THE JOURNAL
L’Oiseau Blanc at The Peninsula Paris. Photograph courtesy of The Peninsula Paris
From Paris to Yangon, MR PORTER recommends six of the best places to make a reservation this Valentine’s Day.
Finding a good restaurant has never been an easy business. Just ask the restaurant critics. They don’t exactly dole out five-star reviews with a trowel. And it isn’t just because they are all incurable sour-pusses (well, not always) – it is because, as a formula, the restaurant is difficult to perfect. The components of a top-flight restaurant are as many and various as any Broadway show. Now, affix the word “romantic” to the word “good” and your former headache just became a migraine. There are a whole host of other things you need to consider now, because the best restaurants are not necessarily the most romantic; how could they be? A nine-course tasting menu featuring live ants may rate highly in terms of culinary ingenuity, but is unlikely to get you in the mood for a night of passion on the divan. So, to help you out, MR PORTER has scoured the globe to find the sweet spots where the superb meets the sexy, where you can whisper sweet nothings to your sweetheart as you indulge your sweet tooth.
Langosteria Bistrot, Milan
Photographs courtesy of Langosteria
Hidden away from the tourist trail, cheek-by-jowl with the canals of Navigli, Langosteria Bistrot appears to have escaped from a Mr Federico Fellini film. There are the bent-wood chairs, the starchy tablecloths, handwritten specials on the mirrors – all it really needs is Ms Anita Ekberg sat in the corner nibbling on some crudo (raw fish, Italian style). And what a lot of crudo there is to choose from here. The place is known for its seafood, which is arranged high on a raw bar, as if just that moment yanked out of the sea. This makes it a perennial favourite with the waistline-conscious Milanese. Though, pleasingly for those who want more bucatini for their buck, there is a comfortingly long list of homemade pastas. Sexy and small, it is the perfect place to sip a spritz and indulge in a little amore.
What to order: plateau di cruditè followed by the pappa al pomodoro e vongole (clams in tomato sauce)
What to wear
Le Coucou, New York
From left: photograph by Ms Corry Arnold. Courtesy of Le Coucou; photograph courtesy of Le Coucou
The great French Uptown dining palaces of 1980s Manhattan, such as Lutèce and Lafayette at the Drake, are now but a memory. Sure, some labour on with those wine lists like bibles and knee-deep shag pile carpets, but their allure has leaked away, leaving only the faint smell of hairspray and Drakkar Noir. In their time, though, they were temples to glamour – which is just what Le Coucou is for the modern era, with its high-ceilings, candlelit tables and long blue crushed-velvet banquettes. Created by Chicago-born, Paris-based chef Mr Daniel Rose, it serves French food at its most buttery (there is more sauce than a Carry On film here), the sort of thing you can only manage once a month if you still want to fit into your Acne Studios jeans. Book a window table and watch the glinting towers of New York remind you that you are not actually in Paris.
What to order: Dover sole Véronique with a garnish of peeled grapes.
**Book your table with the help of MR PORTER’s Style Council **
What to wear
Casa Cruz, London
Photograph courtesy of Casa Cruz
It is the door that first hits you square on the corneas at Casa Cruz, standing 8ft tall and covered entirely in shimmering copper (a decorative scheme that continues into the dining room of this former Holland Park pub). It is all rather stunning, which is how you and your date will (with luck) look in the generously low-lit, velvet banqueted dining room. Created by Mr Juan Santa Cruz, a Chilean former investment banker, this London outpost of his Buenos Aires original features a menu composed of fresh ceviche and meat seared on a hot Josper grill (the ribeye is particularly toothsome), and is very popular with the financier crowd who abound in this upscale west London neighbourhood. Book a table upstairs, and make sure to message your date with something suggestive from the hall-of-mirrors bathrooms.
What to order: one of the ever-changing ceviche dishes
**Book your table with the help of MR PORTER’s Style Council **
What to wear
Mandolin Terrace at Soho House Istanbul
Photograph courtesy of Soho House
With its multitude of Carrara marble and frescos, you can imagine the poet Lord Byron descending the staircase of Soho House Istanbul on his way for a dip in the Bosporus (he was a big fan of the city). Today’s Lord Byrons would do well to whisk their dates upstairs, however, to the roof and its magnificent Mandolin Terrace. A lounge and pool by day, it transforms into an intimate, low-lit restaurant at night, where husband-and-wife duo Mr Ahmet Erkaya and Ms Anastasia Koutsioukis serve up a combination of Turkish and Greek food – think kebabs and meze – from their respective homelands. Based on their original venture in Miami, the standard of their food is high, but the view is even better, looking out over the Beyoğlu district and beyond. Book early as Istanbul’s arty crowd are drawn here as butterflies to poppies. If, that is, poppies offered espresso martinis.
What to order: lahmacun meze
What to wear
Kissa Tanto, Vancouver
Courtesy of Kissa Tanto
When Kissa Tanto opened last spring, some people shook their heads at the notion of this 74-cover restaurant in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Do the words “Italian” and “Japanese” really have any business being seen on the same menu, they asked? Well, skip forward 12 months and the answer is a big fat yes – Mr Joel Watanabe’s joint has been named Canada’s best new restaurant by Air Canada’s enRoute magazine. The food is as exceptional as that accolade implies (24-hour slow-cooked Wagyu lifter steak, anyone?) and the setting deeply romantic, with its slightly faded 1960s-style interior of dark green walls and red leather banquettes. And in keeping with the name, kissing is very much on the menu.
What to order: daily fish crudo with shiso vinaigrette
**Book your table with the help of MR PORTER’s Style Council **
What to wear
L’Oiseau Blanc, Paris
Photographs courtesy of The Peninsula Paris
The L’Oiseau Blanc biplane might have been lost at sea in 1927, but you won’t if you take your date to its namesake restaurant on top of The Peninsula Paris hotel. It is a singular place, with 360-degree views of all of Paris (there’s a difficult choice to be made between a table looking onto the Eiffel Tower or the Sacré-Coeur atop Montmartre). The kitchen lies in the very capable hands of chef Mr Sidney Redel, who produces a menu of seasonal French food which changes by the week. The wine cellar is rather fulsome here, too, with some 12,000 bottles on offer. So, make the most of the expertise of super-sommelier Mr Xavier Thuizat and get a dusty bottle of Pétrus as you pop the question.
What to order: The Valentine’s Day menu, with its highlight of quail eggs with Petrossian caviar.
What to wear
Le Planteur, Yangon
Photograph courtesy of Le Planteur
The opening up of Myanmar (Burma) in the last decade has led to a flowering of the tourist trade. Nowhere do you see that more than the visitors’ book at Le Planteur, which has, in the past few years, drawn Sir Mick Jagger, the president of Switzerland and a host of other luminaries. It is easy to see why the VIPs keep coming. The hotel is set in a colonial-era house perched on the banks of Lake Inya near the residence of Myanmar’s foremost activist, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi. Its extensive grounds look like they have come straight out of a Pathé film, so clipped and trimmed are they. You can eat inside or out; we recommend booking a table by the lake and ordering the five-course tasting menu (the red tuna starter is particularly fine), so you can sit outside in the cool evening as long as is humanly possible.
What to order: The tasting menu