“We don’t eat and travel to escape life; we eat and travel so that life does not escape us.”
Galavante kicked off 2016 with our exclusive events for our First Class Members in grand fashion at the newly re-launched Asiate at the Mandarin Oriental, New York. We could not be celebrating Travel & Cuisine without our favorite dinner club, The Supper Club, whose exquisite taste in food and wine make every dinner an experience, and the formidable Dolphin Capital Investors, whose mission is to create the most beautiful and extraordinary places around the world. Their developments put destinations on the map, and combine sublime luxury with the authenticity of the local culture. They single-handedly have brought luxury to the Dominican Republic, and their pieces of heaven in Cyprus, Greece and Panama are on our 2016 and beyond travel list.
After all, they gave us one of our top moments in 2015, when we walked down a crescent shaped slice of white sand beach to a local area in Playa Grande. It was here on makeshift tables, we were served lunch of fresh lobster and snapper fished right out of the ocean that day, with sides of huge ripe avocados. We had the best pina coladas of our lives, which were the simple ingredients of pure, sweet pineapple and that famous Dominican rum. It was one of the most luxurious four hours of our year, because luxury is not just about a nice hotel; it’s about the luxury of authentic experiences.
Through our friends at Pasternak Wines, we paired new Chef de Cuisine Garrison Price’s creation of tuna sashimi with green apple, black truffle and soy vinaigrette with Champagne Barons de Rothschild Brut poured by the magnum, and his chilled lobster saladwith petite tatsoi, forbidden rice, plum vinaigrette (we’re still dreaming of this course) with Champagne Barons de Rothschild Rose, poured by the magnum as well, of course.
Our guests continued the evening with the mind-blowing seared sea scallops, candy stripe beets, soy-miso butter and Wagyu beef short rib, bone marrow, sunchoke, black trumpets with Chateau La Nerthe Rouge and Blanc. The cherry on top in this case was chiboust of caramel apple, coriander cream, celery sorbet and Illanka chocolate torte, which was a perfection of stout cake, coffee cream, hazelnut sorbet. It was the clean plate club that evening, to say the least. And it certainly won’t be the last clean plate at Asiate this year; we live a little too close to our favorite Mandarin Oriental, that it’s now our new neighborhood spot.
Be a part of our extraordinary experiences at Galavante. After all, it’s better in First Class.
*Photo Credit: Jakub Studios
