Wow! Incredible! Fabulous! That was our reaction when we set foot in the restaurant La Villa in the Sky, located on the 25th floor of the IT Tower in the business district of Brussels, at 480 Avenue Louise.

What a fabulous venue  to have dinner with the best view in town. With that incredible a setting, we were eager to discover if Chef Alexandre Dionisio's cooking matched the view.

For dinner, you can choose between two menus “Louise” and “In the Sky” which cost respectively 155 euros and 195 euros. We opted for “In the Sky” which looked more appealing to us and we were not disappointed.
The menu selected came in seven services, from the aperitif cocktail to the amuse-bouche, from the entrées to the main dishes everything was well thought out, delicate, refined, delicious and perfectly cooked. Even the olive oil, the bread and the butter were perfect.

Our little gourmet (who is seven years old) enjoyed all his dishes and told the chef that his food was excellent!

They have a very good wine list, coming from all over Europe and the world, but also a very good by-the-glass selection. Each glass of wine was chosen to complement the dish, each one was pertinent to the food we ate and proportionately served by a great female sommelier. A special mention to her, probably one of the best sommeliers and one of the best hostesses we've had so far.

The service was impeccable, the team was very welcoming, warm and kind; one of the best if not the best service we've experienced with the Michelin starred restaurants. Every gastronomic restaurant should have a service at this level of excellence.

Alexandre Dionisio is not only a great chef, but also a nice and warm person. At the end of the meal he came to us and told our son that he was very happy to see he enjoyed his meal very much.

A grand bravo to Alexandre Dionisio and his team!  To us, La Villa in the Sky is one of the best restaurants in the world we've experienced so far.

A small remark though: the restaurant is not accessible to people in wheelchairs as the elevator only goes as far as the 23rd floor and from there you have to climb the stairs  to reach the 25th.  It's really a pity.

La Villa In The Sky

IT Tower - 25th Floor

Avenue Louise, 480

1000 Brussels

Belgium

Tel :32 2 644 69 14www.lavillainthesky.be

If you want to lunch in a quiet and beautiful place in the heart of the historic city of Palma in Mallorca, you should head to the stylish hotel Sant Francesc and its restaurant, Quadrat.

Quadrat Restaurant & Garden has a beautiful patio with eight tables, where in spring and summer you can lunch or dine in a cosy and relax atmosphere.

Alfonso Lillo, a Gordon Ramsay and Heston Blumenthal alum, is the executive chef at Quadrat where he prepares the three-course “Menu Del Dia” which changes every two or three days depending on the local market. For 22 euros, we got a dish of Pica Pica (that means "small plates of tapas") to be shared by the whole table, a main dish and dessert.

The small tapas were tasty and delicious; our main dishes were good and the dessert were excellent. The only gastronomic faux-pas we noticed was the Heinz tomato ketchup they serve with their homemade French fries. A five-star resort and restaurant should ban these products and make their own sauce.
 

The wine list had an option for every taste, including a great selection of Catalan and Mallorcan wines.
 

The service was warm, nice and efficient.
 

Quadrat is the kind of address you want keep to yourself, it feels so exclusive.

Quadrat

Tel: +34 971 49 50 00
 

www.hotelsantfrancesc.com

 Marc Fosh is probably the only British chef working in Mallorca, Spain. He started there in early 2001 and in 2009 opened his first restaurant and earned a Michelin Star.

To be honest, Marc Fosh was not our first choice for our last night in Palma the Mallorca, we initially wanted to go to the restaurant Zaranda (**), but they considered our almost eight year old son to be to young to sit through the whole dinner quietly and thus would not take our reservation. So our option B was Marc Fosh where they kindly accepted a seven-year-old.

When we looked at the menu, we found their “Menu Natural” very appealing, it was indeed true for the first three dishes : the savoury goat milk yogurt with compressed apricot, granola, curry and pickled red onion; salt baked beetroot tartare with wild fennel pollen; and probably the best Tortellini dish we ever had, cooked Tajine style with tomato and a smoked garlic emulsion.

But the four following dishes were a let down, a disappointing finale not up to the first three dishes. The two desserts were downright distasteful.

How could a menu go from high to low in seven acts? How could Marc Fosh score so high and finally lose so big? One reason, we suspected, was that the Menu Natural was not thouroughly thought through by the chef and his team, plus the dessert should be more refined and subtle.

Overall, our dinner at Marc Fosh was so-so and left us wondering whether he really deserves a Michelin Star when there was such an enormous gap between all the dishes.

The wine list was mostly Mediterraneen (Spain, France and Italy) with great local wines from Mallorca. They also had a great choice of cocktails.

The service by our hostess was impeccable and in English.

Marc Fosh

Address : Carrer de la Missio, 7

07003 Palma de Mallorca, Spain

Tel : +34 971 72 01 14

marcfosh.com

If you want to taste good food with creativity and fun while in Mallorca, you should head to Adrian Quetglas where the Porteño born proposes a solid degustation menu in seven dishes with democratic prices (50 euros) for a haute-cuisine experience.

The atmosphere at the Adrian Quetglas restaurant was more of a sophisticated bistro than a Michelin star restaurant. Adrian Quetglas wants his restaurant and his food to be more accessible to all gourmets and gastronomes.

For our dinner, there was a unique menu of seven dishes with a pairing of five wines. The cuisine of Adrian Quetglas was exactly what we look for when going to a Michelin starred restaurant, his menu was creative, original and most of all well thought through, all the dishes were perfectly dressed and served in the right proportion.

Even the wines we chose were coherent with the meals served. We were a little bit skeptic about the shot of Vodka proposed with the Borsch Adrian Quetglas style, but it turned out to make sense since we know that Adrian Quetglas spent 10 years in Moscow.

The service was multilingual and very warm. For us it was in French by our charming French hostess, Camille, her service was professional, smooth and in tempo.

Adrian Quetglas is highly recommended for all goumets travellers looking for original and innovative cooking without emptying their wallets.

Adrian Quetglas

Address : Passeig de Mallorca, 20

07012 Mallorca

Spain

Tel :+34 971 78 11 19

adrianquetglas.es

After our wonderful lunch at Lume where tradition meets innovation, we wondered what other restaurant in Milan could possibly offer us something as original and creative? The answer is Tokuyoshi.

Tokuyoshi is the restaurant of Yoji Tokuyoshi, who came to fame as second to Massimo Bottura at the Osteria Francescana.

Most critics credit chef Tokuyoshi with chanelling Massimo Botura's crazy energy and creativity into dishes while he worked at the Osteria Francescana.The rest is history as Osteria Francescana obtained three stars in the Michelin Guide.

Now on his own, Yoji Tokuyoshi can execute what he calls “Contamined Italian Cuisine” contaminating Italian cuisine with Japanese heritage and his personal experience.

Tokuyoshi project seemed serious – and pretentious, but in fact it was the exact opposite: playful, fun, creative and extremely concise in its conception, realization and presentation. Each dish was thought out like a piece of art, for exemple his version of the Pizza Capricciosa, a pure player as music geeks would say.

Chef Tokuyoshi accomplished a tour de force with all his dishes by creating a distinctly Italian dish with a touch of Japanese and Asian flavors.

The service had a touch of French and English class.

For the wine, the in-house sommelier suggested a wine pairing with our choice of menu, or a selection of infused cold teas. The restaurant also had a vast array of sakes.

Tokuyoshi and Lume in Milan reconciled us with Italian haute-cuisine. Their cuisines are masterworks that illuminate the city of Milan but also the entire Italian gastronomy.

Tokuyoshi

Via S. Calocero, 3

20123 Milano MI, Italy

Tel: +39 02 8425 4626

www.ristorantetokuyoshi.com