Having lived twice in London–and traveling a great deal as well, I’ve made a menagerie of Australian friends through the years, and seeing them all again was the main reason I’d been looking forward to my first trip Down Under. Friendship to one side, however, I was also keen to sample the country’s storied gastronomy, since Australian chefs have displaced European ones all over Asia, Australian food photographers and stylists are second to none, and one of the world’s two or three best mass-market food magazines is published in Australia, too–The Australian Gourmet Traveller (America should be lucky enough to have a magazine of this sophistication, wit and originality, instead of all of those food books that are 15-minutes-to-dinner recipe driven, advertiser tethered, or fumbling to find the surely lucrative cross-hatching between food and celebrity {If the economy improves a bit more next year, I wouldn’t be remotely surprised to come across PEOPLE–FOOD! on the newsstand}). So numb to dumb with fatigue, I arrived in Sydney a few weeks ago, and couldn’t wait to sink my fangs into a full-house of Antipodean menus.

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Following an epic Champagne tasting at the Grand Hotel with a friend, we were not very hopefully stalking the rainy streets around the Opera for a quick, tasty, inexpensive meal, when we found ourselves standing in front of a nice looking Vietnamese place neither of us had ever heard of before, Entre 2 Rives. Since neither of us can eat Vietnamese food often enough, we decided to give this slick looking little dinette with a cute coffee shop decor of white chairs and tables, suspension lamps and tomato red walls a try, and we ended up being very glad we did. Not only was the food delicious, but the service was charming and it turned out to be a very good buy to boot.

We started with Ha Kao, steamed shrimp dumplings that were light and full of flavor, and Banh Bot Loc, which were delicate rice flour crepes garnished with dried shrimp and steamed inside of a banana-leaf wrapper. Main courses were terrific, too, including Banh Xeo, a crispy omelette stuffed with bean sprouts, shrimp and pork and served with a garnish of lettuce and aromatic herbs, and a superior pho, or rich beef bouillon with rice-flour noodles, thin strips of beef, bean sprouts and herbs. The brief wine list has some stand out bottles at very good prices, too, including a Guigal Cotes du Rhone at 22 Euros. We didn’t get to dessert, since my pal was aching to head over to Harry’s Bar for one of their very good Manhattans, but they’d looked good, too, and since this place is so handy and so good, I know I’ll be trying them soon.

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The red chili pepper garlands are a tip off at L’Orient d’Or

L’ORIENT D’OR

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Chef Thierry Dufroux at Le Bistro Volnay  Since talented chef Thierry Dufroux took over the kitchen in May, Le Bistro Volnay, on a quiet street behind the Paris Park Hyatt hotel and the Place Vendome, has become one of the hippest restaurants in town, or the kind of place where you recognize well-known faces in the hip and very good looking young fashion and media crowd who’ve made this place one of their favorite watering holes.

Run by Magali, who’s put together a really superb wine list, and Delphine, it’s a wonderful looking restaurant with a New York supper club vibe and a low-key but wonderful art-deco inspired decor that’s mostly black with the punctuation of some really good art and a row of milk-glass ball suspension lamps over the bar. Aside from Dufroux’s very good contemporary French bistro cooking–his impressive resume begins at the Hotel du Palais in Biarritz, includes stint at Michel Guerard, Bernard Loiseau, Chez Sarko, aka the Elysees Palace, and most recently with Alain Ducasse in Monaco and at Ducasse’s cooking school in Argenteuil, what I love about this place is that it proves that hip young Parisians really do know and like good food beyond the identikit menus at the Costes Brothers tentacular empire.

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Dining Bar at 39V

This was a very interesting week of dining out in Paris, because even though I’m wary of announcing emerging trends in local culinary culture before they’ve gained obvious momentum, the most memorable element of a pair of very good meals were the exquisite sauces that emerged from these respective kitchens. These sauces were so luxurious and elegantly classical that my mantra all week long has been a trio of favorite quotes from Curnonsky, the brilliant 20th century French food critic. To wit:

1) “Sauces comprise the honor and the glory of French cooking.”

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I’ve been eating at the Oyster Bar, the seafood restaurant in the bowels of Grand Central Station in New York City, ever since I have any clear memory of what was on my plate. For those who don’t know it, Grand Central Station, one of New York City’s main train stations, is one of the most magnificent buildings in the United States, a dignified, elegant American Beaux Arts building with a soaring main concourse with an azure ceiling with faux constellations, solid brass fittings, and acres of polished stone.

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