Sean is a local Korean chef that recently won a cooking contest for Outback Steakhouse. As the winner he got to travel to Australia to do a commercial shoot in Australia with Daniel Henney. If you go to Outback, you'll notice a poster with Sean and Daniel Henney. Besides being good-looking, Sean is the real deal. He can cook. For his winning dish he smoked a ribeye steak using indigenous wood that can only found on the mountains of Korea.  Anyway, Sean and I are currently working on a series of cooking videos and cooking classes with O'ngo Food Communications . More details on that soon. Here are some of the press pics of Sean and Daniel:

Each Meal at Star Chef starts out with a bowl of broccoli with bits of caramelly garlic. The radiant green will prepare your eyes and stomach for the feast ahead. Star Chef is a place I go to to indulge in gastronomic wonders. I mean the menu hasn't changed in a long time, but it's nice to know that you can get great food in the city. The wine menu is something that needs some work. There aren't many exceptional bottles on the menu. Since we were going to have the whole trout tonight, we first went with a reisling. It really couldn't hold up to the spice. I recommend a cocktail or a beer instead. The wine is what it is. Here is the mushroom and beef salad. It is a humongous salad- easily enough to feed two people till they are full. The slightly citrus and creamy notes of the dressing paired well with the savory, grilled morsels of beef. The mushrooms added a earthy note too the dish. The whole cloves of roasted garlic really stand out here. There was one slight problem...

Here is Chef Christian Meilinger pulling out some roasted pork shank out of his oven. It smelled so good, that I had to order one. Here is the plaque from the Miele Guide. Here is the shot of the Roasted Pork Shank dish. The meat was so tender that it melted. The fat on the skin was roasted until it was crisp like crackling. The potatoes and saurkraut made this the perfect autumn meal. I especially loved the horseradish thread on top of the dish. The Miele Guide appointed Chef Christian Meilinger's restaurant, Chef Meili, as one of the best restaurants in Asia. It's well-deserved. Dan

If you've been watching this season of the American show Top Chef, you've probably noticed a lot of the dishes made so far use yuzu. I found myself wondering what yuzu was. Googling yuzu led to the realization that yuzu is actually yuja (유자) of yujacha (유자차). Maybe I'm one of the last people to figure this out, but I was really surprised. Largely because when I asked co-workers about yuja (유자) they didn't know of any other use for it than in tea, and maybe occasionally in some sauces. It's labeled pretty vaguely on the yujacha (유자차) jars as "Citron Tea" in most instances. I think I was meaning to research it more, but forgot about it in the swirl of my balli balli Korean lifestyle. :) Apparently it's an ingredient that has been rising in popularity in the kitchen since at least 2003 , according the New York Times article behind that hyperlink. I don't think I've ever had yuzu, or yuja in any dishes in America, but I have had yuja in Korea and...