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Table of Content for dining:

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2026/04/19 Seven Paintings Dinner in Mountain View

π 2026-04-19 01:01 in Dining, Ndining

It's not every day that I go to a restaurant because of an instagram or facebook ad (actually that never happened, haha), but I made an exception this time around. Reading google reviews did point out that food was not up to par for a $200+ set menu, but thankfully by the time we went, they had improved that part and the food was honestly quite good. It was not on par with a $200 tasting menu anywhere else, but obviously they offer the show and experience as part of that price, so fair enough. I still think the price is on the high end of what the experience and food, justify, but it didn't feel terribly overpriced either as the experience was fun. The only thing they could do much better is to have the projections be interactive like I have seen in Japan's Teamlab Borderless, or Arte Museum Vegas

So with that out of the way, some pictures :)

Restaurant is more food served in a conference room with projectors

the projections were nice, but not interactive

a few fun games to get to your food

yummy

the meat was quite good

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2023/12/31 NYE Dinner at Villa 9 Trois

π 2023-12-31 01:01 in Dining, Family, France, Ndining

We had been there before in previous years, and I was happy to invite my dad and Patricia for another NYE dinner there. It was a fixed menu. Of course it wasn't cheap, as nothing is on NYE, but it was quite good without being too much food:

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2019/08/08 Anniversary Dinner at La Folie

π 2019-08-08 01:01 in Dining, Ndining

We had already been at La Folie in the past, but it had been a while, and it's a good restaurant in SF, so we were happy to go back for our anniversary (a couple of days early):

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2019/07/01 7 Course Tasting Menu at de Silveren Spiegel in Amsterdam

π 2019-07-01 01:01 in Dining, Ndining

While in Amsterdam, I found a very nice restaurant Yves Van Der Hoff, a young 24 year old chef with much talent.

We got their 7 course tasting menu (skipping the cheese in the 8 course option), and the dishes were quite nice. The price was quite reasonable considering that this easily rivaled michelin star restaurants we've eaten at.
The only thing they could easily improve is having a fancier wine pairing option. The one they had was well priced but also pretty basic wines. They could offer a more expensive pairing option with older and better wines.

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2019/06/20 75th Anniversary Dinner with my Dad at Hélène Darroze in Paris

π 2019-06-20 01:01 in Dining, Ndining

This was our 4th time there. The first time was best as she was not too well known yet. That was mid 2000's. By the 2nd time, the prices had more or less doubled and by the 3rth time in 2014, her prices had stayed quite high, but the service had gone way down, to embarassing levels.

Thankfully for this 4th time, the service was back to where it should have been. The base menu price stayed in the expensive range, they finally stopped forcing you to buy pointless bottled water for prices higher than good wines by offering filtered water if you asked enough, but they sure upsold you a lot on drinks with no price at all. They didn't even publish the price of the wine pairing...

The nice surprise is that we got the chef's table by the kitchen and were greeted by Hélène who was working there that day, and took a few pictures with us).
The meal itself was great and my dad was very happy to get pictures with Hélène, so that worked out great as a 75th BD dinner.

they didn't have 1944, for my dad's birth year, but they had 1941

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2019/02/06 Dinner at Jerome Ferrer's Europea in Montreal

π 2019-02-06 01:01 in Dining, Ndining

I arrived in Montréal with not a lot of research for food and when I looked for a nearby restaurant that offered seared foie gras, I randomly ended up at Europea which had a 10+ course tasting menu and was the top restaurant in town. Somehow I was late enough on the right day of the week to get a last minute table. Lucky me :)