About Gerard Cok

Cutting-edge cooking rooted in the Austrian landscape

Chef Heinz Reitbauer pushes the boundaries of Austrian cuisine in thrilling ways at his beautiful restaurant on the banks of the river Wien in Vienna’s central park. His cooking draws heavily on the Styrian roots of his family, incorporating unusual ingredients from the region’s fields and rivers, as well as his own farm. The stunning produce is handled with the utmost respect in the kitchen, with Reitbauer using his own ground-breaking cookery techniques that are now inspiring other chefs around the world.

Hot beeswax is used to cook the freshwater mountain fish char, served with yellow carrot, pollen and sour cream, while the chef also cooks with heated blocks of Himalayan pink salt and special branding irons heated to 600°C.

The restaurant trade has always been in Reitbauer’s blood. His parents first set up Steirereck in 1970 and he trained under some of Europe’s best chefs, including Alain Chapel near Lyon and Anton Mosimann in London, before returning home to eventually head up the family business. The knowledge he has accrued during his career is evident in beautifully presented dishes such as puntarella (chicory) with woodruff, sweet potato and sea buckthorn and a dessert of quince with burnt milk and lavender. A huge wine list showcasing hundreds of indigenous varietals from Austria’s best vineyards is further reason to visit.

Source: http://www.theworlds50best.com/list/1-50-winners/steirereck


Japan’s leading restaurant celebrates nature with an added dash of drama

As a young man, Yoshihiro Narisawa left his native Japan to train in France, Switzerland and Italy – and his culinary tutelage is evident in the style of his eponymous Tokyo restaurant. But Narisawa does much more than simply transport European haute cuisine to the Far East; his genius is in blending classical French techniques with the finest Japanese ingredients – along with plenty of imagination and a dose of drama – making for a genuinely unique gastronomic journey. The combination has seen Narisawa retain its seat at the top table of global gastronomy for many years.

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Stay cool with a new line of Atwater’s ice cream.

No need to scream for ice cream—we couldn’t be happier to learn that Atwater’s has moved into the ice-cream making business.

Owner Ned Atwater tells us that even before opening his first cafe 15 years back, he’d always dreamed of making his own dairy products including ice cream, yogurt, and cheese. “I always wanted a component of our business to be a creamery,” Atwater tells us, “but I never had the time or space.”

Now he has both.

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Delicate produce-led cooking near the Franco-Italian border

Mirazur leaps 17 places to rest tantalisingly close to the top 10 on the 2014 list, a reflection of the considerable evolution of Mauro Colagreco’s cuisine over the past few years. While other chefs often bring more involvement to their food as the years wear on, Colagreco has de-cluttered his approach: the intention here is to serve ingredients with as little adornment as possible to allow the quality of the produce to shine.

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Exceptional flair and gutsy innovation produce eclectic brilliance

British-born Luke Dale-Roberts has been making waves way beyond the shores of his adopted homeland of South Africa for some years, having featured in The World’s 50 Best Restaurants during his time at La Colombe. But it’s since the launch of his Test Kitchen in shabby-chic Woodstock just over three years ago that he has really started to carve out his own niche. Named the One To Watch last year, The Test Kitchen has seen the chef’s unique culinary style brings together a mix of techniques and flavours inspired and influenced by his stint at Bali Sugar, one of London’s first fusion restaurants, as well as his extensive travels in Asia.

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Schermafbeelding 2014-05-26 om 10.30.09

NOVOCASTRIAN chef Brett Graham’s London establishment The Ledbury is the tenth best restaurant in the world.

The Notting Hill restaurant came in at No 10 on the World’s Best Restaurant list, released today, climbing three spots since 2013. It is one of two UK restaurants in the top ten, alongside Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner.

“It’s a huge surprise being there in the top 10,” Graham said.

“We’ve got a great young team, actually half full of bloody Australians as well, from all over the country.”

“My sous-chef Greg who’s from Forster does a wonderful job and he’s been a big part of this as well.”

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Modernist techniques and artistry come together to astonishing effect

Grant Achatz has been a world leader in culinary innovation since opening Alinea in Chicago back in 2005. Dishes such as hot potato, cold potato and black truffle explosion, as well as food suspended on wires or plated straight on to the table, have become iconic around the globe. And nearly a decade on, the chef continues to push the boundaries of avant-garde cuisine with his ever-evolving menus.

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The Sin City food scene is on the rise, on and off the Strip

Guy Savoy at Caesars Palace has been awarded two Michelin stars, the Forbes Travel Five Star Award, The AAA Five Diamond Award, and many other honors.

Las Vegas is maybe the strangest anomaly of a city — culinarily and otherwise — in the United States. Around the turn of the 20th century, when New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and other American powerhouse population centers were booming with emerging food cultures of their very own, Sin City was non-existent – an unincorporated stopping point between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles.

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FORGET The Fat Duck. Just for a minute.

Sure, there’s a lot of hype regarding Heston’s relocation of the famous Berkshire restaurant down under, and it will be awesome. Blumenthal plans, after all, to ­relocate just about everything, including the signage, from Bray to Southbank, and for many of us it will be as close to a Fat Duck experience, and its famous, laterally thought cuisine, as we’ll ever get.

Not a pop up. Not a guest chef appearance. Six months from February 2015 in the space at Crown Melbourne currently known as Breezes.

But, you know, it’s a fad. It won’t last. Long after the thrill of the Duck affair is over, we will be married to Dinner. And let’s face it: Dinner, Blumenthal’s restaurant in the swish Mandarin Oriental in London’s Knightsbridge, is a five. Not a 47. That’s five as in No 5 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, the annual restaurant pissing contest sponsored by S. Pellegrino and Acqua Panna.

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DINERS passing through the imposing facade of one of New York’s finest restaurants may perhaps be surprised at how well the maitre d’ seems to know them, their profession, their personal tastes and perhaps the fact that they are celebrating an anniversary.

Even in a city like New York, where a significant proportion of the population believe themselves to be famous, the familiarity of the staff at Eleven Madison Park with their personal achievements would seem flattering but a little far-fetched.

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