The monthly summary for July and it’s been another hectic few weeks!

I was most flattered and surprised when BBC Olive magazine gave me a kind mention in the August issue:

‘worldfoodieguide.com has an amazing array of restaurant reviews and she is very fair and straight with her comments. Particularly useful for Chinese/Asian venues, her area of expertise‘.

A Time Out London post When are food bloggers just meal blaggers? also mentioned me. I won’t replicate the controversial debate on the subject of ‘PR freebies’, whether in the form of complimentary meals or products to review. I’ve tried to be as transparent and fair as possible with the few complimentary meals I’ve written about. It’s a subject that’s still very much on my mind, so I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

I voted for my favourite UK restaurants as part of a panel of over 300 people for Restaurant Magazine’s National Restaurant Awards 2009.  The Top 100 UK Restaurants will also be announced on 12th October at the Hurlingham Club. I’m looking forward to the results! Meanwhile, I maintained my position within the top 10 in the Wikio Gastronomy rankings.

The husband and I have decided to go on a traveleating journey around Japan in November. It will be my fifth visit and I’m already excited about researching places to eat. Luckily I have a lot of friends in Japan who will be helping me and I hope to gather some Japan-related tips on Twitter nearer the time. If you have any suggestions, particularly food-related, please send them my way!

Outside the home, I had good meals at 202 Café (smoked haddock fish cakes), Rasa Sayang (black pepper crab), Salt Yard (stuffed courgette flowers) and Sushi-Hiro (very fresh sushi, particularly the scallop). On the other hand, St. Alban was just a so-so meal, while I had a most disappointing dim sum lunch at Min Jiang.

In the kitchen, I attempted to recreate one of my favourite dishes, Cantonese wonton noodle soup. Where to find the best wonton noodles in Hong Kong causes great debate amongst foodies! The egg-less pasta post written by the husband last year was updated with new photos after the recipe was re-tested. I also reviewed two excellent cookery books Balance & Harmony (with a recipe for braised chicken, tofu and glass noodle hot pot) and Modern Spanish Cooking (with recipes for pimientos de Padrón and patatas a lo pobre, both vegetarian dishes).

Finally, Foodies on Twitter, in which I wrote about using Twitter as a foodie, attracted some great comments from fellow Twitterers. Are you using Twitter already, or thinking of joining?

Thank you as always for reading!

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

I suppose I had better start with the Guild of Food Writers 2009 Awards party, which I attended last Thursday as a shortlistee for the New Media category. I didn’t win, but I did get the opportunity to meet some fantastic people, including my two ‘rivals’ for the New Media award, Tim Hayward from the Guardian Word of Mouth (who beat us!) and Elisabeth Winkler from Real Food Lover. You can read all about the awards here, and I was mentioned on Word of Mouth the following day. It was nice to be reminded of the judges’ comment about World Foodie Guide (which I completely forgot from nerves!) – ‘great fun to read and hard to leave‘. Thank you to all my readers and friends who have been so supportive! Had I won, I would have shared the award with you all (I had a little speech ready just in case!)…

What else? I did a day trip to Manchester to attend the Sweet Mandarin Chinese cookery class, which was great fun and very informative. I reviewed two cookery books in June, Serendip on Sri Lankan cuisine by Peter Kuruvita and A Culinary Voyage on Greek Island cooking by Theodore Kyriakou. Both were ‘traveleating’ books at their best and I particularly enjoyed making the potato and tuna cakes from Serendip. I also attempted to make Sichuan wontons, which were rather spicy and delicious!

Outside the kitchen, I returned to Taste of London, the annual restaurant and food festival, and ate at Japanese Tsuru, a 15 course dinner at Hunan, a superb pizza at Franco Manca, dim sum at Leong’s Legend and revisited Le Café Anglais.

And last but not least, I met Kang from LondonEater for lunch. The meal itself was mediocre, but the company was excellent. As a result of our chat, the next day I bought myself the Leica D-LUX 4, which Kang recommended as ‘the king of compacts‘. He has also been giving me useful food photography tips ever since, and I’m determined to learn to use the Leica properly. Thank you Kang!

Thank you as always for reading!

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

I worked my way through the submission process, frantically filling in the application form and sending five links from my 2008 posts to the various judges in my category, in order to meet the tight deadline. Then I heard nothing again until a few weeks ago, when various GFW members started to congratulate me on Twitter for having been shortlisted. I was forwarded this press release with all the shortlistees, which listed me for the New Media award, along with Elisabeth Winkler from Real Food Lover and Tim Hayward who writes for the Guardian/Observer Word of Mouth blog.

The day finally arrived and the vegetarian husband and I dressed up and headed off to the Guild of Food Writers Awards party at The Great Hall in Lincoln’s Inn, Holborn. This year, the GFW was also celebrating its 25th anniversary, so the event was doubly important. Drinks and delicious hot and cold canapés were served from 6.30pm, although I was too nervous to eat until after the announcements. It seemed like an eternity though before the awards were finally presented by legendary food critic Egon Ronay, still sharp at a venerable 94 years old.

So did I win the New Media award 2009? No, but Tim Hayward did! Elisabeth (her post has photos, whereas I was too jittery to even hold a glass of wine!) and I gave each other hugs and later I went to congratulate Tim, who turned out to be the vegetarian husband’s old schoolmate! It ended up being a really enjoyable evening and I also chatted to Fuchsia Dunlop, Stefan Gates, Susan Smillie from Word of Mouth (there’s a post about Tim’s win that mentions Elisabeth and I) and some of the judges in the New Media category, who were encouraging and full of praise for World Foodie Guide.

It was indeed an honour to have been the only non-professional shortlisted and to be amongst such distinguished company (Heston Blumenthal and Mark Hix were winners on the night). I look forward to trying again for the New Media award in 2010! I urge all British food bloggers to do the same, as this was only the second year that they have had the New Media category, and the perfect category for bloggers.

The full list of winners can be seen on the GFW website.

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

The monthly summary, for May.

I suppose I’d better start with the big news! I’m very proud to announce that World Foodie Guide has been shortlisted by the Guild of Food Writers for the New Media of the Year Award, along with Elisabeth Winkler’s blog Real Food Lover and Tim Hayward’s blog on The Guardian & Observer’s Word of Mouth. Results for all the categories will be announced at the 14th GFW award ceremony on the 25th June. Until then, fingers and toes crossed!

What else? I wrote two book reviews for The Real Flavour of Tuscany (with a recipe for pappardelle with duck sauce) and British Regional Food (with a recipe for Welsh rabbit). There’ll be two reviews with recipes each month for the near future. I hope you’ll enjoy them!

From the kitchen, I made nettle pesto, zaru soba and Chinese cold noodles, all very simple and easy to prepare. The nettles came from our garden and are extremely good for you. We’ve eaten nettle pesto several times since and I highly recommend it, while both the zaru soba and Chinese noodles are cold and therefore perfect for summer weather.

In May, apart from a delicious gastropub dinner at the Fox & Anchor, all the meals out were at Chinese restaurants – a revisit to Yauatcha for dim sum, more dim sum at Yum Cha, which has made my dim sum recommendations list, and a lovely lunch of ‘xiao chi’ or small eats at Ba Shan. Finally, I attended this year’s Real Food Festival at Earl’s Court, a three day event featuring hundreds of small food and wine producers. Although I thought last year’s event was better, I still enjoyed chatting to producers, sampling endless produce and taking some goodies home with me.

Thanks as always for reading! Follow me on Twitter if you’ve recently joined – @foodieguide

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

Here are the 7 colleagues I’m going to pass the award onto:

• Aapplemint - I love the photos, recipes and health tips, especially the one on honey & cinnamon

• An American in London – great restaurant reviews from London and abroad

• Appetite for China – I’ve learned lots about where to eat in Beijing from Diana

• Fotocuisine – the stunning food photos have inspired me to buy my new camera

• Londonelicious – excellent resource for London restaurant reviews

• Tamarind and Thyme – for great recipes and restaurant reviews

• We Are Never Full – one of the first food blogs I came across, and as brilliant as ever

And the rules, for those who accept this award:

1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog
2. Link to the person you received your award from
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Put links of those blogs on yours
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the people you’ve nominated

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

Two awards in one week! I’ve barely recovered from receiving the first one. Thank you so much to Su-Lin from Tamarind and Thyme for passing the Arte y Pico award on to World Foodie Guide. It’s very much appreciated and I feel very flattered to have been chosen by you.

As VegeYum Ganga at A Life (Time) of Cooking passed my first award to me a few days ago, I am going to pass on the Arte y Pico award to her, for her delicious recipes, stunning photography and beautiful, inspiring travel stories.

Thank you to both of you!

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide

VegeYum Ganga (aka Jennifer) from A Life (Time) of Cooking has just given me a Rockin’ Girl Blogger award! I feel so honoured that she’s chosen me. Thank you so very much! It’s my first blogger award, so I feel extremely proud. She was one of my very first readers when I started blogging last October and has been so supportive, while I’m always inspired by her stunning food photos. Now I’ll have to work extra hard…!

In turn, I would like to pass on the award to two of my fellow bloggers:

• Tess at Tess’ Japanese Kitchen – for your amazing project – learning about Japanese food from a single cookery book. Keep up the good work!

• Charmaine at tasty treats! – for your excellent advice on where to eat in London and Hong Kong. I’ve learnt an awful lot from you!

Thank you again Jennifer, you rock!

Helen Yuet Ling Pang @ World Foodie Guide