Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

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The Raeburn (Edinburgh): Quaint Scottish Locavore

Jacob's LadderI hadn’t been in Edinburgh for very long when I started to hear about Stockbridge.

This little neighborhood filled with quaint shops wedged together on narrow, cosy streets used to be a village — and still has that air about it.

It’s become recently fashionable, though — sort of the Greenwich Village of the city. And amid the buzzy cafes and shops popping up, I started to notice one in particular: The Raeburn.

Aside from reading about this new boutique hotel and restaurant, I knew there was something there when I happened to overhear a set of chic young Edinburgh professionals talking about it being the place to meet for after-work drinks these days.

So on a chilly spring evening, Dorset Boy and I bundled up and headed over …

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Hong Kong: Sunday in the Sai Kung With Daphne

Sunday in Hong Kong and two sisters have nothing but empty hours and sunshine ahead of them.

The possibilities are plentiful — shall there be some dimsum? Or a lovely pork chop bun, perhaps? Because the day is beautiful, however, something outdoors becomes a must. Into a car we hop, squeezing through the city’s narrow, congested lanes, whizzing down a highway past thickets of toothpick -thin skyscrapers. Before long, there is a blur of greenery, squat shophouses, the sounds of children squealing.

As we tumble out, there is a smell. It’s the sea — and there is a vast expanse of it.

“I thought you would like Sai Kung,” Daphne says. And she is right, even if this is just the beginning.

We gather ourselves and amble on. Not so far away, a lively fish market awaits …

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The Shop at Andaz Fifth Avenue: Style, With Some Substance


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As hotel restaurants go, the shop at Andaz Fifth Avenue tries pretty hard.

Determined to cast itself as a New York restaurant, it likes to broadcast just how local it is. Its Web site rattles off a litany of New York purveyors — eggs hail from Feather Ridge Farm in the Hudson Valley; lox comes from Russ & Daughters on Manhattan's Lower East Side, which has been providing New Yorkers with smoked fish since 1914. And there's even a self-conscious little area that sells snacks made by small, lesser-known brands in New York.

This is all in line with the in-the-know feel that the hotel, part of Hyatt Hotels & Resorts' chain of boutique properties, tries to give off. It's a pretentiousness you can already sense from the fact that it is the shop — spelled all lowercase, the hotel insists — and not, well, The Shop. (You'll have to check out my review of the hotel in the New York Times Travel section for more on this Andaz.)

How would the food stack up against all this posing? We decided to find out …

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