Latest news with #VEA
Los Angeles Times
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Celebrity chefs, fans celebrate food and drink at Relish's debut in Newport Beach
The premier food, wine and spirits event known as Relish made its debut in Newport Beach over the weekend, bringing celebrity chefs and foodie fans to Orange County. Co-created by chef and Newport Beach resident Jamie Gwen with Cobalt Events event planner, Nicole Hirsty, the three-day culinary experience was held at VEA Newport Beach from June 27 to 29. 'We're incredibly proud of Relish's success and deeply grateful for the enthusiastic response from our guests, partners, and community,' Gwen said in a statement. 'It was a vibrant gathering of creativity, connection and culinary excellence. ' The weekend kicked off with a cocktail reception on Friday evening with gourmet hors d'oeuvres, like sushi rolls from Sushi Roku, a fresh fruit and charcuterie spread from Melissa's Produce and craft cocktails and wine on the lawn at sunset. The cocktail reception was followed by a private, four-course Italian dinner with chef and 'Chopped' judge Scott Conant. On Saturday, industry experts hosted a full day of master classes, giving attendees the opportunity to learn about craft spirits, wine, chocolate and cheese from sommeliers, mixologists, pastry chefs and more. Gwen tapped celebrity chef friends and colleagues to fill out a roster that included chef Gale Gand, mixologist Tony Abou-Ganim, winemakers Chris Kjanai and Bob Cabral and cheesemaster Afrim Pristine. The highlight of the evening was a four-course dinner from chef and Food Network show host, Tyler Florence. The event closed on Sunday morning with a sushi and doughnuts brunch that was followed by wellness workshops on guided yoga and meditation to balance the weekend's indulgent spirit. The ambitious event was partly created to bring culinary clout back to Newport Beach in absence of the Newport Beach Food & Wine festival, in which Gwen was heavily involved. 'I love living in Orange County and I believe that we do have a culinary scene and we do deserve an elevated, bespoke and extraordinary gastronomic event,' Gwen told TimesOC in April. Relish partnered with the James Beard Foundation, with a portion of the proceeds benefiting the foundation's Good Food for Good mission and also received support from Visit Newport Beach. Encouraged by the success of the inaugural event, Gwen said the team is looking forward to the future of Relish. 'We're already dreaming up ways to elevate the experience even further in the years ahead,' she said.
Vancouver Sun
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Vancouver Sun
Travel eats: Exploring Canada's connection to Hong Kong's innovative cuisine
When it comes to Chinese food, Metro Vancouver prides itself on its expansive traditional Chinese restaurants. But how do we fare, comparatively? As I found out on a recent trip, Hong Kong trounces us. For starters, it has seven three-Michelin stars, 11 two-stars, and 38 one-stars, as well as 64 Bib Gourmands. This year, two Chinese restaurants in Hong Kong scored second and third spots at Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. When it comes to innovative modern Chinese cuisine, we're barely out of the gate. Two cutting-edge Chinese restaurants I dined at in Hong Kong are run by Canadian-raised chef-owners. One, chef Vicky Cheng (Auberge du Pommier and Canoe in Toronto and Daniel in New York), operates Wing restaurant, which placed 11th in the World's 50 Best Restaurants last week and placed third on the Asia's 50 best list earlier this year. He also runs the one-Michelin-star VEA. While VEA offers Chinese food with a tweezered French personality, at Wing he focuses on China's Eight Great Cuisines with an haute approach — and sometimes eye-popping, as with a vibrant Harbin-style apple-wood smoked braided eggplant dish I had — a visual knockout. Discover the best of B.C.'s recipes, restaurants and wine. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of West Coast Table will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Innovative Chinese cuisine is relatively new to Hong Kong, too, Cheng said. 'It's a culture that embraces tradition. It's got such a rich history and such respect for the masters that chefs don't dare change.' But since Cheng didn't train under Chinese chefs, he did dare when he opened VEA 10 years ago. 'I call it boundary-less Chinese cuisine. While it is not 100 per cent traditional, it is 100 per cent Chinese. When I opened VEA, it was very controversial. We were the first to do Chinese and French together. But now, it's getting more and more popular.' He's blown away by ingredients from Hong Kong, China, and Taiwan. 'In my mind, Hong Kong's a better place for ingredients (than Toronto or New York). The amount of variety is insane. Some of the best produce I've ever had is from China. Most people have never had blueberries from Yunnan. Most haven't had a mango from Sanya, a small island we call the Hawaii of China,' he says. And now I have, thanks to my dinner at Wing, and I can tell you the blueberries gave me actual thrills! Big as marbles, sweet, and humbling. Ditto the cantaloupe, mango, and lychee, all seductively sweet and at their peak. At Hong Kong's wet markets, Cheng says 'there's always a sense of discovery.' A favourite ingredient is dried seafood. 'It's a true representative of Chinese cuisine' he says, holding a large, dried collagen and protein-rich fish maw (the swim bladder). 'It's been aging for 20 years and almost has a texture like mochi (when cooked),' he says. I had it in a dish with yellow fungus and rice with abalone sauce. He also showed me two giant dried sea cucumbers covered in white ash. 'After soaking for a week, it'll almost double in size,' he said. A braised version appeared later tucked inside a spring roll, marinated and moist, with a slight chew and elevated with a glossy sauce. The tasting menu at Wing included dishes with firefly squid and bull kelp, oysters, house-made transparent 'golden crystal duck egg,' 'drunken' abalone, silver pomfret with mandarin peel with fermented black beans, king crab with crispy cheung fun (steamed rice roll), white asparagus with shrimp paste cured pork. The wow! dish was a glazed, crisp-skinned smoked pigeon, dry-aged 43 days and smoked over sugarcane, served on hay, along with the roasted head, on which my husband crunched and munched. (Call me a coward. I have this thing about eating anything with eyes that stare back.) Chef Alvin Leung, a.k.a. Demon Chef, is another Canadian making a difference. He shocked and astonished the traditionalists with his two-Michelin star Bo Innovation (three-Michelin for a few years). He also runs Michelin-recommended Cafe Bau in Hong Kong, and other global restaurants, including R & D, an Asian fusion restaurant in Toronto. You might remember him as an outspoken judge on MasterChef Canada. When Bo Innovation opened in 2017 with its provocative 'X-treme' Cantonese cuisine, he enlisted molecular gastronomy moves and bad-boy creations such as — blush — Sex on the Beach, an edible condom filled with honey and ham. (Proceeds from the dish were donated to an AIDS organization.) It has, at times, been called the El Bulli of the East. But I visited his two-year-old Cafe Bau, which, unusual for Hong Kong is stubbornly a low carbon, farm-to-table enterprise. Over 90 per cent of products including beef, poultry, pork and seafood, are local and nothing is flown in. Wines arrive by sea rather than air. Rice is from an almost one hectare co-operative farm on nearby Lantau Island. The star of the eight-course tasting menu was a whole roasted local Ping Yuen chicken bred for taste, texture and higher fat content. It was brined in coconut milk, dry aged, stuffed with lemongrass, pandan leaves and rosemary. It arrived in a wooden box, whole and steaming. The server ceremoniously opened it as he would a crown jewel. Upon carving, it was served with the local rice and a velvety sauce with chicken marrow and cartilage. Other dishes included blue crab jelly with housemade foamed cheese and heirloom tomato jelly tomato; jinga shrimp gado gado layered in mille feuille; two kinds of housemade ravioli with Chinese stuffing; pan-fried local perch with banana emulsion and minestrone broth; and Pat Chun (a premium Hong Kong soy sauce) pork knuckle zampone with egg confit and stem ginger. Another mover-shaker adding magic to Chinese cuisine in Hong Kong is Vicky Lau. She studied and worked in New York as a graphic designer and brings artistry and French influences to her Chinese menu. She, too, runs sustainable kitchens at Tate, her two-Michelin star restaurant, and Mora, which opened four years ago, earning one star and a Michelin Green Star for its sustainable practices. At Mora, soy is the star ingredient. Lau even operates a soy milk and tofu factory in Hong Kong, using organic Canadian soybeans. (A taster of her silky soy milk was the best that has passed my lips!) Lau, named Best Female Chef by Asia's 50 Best Restaurants in 2015, wows guests with soy's versatility and low-impact soy products. The Mora tasting menu included dishes such as soy mascarpone, with pickled cucumber, green olive grains and soy yogurt foam whipped into a yubu tart shell; geoduck 'noodles' in a soy milk and clam broth, with seaweed and fresh yuba. Deep-fried tofu, even gentler souled than agedashi, was brightened with sesame sauce, dill oil, pine nuts and preserved radish. Chicken roulade got razzle-dazzled with mapo tofu sauce; mushroom rice became addictive with soybean paste, chicken fat, and Chinese ham. But Lau's Tate restaurant is an 'you eat with your eyes' haute experience, each of seven courses, an 'ode to' an ingredient. After three canapés, the Ode to Century Egg course arrives and it's beautiful — a circular presentation of Alaska king crab and century egg covered with rose rice vinegar jelly. Over it, a symmetry of tiny, gelled cubes, aubergine, and croutons. A forestry braised mushroom dish included wood fungus from Yunnan, tree moss and a prized foraged red mushroom from the Wuyi Mountains in Fujian province (it grows for only two weeks). A zucchini flower was stuffed with scallop, tofu, abalone, scallop, langoustine and nested on coconut scallop velouté. Ode to Sakura was a meringue shell with fragile meringue sakura blossoms, lychee rice pudding, sakura tea sauce and a raspberry sorbet. A dried lotus flower tea ceremony followed. 'The symbolism of the lotus flower is strength, integrity and beauty,' our server said. 'It's our way of saying thank you. Now I will manually blossom the flower.' And blossom, it did. What a lovely end, we thought. But the actual finale was a Chinoiserie cabinet filled with petit fours (including chocolate hazelnut lollipops, lemon tarts with marshmallow topping, fortune cookies, canelés, choux pastries) wheeled up to us. I hushed the five-year-old in me and asked for just one — the lemon tart, whereas two young women at another table, less worried about waist expansion, chose about a half a dozen each. miastainsby@
Fashion Network
18-06-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Orlebar Brown and VEA Newport Beach collaborate poolside
It's a collaboration tailor-made for a poolside summer: British men's beachwear specialist Orlebar Brown and luxury Southern California resort VEA Newport Beach (billed as 'Newport's social sanctuary'). The timely coming together coincides with Chanel -owned Orlebar Brown opening a store on Fashion Island in Orange County California, and the pair have hosted a pop-up store within VEA's poolside cabana that also offered 'a fleet of on-site amenities' including an in-room shopping concierge, a signature cocktail, and certificates to shop at the brand-new flagship across the street from the resort'. Every Saturday in June, Orlebar Brown has been activating the cabana at VEA's pool with custom upholsteries, branded pool accessories, and a sampling of the brand's latest collection. In every VEA room, guests can find hanger tags that activate a personal shopping concierge able to deliver product from the Fashion Island store, located steps away from the resort while guests staying in VEA suites throughout the month will receive a $250 Orlebar Brown gift certificate. 'VEA provides the perfect backdrop for a luxury fashion experience,' said Debbie Snavely, GM of VEA Newport Beach Marriott. 'Orlebar Brown embodies the essence of our guests — elegant yet approachable, relaxed yet polished.' It's the latest opening for Orlebar Brown which operates 50 direct stores including London, Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Sydney, Dubai, St Tropez, Marbella, Ibiza, Mykonos, Athens, Montecito, St Barths and East Hampton.
Fashion Network
18-06-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Orlebar Brown and VEA Newport Beach collaborate poolside
It's a collaboration tailor-made for a poolside summer: British men's beachwear specialist Orlebar Brown and luxury Southern California resort VEA Newport Beach (billed as 'Newport's social sanctuary'). The timely coming together coincides with Chanel -owned Orlebar Brown opening a store on Fashion Island in Orange County California, and the pair have hosted a pop-up store within VEA's poolside cabana that also offered 'a fleet of on-site amenities' including an in-room shopping concierge, a signature cocktail, and certificates to shop at the brand-new flagship across the street from the resort'. Every Saturday in June, Orlebar Brown has been activating the cabana at VEA's pool with custom upholsteries, branded pool accessories, and a sampling of the brand's latest collection. In every VEA room, guests can find hanger tags that activate a personal shopping concierge able to deliver product from the Fashion Island store, located steps away from the resort while guests staying in VEA suites throughout the month will receive a $250 Orlebar Brown gift certificate. 'VEA provides the perfect backdrop for a luxury fashion experience,' said Debbie Snavely, GM of VEA Newport Beach Marriott. 'Orlebar Brown embodies the essence of our guests — elegant yet approachable, relaxed yet polished.' It's the latest opening for Orlebar Brown which operates 50 direct stores including London, Paris, New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Sydney, Dubai, St Tropez, Marbella, Ibiza, Mykonos, Athens, Montecito, St Barths and East Hampton.
Yahoo
17-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Lake Street Capital Initiates Buy on Alphatec Holdings, Inc. (ATEC) with 63% Upside
Alphatec Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATEC) is among the best NASDAQ stocks under $50 to buy. On Monday, analysts at Lake Street Capital Markets initiated a high-note coverage on Aphatec Holdings with a Buy rating and price target of $18, implying a solid jump of 63% from its current trading price of $11.02. What's driving the optimistic outlook? As Lake Street highlights, 'Alphatec Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATEC) represents the only scaled spine player totally focused on improving spine outcomes while much of the industry borders on totally confused.' A medical professional guiding a robotic tool placing pedicle screws in a patient's spinal column. This positive coverage followed a non-deal roadshow in New York City, where Alphatec's management and Lake Street analysts met to discuss the company's goals and strategic plans. The investment bank believes that the company will continue to surpass growth rates driven by a focus on a niche spine treatments market. This is reinforced by the 20.04% year-to-date return delivered by the giant in contrast to the return of merely 2.58% by the broader market. Alphatec Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:ATEC) is a California-based medical technology company that engages in the design and advancement of surgical treatment of spinal disorders technologies. Founded in 1990, the core offerings of the company include the Alpha InformatiX product platform, VEA alignment mobile application, and PTP Patient Positioning Systems. The company aims to become 'The Standard-Bearer in Spine.' While we acknowledge the potential of ATEC as an investment, we believe certain AI stocks offer greater upside potential and carry less downside risk. If you're looking for an extremely undervalued AI stock that also stands to benefit significantly from Trump-era tariffs and the onshoring trend, see our free report on the best short-term AI stock. READ NEXT: The Best and Worst Dow Stocks for the Next 12 Months and 10 Unstoppable Stocks That Could Double Your Money. Disclosure: None.
