Many options here.

Check the following names:

Invincible - for just plain and simple products done with no fuss, wonderful wine pairings
La Veranda - serves a fixed menu only, but sensational, hard to book
Nuance - probably among Belgium's best restaurants, but you need a car
Lam and Yin - chinese, but not as you know it
Het Gebaar - lunch only with improbably sensational deserts

and for drinks, before or after

SIPS - hard to explain, a must book cocktail bar

Enjoy and report back.

The inner court yard of Gaumenspiel is in July one of the best and most beautiful places to have dinner. Booking here is definitely recommended. With their focus on fish, vegetables, herbs and fruit they are indeed not typical viennese, where meat and starch have imperial status.

(Comments elsewhere on this topic are misleading and somewhat malicious. There is a second restaurant and even a hotel next door that share the connecting court yard, but kitchen and staff are separate operations.

Dear Marshaw,

Budapest has a lot to offer, but no seafood.
To check my theory you could go to the Budapest Nobu and appreciate what it costs to fly in every single shrimp and clam. (After the meal at Budapest Nobu you will be deaf, because their specialty is very very loud 70s pop music and staff shouting on top.)

Borkonyha mentioned here is indeed good. Another good restaurant is Csalogany 26. For classical hungarian as in goose, venison, paprika infused stews go to Rosenstein.

For sampling wines do visit one of the Bortarsasag shops (the one on the left bank just when crossing the Chainbridge has fine english speaking staff.) or indeed their restaurant Klassz.

Nandori Cukraszda on Raday utca has imo the best pastries and cakes. You'll go on a diet in your next re-incarnation.

Dear Vulpine,

In Brno please try AVIA in Botanicka street. Yes this is a strange setting for a restaurant, but check their cooking and report back.

Prague is undergoing some changes right now. Lokal is good cooking at very fair prices, but I cannot stand the noise level.
More upmarket but still very affordable is Konyrna.

Enjoy

Rather than the okonomiya I suggest you try the oysters. One place serves an incredible lunch is called Kakitei Conclave. It is located along the Kyobashi river and has an open air seating area with red tables and umbrellas.

Good news and news less so.

There is an exquisite thai shop that serves lunch in Schweglerstrasse 19 in the 15th district. (On the U3 subway line at the Schweglerstrasse stop, take exit Märzstrasse.) This is actually a grocery with a wholesale operation. All other thai restaurants buy their ingredients here.
New deliveries of herbs and vegetables come in on Tuesday.
Eating here is a bit rough in social terms, with service rather unpredictable, but the food does taste like the real thing.

There is no Vietnamese nor Korean worth mentioning and you must take great care with any shop serving fish. The only genuine good japanese bistro - Kuishimbo - serves very limited selections of fish, but does very good vegetables and noodles.

Worth trying is the new age fusion chinese ON in Wehrgasse, but the owner spreads himself too thinly over three large scale operations. ON can occasionally be sensational.

I close with a jibe that will owe me flaming, but I stand by it - you must avoid Kim Kocht and it satellites.

Dear intrepid,

check out some of the following places:

Invincible - www.restaurantinvincible.be - for local dishes, simple no fuss presentations and a very adventurous wine list.
Interesting also for its sushi-counter type of seating.

Veranda - located in Berchem, Guldenvliesstraat - for fixed course no options menu of very intelligent composition and attention to quality produce. (Book well in advance

If you had a car you ought to consider Nuance in Duffel, a fifteen minute ride from Antwerpen. www.resto-nuance.be.
Try to go there now, so you can say in the not too remote future when they will have three stars "I ate there"!

As much as I respect all other chowhounds' opinions, I would like to say that the recommendation for fiskebar in another reply to your query, is imho wrong. Very wrong, in fact.

Enjoy

Hurrah! I subscribe to this board exactly for posts like this. Wonderful!

Hi Angelhair,

There is one great Indian place - The Pind - www.thepind.cz. (No pork!). Ignore all other indians and so called chinese in the centre. I have been looking for a Vietnamese, but no luck so far. Do not even think of japanese or anything else that claims to be sushi.

Rather formal dining, but very good produce, can be had at the restaurant of the Augustine hotel - Lichfield. Not a budget option, but affordable lunch.

Still on castle hill is Konyrna. Very basic Czech food with some dignified touches. Lunch a steal at this price/quality.

And why not consider to have the young gentleman cook himself from produce bought at one of the various farmers markets? The ones at Naplavni, Jiriho n ode brad and Dejvice the best stocked and easy to reach by public transport.

Dear Brian,

I strongly recommend you do not go to Armes de Bruxelles. For traditional Belgian bistro food made with fresh products have a look at Henri - www.restohenri.be.
Bruneau was a classic top notch place that reinvented itself a while ago, it is still good but not very imaginative. You can do much better for a Sunday celebratory lunch. Will you have a car? If so, check www.resto-nuance.be.
Enjoy and report back!

In terms of researching menus, you ought not to waste too much time. All produce is strictly seasonal and the main ingredients will at this time of the year be pretty much the same wherever you go - saori fish, gingko nuts, new rice, matsutake mushrooms, persimmon, chestnuts.

I wonder why no other of the permanently japan based c-hounds are replying. Your list has quite a few names of restaurants that were never mentioned before on this board.

Enjoy

Hi brismomo,

far from being an expert - other people on the board are more up to date with the scene - but I do understand very well what "first time to Kyoto" means for foodies... A few general ideas.

Kyoto food experience is not just about eating in restaurants. Must do gastronomic adventures not on your list involve shopping at the food basements of the department stores, lugging the catch onto the train or to your room and eating it there. The basements of Takashimaya and Isetan are top.

Do not miss the Nishiki arcade market and eat what you see. There is a rice shop that serves lunch, and so does one of the vegetable stores. Grilled oysters too. All anonymous but very delicious.

Yes it is normal to order when making the reservation. You will typically be offered a choice of two or three prices. You will not be given choice of what you eat, just how much you spend. This is politeness and good planning. At the higher end of the market it avoids embarrassment for the customer. And the kitchen does not buy produce they won't sell.
Consider the price brackets more as a right to enter the shop and a gauge of the luxury, rather than as a prediction of what you will eat.

Lunch sets are very good, but hard to book. There is just less elaborate techniques and decoration involved. You might be served a one or two tier box (bento) with all of your lunch in a single arrangement of small dishes.

Kitcho - and a few other top kaiseki places like Kichisen, Wakuden, Chihana - are, to my wallet, very hard to justify, although I have been to all of them when the yen exchange rate was more clement. Kaiseki is an open end platonic concept with no roof limit to perfection. If the ladies serving you wear pedigree kimono's in hues matching the season and all the flower decorations and antique vessels come in a color scheme matching that of the food and so on, there is a considerable cost. If the meal involves precious items like maitake mushrooms or turtle you can easily get to 400 dollars per person. It is your sense of luxury that guides you here. Please note these places will not let you change the menu. Order on the spot is contrary to the essence of kaiseki food, some dishes requiring preparation spread over a full day or two.

Strictly speaking of the food my choice for kaiseki as a cooking style is Nakahigashi. Try calling them on 1 November to get a table in December, if you are lucky. A very good and moderately priced restaurant serving the multi course tasting menu in a family home setting is Kaishin, south of the JR central station.

No shortage of breakfast options in the same station basement - croissants, cappuccino, fruit salads, the lot. Finally, it is safe to assume that taking pictures with your phone is a japanese invention. But please do not - as I witnessed once - request the chef to come out of the kitchen and ask him pose with a fish and offer him a cash tip if he seems reluctant. I can tell your sensibility to japanese culture is way better than that.

Enjoy and report back.

Dear Theresa,

In Oostende you have plenty of choice. Two places stand out imho. Both offer the classics of Flemish cooking associated with the coast - sole, plaice, grey shrimps, fish soups, mussels and mountains of fries.

Au vieux port is the luxury version - http://www.auvieuxport.be, De Stad Kortrijk in Langestraat 119 is the rough opposite.

I prefer the latter for its simple minimalism - no reservations, no service worthy of that name and please do not drink their wine, stick with the bottled beer. But the food is very tasty.

Of course if you were in Diksmuide and had a car you would be less than half an hour away from In de Wulf, consider to be one of the best restaurants in Europe.

Enjoy and report!

Hi DougOlis,

Looking at your list I see a few top places missing, but basically your choice is sound.

For Antwerp I agree with the suggestion you add Nuance in Duffel (a 20 minute drive from the city center)
Try Invincible as well. Less ornate, more basic cooking with counter seating and a very clever wine list.

For Ghent you ought to consider Dewitte Benoit en Bernard in Zingem. (Fifteen minute drive from Ghent center.) Right now imho the best in Belgium.

In Brussels I strongly recommend you do not go to Museumsbrasserie.
Kelderke, Pre Sale and Bonsoir Clara offer little interest. Why not consider Henri - www.restohenri.be - if you are after typical Belgian dishes done in a simple and straightforward manner based on quality products. Interesting wine selection.

Hard to beat Marcolini for chocolate, in terms of the basic product and the aromas, but I find Darcis in Verviers - darcis.com - better, a lot better in fact. Then again Verviers is a long ride.

Enjoy and report back please.

dear vanderb

most useful posts and the follow up is impressive.

What about AVIA in Brno? That is my favourite. And In Prague I recommend Sansho. I will watch this space to see whether you like that those. By the looks of it, you will.

Hi currycue,

the two viennese delicatessen mentioned elsewhere in this post do indeed sell pumpkinseed oils. However they operate as pharmacies and charge ridiculous profit margins. Plus, you might not be told if the bottle you buy is from the latest harvest. You can do better than that.

Some of the most reputable producers have mail order delivery and overseas shipment services. You can order and have the goods send to your hotel or elsewhere. I know for a fact that this works, having used either method for my own usage and for overseas business contacts. Some producers even use special metal containers for shipments.

You could check the mill of family Kiendler, my favorite, under www.kiendler.at, or family Hamlitz, third generation producers of perfectionist standards under www.hamlitsch.at.

Please be aware that when buying a bottle labeled as "produced in Austria" you might be buying oil made from inferior chinese seeds. These were shipped to Austria and pressed there, but the type of pumpkin being used is of a lower pedigree and the time lapse between havest and pressing is deadly.

To reward you for efforts in this cause, I give you my recipe for pumpkin seed oil omelet.
Preheat your oven to 80 C. Take three very fresh eggs, separate the white from one egg and wisk it into a firm foam, adding a good pinch of salt. Beat the remaining two eggs, plus one yolk. Heat a non stick pan to quite hot. Now mix two table spoons of your best pumpkin seed oil into the egg white, beating with the whisk - great colour effect! Now add some butter to the pan. Carefully fold the egg whites, now turned green, into the yolks and immediately pour the mixture in the hot omelet pan. After 30 seconds on the stove, put the pan into the over and leave it there for five to minutes.
Serve with toasts, after having sprinkled seeds and more oil on top, plus pepper to taste.

Dear Willowan,

Your plan sounds fine to me. I never visited Baldastzis, but Klassz and Bock's are very good, and relaxed.
To sample wines you ought to try visit one of the branches of the Bortarsasag wine sellers. The one just across the chain bridge, turning left when you go castle side is top class. They have tasting formal and informal all the time. Bortarsasag are the owners of Klassz by the way. That explains why the restaurant offers permanently 20 wines by the glass at very good prices. The service is never less then adequate. (I was there last Monday.)

Don't expect too much of the beer scene. The two dominating european players - Heineken and InBev - offer their own pils under different names, posing as local beers, but it is just the same drink as Heineken and Stella. If you did find local micro breweries I certainly would like to hear about them.

If it were fine dining with formal service you were after, you might consider Csalogany 26 and Borrszo.

Unbeatable in my opinion for breakfast is Nostro in Krudy Gyula utca, near Mikszath Kalman square. The sun, the croissants, good coffee.

Enjoy and report back

There is some difference in the price levels. The highest will at this time of the year probably feature wild mushrooms. From having eaten there quite a few times and having worked with a former assistant of Murata-san, my intuition is that the lower of the three options uses less expensive ingredients, like farmed fish instead of wild catch.
In any case, this is despite many detractors posting on the web, one of Kyoto's great restaurants.
Make sure to sit at the counter.

My own impression as a regular customer of Klassz for more than five years now, is that they have lately, in the last year or two, been having serious difficulty staffing the kitchen. The team of waiters in the restaurant room has not changed once. The staff in the kitchen however seems to be erratic, uneven and can create serious time problems and occasional but rare lapses of quality.
I would still recommend it, however. Your are right in praising Bock's, which has a higher standard of cooking, but costs 50 to 70% more, not to mention that their wine selection is definitely not better than Klassz.

The suggested restaurant is good, not scary, some might even call it tame.

But insiders and people who really know Indonesian food introduced me many years ago to a place in Den Haag called Soeboer. www.soeboer.nl/restaurant/index.html. (website in Dutch, but the contact details are fine.

Ever since, the idea to eat indonesian food elsewhere than at Soeboer has never again crossed my mind.

Budapest would have to be:

- Borsso Bistro (has an impossibly nice terrace)
- Csalogany 26
- Borkonyha wine kitchen

Trade either of these for Rosenstein if you wanted a traditional old style hungarian-jewish meal.

Prague ought to be

- Sansho (has a terrace, very good beer but the spanish wines are better)
- The Pind (indian, indeed indian, not czech, with a terrace and very good beer)
- Coda (for the location) or Chagalls (for the food)

Trade either of these for Degustation, if price is not an issue and if you like this type of food.

The summer has been much hotter than normal so far, and the traditional cooking of either city does not fit that weather so well. The beer does of course.

Enjoy

Very smoky and very crowded. The kitchen fumes and cigarettes mean you must add the cost of the cleaners to the bill. You will not be able to wear your suit the next day.
They serve two groups, one at 6 one at 8. The hasun-starters for the second group are made in advance and kept on the dish washing counter waiting for the guests to arrive.
They serve one main dish on almost all turns - fish head stew with burdocks in reduced dashi and mirin broth. Tasty, but not a reason to go.
Their selection of sake is not refined nor special and definitely not remotely as sophisticated as what Kashin will offer, at a lower cost.

All restaurants suggested are top class, the best and very fitting. I would go to Vau because they have no music and you could talk quietly, maybe even sit in the small inner court yard. Reinstoff is more conspicuous and showing off technique. Vau is feel good food.
Just to add to your embarrassment of richness - why not consider Die Spindel as well.

Dear Diane,

If you took out Plachutta, Gmoakeller and Sarah Bernhardt and were to add Zum Finsteren Stern, Freyenstein and Konyrna I would help you schlepp your luggage on the trip!

Enjoy

Dear cb-addict, may I strongly suggest you think twice before going to giro giro?

Alternatively, have a look at this family run, always full and excellent value for money restaurant just south of Kyoto station - Kashin. keiko_kashin@oboe.ocn.ne.jp or check their facebook entry www.facebook.com/pages/Kashin-Kaiseki...

Enjoy the trip and bring an umbrella!

Diane,

you are in a bit of trouble. Steiereck is closed on Sat and Sun, though their low cost and very very good spin off Meierei is open on weekends.
Fabio and Plachutta are in my opinion to be avoided, on all days of the week.
For a top class Viennese traditional dinner head for Meixner's - www.meixners-gastwirtschaft.at.

Enjoy.

The Hungarian botrytis sweet wines from the overripe late harvest furmint grape are not to be missed. They are known as Tokáji. Look for small 50 cl bottles. They are rated with a star code - look for bottles labelled Aszu with 4 or 5 stars (puttunyos) upwards. In some vintages a superior version is produced - essencia. These wines beat Sauternes at value for money any time.
Vintages 03, 05 and 06 are widely available and top class.
The tax free bay at the airport has a decent and reasonably priced selection.

Things not to missed to bring from Prague are typically not discussed on Chowhound, unless you count their Kohinoor pencils, and their delicate cedar perfumed outer ends as almost edible, as I tend to.

Happy anniversary first of all!

Yes, Onyx and Costes do fit the occasion.

Have a look as well at Csalogany 26 - www.csalogany26.hu - which is quieter and smoother for conversation. Its location does not allow them to charge typical tourist prices, but they cook extremely well.
Bock Bisztro is nice too, but maybe not as intimate as the occasion requires.
Outside the well known top class restaurants is Rosenstein - rosenstein.hu/en/.

Enjoy!

This is too harsh and based on wrong assumptions, in the best of cases.
Lokal is a no frills beer hall, with very good but simple food. They use top class products for very down to earth meals.
No, indeed, no service like in a starred establishment. It is slow food from poor pedigree products and poor people's traditions, like in the days that no refrigeration existed at homes and meats were cooked in communal kitchens.

Lokal does not do foam of ginger over shadow of pigeon with green pea mouse with the waiters complimenting you on your new Jimmy Choo shoes.

What makes we wonder is that the people who now point fingers at your husband, seemed to like Kolkovna. That would be very telling.

Hi Rosie,

Lucerne is easy - Braserie Bodu am Kommarkt. www.brasseriebodu.ch/
Top class food and an unbeatable wine list. Value for money on ripe and ready to drink Bordeaux does not get better.
Book well in advance.