho and then have some delicious cocktails at Angel's Share. Angel's Share is a speakeasy of sorts that's only accessible through the Japanese restaurant Village Yokocho. They have some truly exceptional Japanese bartenders that take their craft very, very seriously and I just love it there.

It was a humid Tuesday evening so I immediately gravitated to this summery drink: Watermelon Man. Made with organic cucumber-flavored vodka, fresh watermelon juice and a sprig of basil, it was deliciously refreshing and deceptively strong.

Melissa picked the Velvet Scene, a drink apparently conceived by pastry chef Chika of Chikalicious. This effervescent drink contains Tanqueray gin, fresh kiwi and fresh grapefruit juice made just from the sweet pulp, all spiked with a bit of honey and lavender.

The most memorable drink of the night, however, was the Cheek to Cheek, which had us so intrigued that we didn't want to share. It starts out typical enough for a cocktail: white rum, muddled berries, fresh lemon juice and white cranberry juice. But then Vincotto is added in—slow-cooked, non-fermented grape reduced until its sugars have caramelized. And then comes balsamic honey, yoghurt and mascarpone foam, and suddenly you're in dessert territory. Is it a cocktail masquerading as dessert or vice versa? I don't know, but it is decadent and delicious.

If my evening at Angel's Share was any indication of how the rest of the summer will turn out, it's gonna be a sweet, sparkling and deliciously tipsy one!

Angel's Share is located at 6 Stuyvesant St., 2nd fl, New York, NY, 10003.

cocktail hour: clover club

I find that a very well-made cocktail can be as satisfying as a delicious meal. So when I read about the first ever NYC Cocktail Week going on from June 15-29, I was beyond excited. Adding to the anticipation was the fact that some of the city's best cocktail bars are participating: Clover Club, Death & Company, Employees Only and Lani Kai. The deal is that you get two cocktails plus an appetizer for just $20.11—pretty sweet considering most specialty cocktails at such establishments run from $12-16. The event benefits City Harvest's fight against hunger and The Museum of the American Cocktail's efforts to preserve mixological history—and I do so enjoy drinking for a cause!

The problem is that what I love about going to these cocktail bars is the experience of perusing extensive cocktail menus or in cases when there is no menu, spilling obscure cravings to the bartenders and waiters and allowing them to surprise me with something incredible in a glass. This doesn't necessarily lend itself well to the restrictions that understandably come with Cocktail Week's prix-fixe arrangements.

I trekked over to Brooklyn one Thursday night to join my cousin Melissa and her boyfriend Ben for cocktails at one of their favorite spots: Clover Club. We went there brimming with excitement at the prospect of Cocktail Week but our hopes were quickly shot down when we were told that the special menu was only served before 7PM and after 10PM. We asked to take a look at the menu, nevertheless, to see what was being offered. On Clover Club's NYC Cocktail Week menu:

COCKTAILS (Choose two)
New York Sour
Bulleit Rye Whiskey, lemon, orange juice, red wine
Cloister
Tanqueray No. 10 gin, herbal liqueur, grapefruit, lemon juice
Hotel Nacional Special
Zacapa 23 Rum, apricot liqueur, lime juice, pineapple juice
Jack Rose
Applejack, lime juice, grenadine

APPETIZERS (Choose one)
Crisps
All right, so they are potato chips ...
but they are tossed in duck fat and
served with a truffled crème fraiche.
Deviled Eggs
Classic deviled eggs, served three ways:
topped with smoked paprika & garlic breadcrumbs,
crispy bacon croutons and mushroom duxelles.
One of each. 

These drinks and snacks sound lovely enough but once I browsed through the extensive cocktail menu, so many wonderful things jumped out at me and I realized that I would not have been happy sticking to the abridged Cocktail Week menu. There were so many intriguing drinks waiting to be tasted and I didn't mind paying a few extra dollars for that privilege. For my first drink, I chose the signature drink, the Clover Club, and with my first sip, I fell in love. Any place that has an egg white in its signature tipple is clearly my soulmate. The Clover Club contains gin, dry vermouth, lemon, raspberry syrup and egg white, and is oh so very delicious ...

I can't recall what Ben's drink was but it was bright, refreshing and perfect for a humid summer afternoon ...

After tasting Ben's excellent drink choice, I thought I'd follow suit for my next drink. Ben ordered the Barrymore Room off the menu and I did the same. This was definitely my kind of drink with rye whiskey, an egg white and some mysterious but delicious friends comprising the drink. I seem to be embroiled in a love affair with rye whiskey and egg these days (I recently had a particularly delicious concoction in Milk & Honey involving rye whiskey, champagne and an egg yolk! LOVE.). It's out of control.

For her second drink, Melissa chose the Blush Baby, which seemed very promising with its mixture of rum, demerara syrup, lemon, blackberry, raspberry and rosé wine. From the look of it, you expected a drink just bursting with berry flavors ... but it tasted kind of watery. It was just okay.

For his last drink, Ben ordered the much maligned and mistreated Mai Tai. If you've only had this in, say, a Cancun all-inclusive resort which shall remain unnamed with an odd fellow named Greg, you'd probably hate the stuff. At its worst, a Mai Tai will contain cheap rum, artificially-flavored juice and that godawful darn sweetener. Over at Clover Club where the ingredients are legit, the Mai Tai sparkles with rum and fresh lime juice and makes you just want to lay out on a sandy beach somewhere with cocktail in hand.

Cocktail Week or not, I thoroughly enjoyed my evening at Clover Club. Admittedly, the Clover Club would be quite a trek for a Manhattanite and I'm quite sure that even a serious cocktail enthusiast from Manhattan would rather squeeze into one of the tiny cocktail bars in the city for a tipple rather than trek out to Brooklyn. I live in the Financial District, however, which is a skip and a hop to Brooklyn so I am much more inclined to come back for more. I thought that the Clover Club's expansive digs dressed in vintage sofas and leather booths were a nice, relaxing change from Manhattan's lilliputian bars where you sometimes have to battle for seating space. The existence of this gorgeous bar with even more gorgeous drinks definitely adds to Brooklyn's ever-growing draw on me.

Clover Club is located at 210 Smith St between Baltic and Butler Sts, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn (718-855-7939)

wanderlust: the 8 restaurant, macau

I love dimsum. I love the mayhem of it: the little Chinese ladies pushing around metal carts loaded with dumpling- and bun-filled bamboo steamers; the aggressive and usually elderly women who accost the pushcarts before they even reach their tables to ensure they grab the best stuff first; and the way the pushcart ladies shove those steaming parcels under your nose, demanding you decide right now whether you want this or not. It is pure heaven for me to spend a weekend afternoon surrounded by this madness because it means I get to eat one succulent dumpling after another until I am dizzy from sheer gluttony.

The Eight Restaurant at the Grand Lisboa in Macau is quite different from the dimsum experience I'm accustomed to. For one thing, this Cantonese/Huaiyang cuisine-focused restaurant boasts of not just one but two Michelin stars. It is housed in one of the most over-the-top and opulent casinos in Macau, with sleek and modern interiors by famed Hong Kong designer Alan Chan. No little ladies with pushcarts here—but over 50 types of dimsum are, in fact, served in these luxe digs during lunch.

The restaurant takes its name from the number considered most auspicious by the Chinese because it sounds like the word which means "to generate wealth." The Chinese consider the number 8 so lucky, in fact, that they started the Beijing Olympics at exactly 8 seconds and 8 minutes past 8PM on August 8, 2008. So it's no surprise that a casino such as Grand Lisboa would pick this lucky number as the name of its most heralded restaurant.

My in-the-know friend Tamara picked this place when I told her I wanted to eat really good Cantonese fare. We came to 8 Restaurant right after swan-diving off the Macau Tower so the first order of business was getting some celebratory drinks. I was stunned when they brought us the wine list.

I was so intimidated by that list that I choked and ordered a beer instead! Next order of business was to get some food inside our grumbling bellies. We quickly devoured the standard dimsum favorites we ordered, like steamed shrimp dumplings and siu mai:

We had some spring rolls, which are always delicious ...

... these spring and summer rolls were phenomenal. Our server recommended this and it totally blew us away. Basically, they've taken a crisp fried spring roll and enveloped it in a layer of soft rice flour wrapper. The wonderful textures just take this roll to a whole other level of deliciousness. I would jump off another tower just to have one right now.

After the dim sum, we got down to serious heart-palpitating business. We had roasted goose, which I was really excited about. Roasted goose is a dish I associate with vacations to Hong Kong because my family and I used to bring an entire roasted goose back to the Philippines every time we took a trip to Hong Kong. We love it that much and this one lived up to my expectations.

Because we do love us some pork, we had to have barbecued suckling pig. I love the perfectly crisp skin, which is attached to the tender meat by a very thin layer of fat. It is served with these cute little rice cakes at 8 Restaurant.

Finally, there was some pigeon, which had been poached in homemade soya sauce. Tender and delicious, albeit freaky for Westerners, I can imagine.

Michele and Tamara were generous enough to treat us for lunch so I don't quite know how much our meal cost, but according to Tamara she was surprised at how reasonable the prices were considering the restaurant's 2-Michelin star status. So if you find yourself in Macau jonesing for some solid Chinese food, definitely pay 8 Restaurant a visit. The food is excellent and the decor jaw-dropping—no pushy ladies but an experience to remember, nevertheless.

The 8 Restaurant is located at the second floor of the Grand Lisboa. Phone (853) 8803 7788 or visit the website for reservations.