Had a final Westin Grand executive club meal and drinks yesterday.  Red wine, white wine and sparkling wine with snacks, then a chicken dish with salad. We had a hotel credit so ended the night at their bar for Ballantine's and Johnny Walker Black on rocks. The taxi ride from the Westin Grand to Munich Airport cost around $100.  Those red numbers stand for maximum  speed in kilometers/hour.  The 120 thus means 75 MPH.  If there are four thin lines over the number, there is  NO SPEED LIMIT. Airport check-in was swift and easy.  Went to the Lufthansa Senator Lounge.  There is also a Business Class Lounge.  Had just about exactly same meal as yesterday, salami sandwich with a German beer. Our Lufthansa flight took off on time.   Copenhagen Airport, CPH, is the largest airport in the Nordic countries, with 31 million passengers/year before the pandemic.  The Daniel Inouye Honolulu Airport only handles 21 million passengers/year. Co...

One of my very favorite restaurants has long been Noma.  The  New York Times  today reported: Though Noma, the Copenhagen restaurant often called the best in the world, will close for regular service, its influence will  live on through its imitators , the Times restaurant critic Pete Wells writes. Noma's innovations included its methods of foraging and fermentation, its rustic hand-thrown pottery and its list of odd-smelling natural wines.  "I don't think any restaurant came up with so many ideas that were shoplifted by so many other places in so many other cities so quickly," he writes. Still, a long-awaited lunch at Noma convinced Peter that the copycats could never capture the original:  "The restaurant that had inspired so many imitators was fluid, it was graceful, it was coherent." It thus seemed only too appropriate to focus my Tuesday nostalgia on that restaurant.  There is something about the intense pressure of being the best restaurant in th...

Partly due to this current pandemic, my eating habits have dramatically changed.  First, no going out to Michelin 3-stars restaurants, as I haven't traveled in 2.5 years and there isn't even one 1-star in Hawaii.  Second, I am mostly consuming vegetables, and almost totally avoiding rice and bread.  However, the sensational result is that I have lost perhaps a dozen pounds. I do have a trip planned for this coming fall, and if that falls apart because of COVID, certainly next year.  In the meantime the  World's 50 Best Restaurants just announced their honorees for 2022 .  A change recently occurred, and a #1 restaurant cannot repeat anymore.  Noma of Copenhagen was the Best last year.  About this restaurant: I was in Copenhagen in  2010 and ate at Chef Rene Redzepi's restaurant .  He was at that time #3 to El Bulli of Spain and Fat Duck near London. Seven years ago  I stopped by again.  Denmark is very cold in the winter. ...