Latest news with #Lao-style
The Star
26-05-2025
- The Star
Lao festival in Japan showcases country's tourist attractions
Darany Phommavongsa (eighth from right), Amphay Kindavong (ninth from right) and Japanese guests on cutting the ribbon to open the Lao Festival in Japan on May 24, 2025. - VT TOKYO: The colourful two-day Lao Festival opened at Yoyogi Park in Tokyo, Japan, on Saturday (May 24) to showcase the Lao unique culture and traditions, as well as offering a tempting array of Lao foods, to inspire festival-goers to visit Laos. The opening ceremony was led by Laos' Deputy Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism Darany Phommavongsa, Parliamentary Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs of Japan, Hisashi Matsumoto; the Lao, Ambassador to Japan, Amphay Kindavong; Chairperson of the Japan-Laos Parliamentary Friendship Association, Shinako Tsuchiya; and other Lao and Japanese officials and visitors. The festival was a unique opportunity to foster mutual understanding and friendship between the people of Laos and Japan, with visitors able to get a glimpse of Laos' rich cultural traditions through parades and performances, a handicraft exhibition, and numerous food offerings. Speaking at the opening ceremony, Darany Phommavongsa said the Lao Festival in Japan had been a great success in the past, so the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism had repeated the event, with year's festival being especially meaningful as Laos and Japan are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The festival showcases the fruits of years of cooperation between the two countries, which has led to wider understanding of Laos' culture and tourism opportunities by the Japanese people, Darany said. It is also a way to build trust and understanding between the Lao and Japanese people as well as advertising Laos' many tourist attractions and way of life so the Japanese have a more accurate and in-depth perception of Laos. Laos has a lot of stunning scenery, along with numerous ethnic groups whose customs are educational and endlessly fascinating for the visitor, the Deputy Minister said. Among the country's greatest attractions are its ornate temples and places with strong historical links such as can be found in the town of Luang Prabang, where the old quarter has been inscribed by Unesco as a World Heritage Site. The ruins of Vat Phou Champassak, another World Heritage Site in the south of Laos and the enigmatic Plain of Jars, the World Heritage Site in Xieng Khuang province in the north are equally intriguing and offer many opportunities for reflection about the people of a bygone era. Vangvieng and Meuangfeuang districts in Vientiane province are popular holiday hotspots thanks to their riverside locations and bucolic landscape amid towering rocky outcrops, with a range of leisure activities on offer to entertain visitors. There is also a wide range of tasty food to be sampled, such as the ubiquitous meat salad (laap sin), fish salad (laap pa), or lam (a spicy beef and vegetable stew), bamboo soup, piquant fish sauce, grilled chicken, Lao-style sausages, and soup pak. Eating these foods with sticky rice is a daily ritual that has remained unchanged for thousands of years. There are so many intriguing places around the country just waiting to be discovered and explored, whether in the mountains of the north of Laos or the islands in the Mekong in the south. Darany concluded by saying 'I would like to take this opportunity to welcome all of you and invite everyone to visit Laos, which I firmly believe you will find an impressive and rewarding experience.' - Vientiane Times/ANN
New York Post
24-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Post
NYC has an amazing new Southeast Asian restaurant in Twin Tails
Did I dream that I was eating fabulous Vietnamese beef satay and Lao-style grilled chicken, not at Indochine or Tao Downtown, but on the achingly sterile third floor of Deutsche Bank Center, aka the former Time Warner Center? Nope, it was all real — and one of the year's happiest restaurant-world surprises. After a mixed-results launch last fall, Twin Tails has hit its stride and is the new culinary star of the Columbus Circle mall. The sprawling Southeast Asian place from the Quality Branded team blows away ghosts of three flops that preceded it on the third floor. Quality Branded runs venues from tiny Italian trattoria Don Angie to giant steakhouse Smith & Wollensky to Middle Eastern-themed Zou Zou's. This is the group's first foray into Asian fare and it's surprising great. 6 The Night Market chicken at Twin Tails is one of the best poultry dishes in the city right now. Tamara Beckwith 6 The stylish, dimly lit interiors make you forget you're in a mall. Tamara Beckwith While the crowd-pleasing, gently cosmopolitanized Southeast Asian fare is reminiscent of clubby downtown spots, Twin Tails stops short of being a party scene. It's crafted for grown-ups — and for grown-ups' finances, with small plates priced up to $29, most main courses in the $39-65 range and a few esoteric meat dishes costing up to $130. Yet, not once did waiters annoy us with the standard 'all our dishes are made for sharing' upsell pitch, even though — get this! — they all were large enough to be shared. The antiseptic mall mood vanishes once you step through the brass doors. Twin Tails boasts 300 seats including the bar, a lounge and private rooms, but what most diners will experience is the 140-seat main dining room, which is sectioned by design firm AvroKo into five intimate areas separated by low-rise planters. It wears its faux-exoticism lightly; there are no temple motifs or jade elephants. Mirrored walls are pink and amber, banquettes are upholstered in deep yellow. Table tops are of burled rosewood, each with its own small shaded lamp that lets you see what you're eating even if you don't happen to be seated under custom-made amber glass chandeliers. The menu is divided into various categories, such as satay, small plates, fish, shellfish, steak, and pork and fowl. There are tons of spices, but no red-hot chilis to blow off the roof of your mouth. 6 Twin Tails stops short of being a party scene, but there's still a great energy in the space. Tamara Beckwith The 'Night market' grilled chicken — a reference to the flavorful grilled meats found in the night markets of Thailand — was one of the best poultry dishes I've had in recent memory. The leg, thigh and breast are brined in fish sauce and lemongrass; spiced with cumin, garlic and ginger; then grilled and roasted. It's served in a pan with broth made from the drippings. The white meat was as juicy and tender as the dark. In a city full of dry, boring chicken dishes, it's a showstopper. The restaurant can be packed at night, but I had the place nearly all to myself for a recent lunch, where I was bowled over by the pork cha gio rolls. A mineral-rich grind of meat and umami-rich cloud ear mushrooms are encased in super-crisp spring roll wraps. They burst with flavor on their own, but wrapping them in lettuce leaves and dunking them in tangy, fish sauce-based nuoc cham takes them even higher. 6 The red curry sea bass shows the kitchen's skill with seafood. Tamara Beckwith I was skeptical of red curry sea bass after several under-performing seafood choices in the restaurant's early days. But chef/partner Craig Koketsu and executive chef Chad Brown now have the kitchen cracking. The familiar fish is marinated and wrapped in banana leaf, then grilled and roasted with pungent hints of galangal and lime. Strangely, the only flop was a dish the waiter said was the house pride: crispy garlic shrimp 'Lotus of Siam'-style, named for a famous Las Vegas restaurant. Maybe I caught them on a bad night, but the shrimp were almost inedibly chewy and tough when extracted from their shells, and they turned hard and cold after just minutes. 6 Crispy shrimp were the only flop that The Post's Steve Cuozzo had a Twin Tails. Tamara Beckwith 6 Desserts, such as a rainbow sherbet cake, end things on a fun note. Tamara Beckwith The fun returned with desserts such as multi-color rainbow sherbet cake layered with guava, Makrut line, pineapple chili and graham-cashew crunches. Remarkably, the flavors don't merge into a sweet blur but stand up for themselves individually. Twin Tails might not be Saigon or Bangkok, but it's a shorter trip to Columbus Circle — and exactly what the southeast Asian-deprived junction point of Midtown and the Upper West Side needed.
