A Japanese restaurateur has turned the nation's everyday comfort food, ramen or noodle soup, into a pricey, gourmet affair that costs more than US$100 and takes three days to fully prepare.

Gong meatballs (摃丸), a daily food of many Taiwanese, has gone beyond being a signature dish to a cultural treasure of Hsinchu.

The milk that Paulette Marmottan uses in her cheese comes fresh from her cows and goats, so warm that on cold mornings, a cloud of steam goes up as she pours it into a cauldron.

Who wants a cup of tea? It's not just Britons, old ladies and laborers who enjoy a cuppa any more, with the world's most consumed drink after water getting a make-over and attracting younger, more discerning fans.

After years of enthusiasm for “molecular gastronomy,” with its battery of gels and emulsions, many leading chefs are turning back to focus on ingredients and where they come from.

Australian winegrowers have been forced to let their grapes wither on the vine and halt production due to damaging levels of over-supply in the sector, a leading industry body said yesterday.

Riding the success of its Kavalan whisky in a recent blind taste test in Scotland organized by an English newspaper, Taiwan's King Car Group is striving to promote its whisky brands around the globe, a company executive said.

El Bulli, the Spanish restaurant repeatedly crowned the world's best, will be closed for two years from 2012, its chef Ferran Adria said Tuesday, citing fatigue and a need to perfect new recipes.

A Taiwanese whisky beat a trio of top Scottish blends in a connoisseurs' blind taste test organized to mark Scotland's annual Burn's Night festivities, the Times reported yesterday.

Tunisians eat over 5 million baguettes per day, subsidized by the Tunisian government as an essential food for the country's 10 million people.