Lorre White, The Guru of Luxury

The Most Expensive Deviled Eggs - $30 each

The Edison’s Angel Eggs, a pairing of the common chicken egg with exotic Osetra caviar, prove to be a delicious addition to an already accomplished menu. The angelic white of the egg starkly contrasts the devilish yellows, blacks, and greens of the other organic ingredients, creating an edible - albeit almost too beautiful too eat - masterpiece.

The creamy texture of the deviled yolk compliments the smooth caviar, welcoming your tongue to a sensory delight. Just as the name - initially ironic but now understandable - suggests, the eggs take your taste buds to heaven.
Price: $30 each !

The Edison
108 West 2nd Street
Los Angeles
213-613-0000

www.edisondowntown.com

Most expensive Ice Cream - Caviar Flavored

Upscale French artisan ice-cream maker Philippe Faur has taken out the ice cream of the universe of the desserts and he indefatigably works In his workshop to create new flavours always more surprising.

After such original products as the Truffle Ice-Cream, the Roquefort ice-cream or the Foie Gras de Canard sorbet developed with Rougié (Prix International de l’Innovation 2007), he has recently made his idea of creating a caviar sorbet come true thanks to a collaboration with Alverta Royal Petrossian.

This ice-cream which contains 60% caviar, from a white sturgeon, took both specialists 6 months to develop and it is is recommended to accompany smoked salmon, scallops or simply a baked potato…

Though, it is reported to possess all the organoleptic qualities of caviar, including in the way it evolves in the mouth It is reported to be a world premiere and unsurprisingly has now become the most expensive ice cream in the world!

Unfortunately, although international customers might be numerous, the ice-creams so far are only shipped within France in a special packaging that prevents them from melting for 72 hours.

A 100 ml tub is priced at 118 €. A 15 ml sample size is also available for 18

Barbie Clothes Fro Grown Ups.

Barbie

No one knows more about shopping than the women in the Shanghai typing pool: all those one-child babies have grown up into over-indulged 20-somethings with office jobs and 100 per cent disposable income. Their parents or grandparents pay for rent, food, healthcare and every other human need; all the rest goes on clothes, shoes, make-up and … Barbie?

Mattel is banking on Shanghai’s girlie-girls to revive its flagging fortunes. The biggest Barbie store in the world recently opened on the city’s Huai Hai Zhong Lu shopping street, where all six floors are infused with the spirit of that 1960s model of female perfection, the blonde and cinch-waisted doll whose brand must rank as one of the greatest successes in the history of world marketing.

But in China, Mattel is breaking that brand mould in a big way: Barbie is supposed to transform herself from a doll into a lifestyle. Nearly a whole floor of the store is devoted to Barbie clothing in grown-up sizes – exorbitantly priced sequined tops that my American eight- and nine-year-old girls would not be caught dead in because Barbie (to them) is a little kid thing. But Shaun Rein of China Market Research says “cute sexy” is what the typing pool wants, and judging from the huge popularity of the Hello Kitty character in that age group, it might just work.

Jinky Gu, spokeswoman for the Shanghai store, has another perspective altogether. “Chinese parents won’t stop investing in their children’s education even during the economic crisis.” The notion that Barbie is an educational toy might horrify the feminists among us, but it just might work among the stiletto-heeled Shanghainese. It would not be the first time that a jaded western brand got a new lease of life in China.

Patti Waldmeir, FT Shanghai correspondent

CNNMONEY.com

. . .

Monaco

Mark you calendar: 

Monaco

September Events.

 

September, 9th- 14th:

CANNES

- FESTIVAL DE LA PLAISANCE prime selection of yachts for sale and charter

 

September, 16th - 20th: MONACO CLASSIC WEEK an invitation to celebrate 100 years of

Monaco

's maritime history 1909>2009 - visit fabulous historic yachts

 

September, 23rd - 26th: MONACO YACHT SHOW nautical in-water show dedicated to most important super yachts for sale & charter

China's love Affair Wirh Gold

Gold

China loves gold in all its forms: as a reserve currency, jewellery, an investment – even gold that is not real at all, or “virtual gold”, the internet commodity used as currency in online games such as

World of Warcraft

. The Chinese government is trying to crack down on trade in virtual gold, which is “farmed” by online gamers in China and sold to online gamers in the first world.

But when it comes to the real stuff – gold jewellery and gold bullion, for either adornment or investment – trade in China has risen sharply. Beijing recently revealed that it had been secretly buying gold for years in order to diversify its foreign reserves, and had almost doubled its bullion holdings. But they are not the only ones: the rising tide of wealth among middle-class Chinese has made China the second-largest gold jewellery market in the world since 2007, behind only India. Sales of gold and silver jewellery in China rose by an astounding 28.7 per cent in May year on year – proof, if any more were needed, that Chinese consumers have certainly not stopped spending money during the financial crisis. Total gold demand in China last year was nearly 400 tonnes, up by 21 per cent from 2007.

But Chinese people like their gold purer than their western counterparts: 24 carat, rather than 18 carat. The reasons for that, says Shi Heqing, gold analyst at Beijing Antaike Information, are partly historical: “Chinese people have gone through several wars in the last century, and the memory of those is still fresh, so they like secure ways of keeping their money. In the west, people seem to use gold more for decoration or beautification.”

The recent rollercoaster ride in the mainland stock market – which at one point last year had fallen by 70 per cent from its 2007 height, but has since crawled back to half the peak level – has also prompted more investment interest in gold in bullion form, gold market analysts say.

Mr Yu, a 55-year-old antiques trader in Shanghai who declined to give his first name, says he bought 500g of gold in 2007 and increased his holding to 2,000g at the end of last year. “I know people who are still buying stocks at this moment … but gold may be better for people my age who are more risk-averse.”

Or as Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research in Shanghai, puts it: “In China, the banking system has only recently become stable. Chinese people like gold: you can always melt it down and it’s easy to carry.”

Patti Waldmeir, with additional reporting by Yan Jin, former FT Shanghai news assistant

. . .CNNMONEY>COM

A $1000 Omlette in NYC - At Least It Is Big Enough For Two

A restaurant in New York is offering something special to customers with expensive tastes - a $1,000 omelette.

Diners at Norma’s in Le Parker Meridien hotel can now order the “Zillion Dollar Frittada”, a Spanish omelette with lobster and 10oz (280g) of caviar.

Restaurant manager Steven Pipes said it began as a lesser dish, but his chefs “decided to have some fun with it”. “We thought we should really make something that would be a spectacular feast for a celebration,” he said.

The restaurant has a bell which will be rung whenever a customer orders the 3,000-calorie dish, topped with sevruga caviar.

There is a budget option, for those without the means to splurge on Manhattan’s most expensive single course.A smaller version of the Zillion Dollar Frittada retails at just $100.

Zillion dollar ingredients :
Six eggs
One tbspn chopped chives
One-and-a-half tbsps butter
One lobster
Five tbsps heavy cream
10oz sevruga cavia

The rise of New Money in China

Shopping habits of China’s ‘suddenly wealthy’

Published: August 21 2009 14:41 | Last updated: August 21 2009 14:41

In the past decade China has become the workshop for the world, its low-cost labour force toiling in factories to churn out cheap goods destined for western consumers. Many of the raw materials needed to feed this industrial juggernaut have to be imported from other countries and today China is the biggest driver of markets in commodities such as copper, oil and iron ore.

But as well as a multitude of low-paid factory workers, the country’s manufacturing boom has also ­created a large and growing number of baofahu – literally, the “suddenly wealthy”. Their shopping habits and changing tastes are reshaping global trade flows at the other end of the production chain.

The rise of the Chinese consumer has ­provided unprecedented opportunities for enterprising global corporations and many now look to the country as their biggest growth market for the indefinite future. And while China’s nouveaux riches share many of the tastes of their counterparts in any other part of the world, there are also a number of customs and cultural legacies that have ­created new markets for ­products that have little value elsewhere. This has encouraged global companies to invest an increasing amount of time and money in understanding what makes the Chinese customer special and how best to market or customise products.

In some cases, traditional Chinese tastes, combined with the explosion in wealth during the past decade, have created a rapacious and unsustainable call for the body parts of endangered species. The manufacture of ­traditional delicacies, ornaments and medicinal ingredients has helped to cut swathes through populations of sharks, elephants, seahorses and other species across the world – and that demand is only expected to increase.

Jamil Anderlini, FT deputy Beijing bureau chief

. . .

Big Flashy American Cars Sell Well In China

Big cars, flashy cars

In the US, cars need giant cup-holders, but in China, it’s chauffeurs that are de rigueur. So when Porsche recently decided to launch a four-door sedan in the midst of financial Armageddon, it chose to do so in China – perhaps the last place on earth where anyone still has RMB2.5m (£200,000) to spend on a chauffeur-driven sports car.

At the Shanghai auto show in April, the Porsche Panamera – which offers the ample legroom required by China’s back-seat-riding bosses – premiered alongside the Geely GE, otherwise known as the Baby Rolls-Royce (much to the displeasure of the real Rolls-Royce). Then came news that China plans to buy Hummer and make it greener. China’s love affair with big, flashy autos is clearly just beginning.

The newly wealthy everywhere love to flaunt their money, but China’s rich are even more shameless than most: cars are not a means of locomotion for the affluent Chinese, they are a symbol of success, status and the naked power of the internal combustion engine over the bicycle or pedestrian.

According to Friedhelm Engler, director of design for

GM

’s Shanghai-based Pan Asia Technical Automotive Center, cars in China are all about “face”. He says the bulky, “three-box” shape that is still overwhelmingly popular is deeply embedded culturally in a country where the rich traditionally rode in palanquins. To western eyes, that makes many Chinese cars look old-fashioned, especially on the futuristic streets of Shanghai, with its space-age skyscrapers. And parking such cars – not to mention parking a “Baby Rolls” – is a nightmare in the city’s congested, narrow streets.

China needs smaller cars, and some younger consumers are leaning toward hatchbacks; but in a country where grandpa or dad is often footing the bill, four doors still often win out over five (not least because grandpa or dad may not know how to drive, so they rely on the younger generation to squire them around at weekends in the three-box). This is a world where the young can start their motoring life with a Buick, not a 2CV or Beetle; Buicks are more popular in China than they have been in the US for decades.

But western car manufacturers are betting that things will change, as China’s budding love affair with the automobile matures. The country is on track to become the world’s largest auto market this year – several years ahead of expectation – and car styles could be transformed at the speed of light. “Chinese consumers are used to moving quickly, from no TV, to a flatscreen,” says Engler. Their auto style may be dowdy today – but in China, tomorrow is always just around the corner.

Patti Waldmeir, FT Shanghai correspondent

. . .

Spa Luxury Grows in Asia

Spas take off in Asia

by CNNMONEY.com

Healthy living is back in style in Asia, which means a revival of ancient Asian wellness techniques - and an explosion of spas.

Residence bungalows on the Chiva-Som lagoon

Chiva-Som's tranquil meditation pond

Sunrise over the Gulf of Siam viewed from Chiva-Som's restaurant terrace

HUA HIN, Thailand (Fortune) -- Yue-Sai Kan -- one of the most recognizable women in China with a cosmetics empire and her own TV show -- often needs to get away from the grueling pressures and polluted skies of Shanghai and Beijing, where she lives.

Her refuge of choice? A health spa in Thailand called Chiva-Som. "The service is amazing, and the food is amazing, too," she says of the wellness center in the beach resort town of Hua Hin, where patrons are offered lemongrass tea all day as a diuretic and eat only healthy salt-free, oil-free, sugar-free food. "I go sometimes more than once a year, from three days to 12, depending on what time I have. But I would love to stay six months. That would really make me healthy!"

Health is a key buzzword in Asia these days. The

region

's rapid growth of the last decade has meant a proliferation of fried chicken and ice cream, air pollution, and generally unhealthy lifestyles. Waistlines swelled along with GDP, and smoking and heavy drinking became fashionable among a certain segment of upwardly mobile Asians.

But increasingly, those with disposable incomes are recognizing the benefits of taking care of their health, and they're turning to spas to do it. "Beforehand there were hardly any Chinese, hardly any Asians, and now there are a lot," says Kan, who has visited Chiva-Som for more than a decade. "People get more money and they want to be more health conscious."

That's meant a dramatic rise in the number of spas in Asia. Chiva-Som -- which started in the mid-1990s as an exclusive club for the wealthy business elite of Bangkok -- was the first wellness spa to open in the

region

. For some time it had the field almost entirely to itself, but in the last several years, the number of competitors has exploded. In Thailand alone, the number of spas grew 154% between 2002 and 2007 -- from 230 to 585.

"There's been a massive proliferation in the number of spas," says Gerard Bodeker, a professor at Oxford University Medical School and author of the book, Understanding the Global Spa Industry. "There's a huge awareness in global value and interest in Asian therapies, so Asian countries are now actively discovering and promoting their own health and heritage. There's an across-the-board revival of interest in Asia in indigenous health traditions."

The result, he says, is age-old methodologies being discovered not just by Westerners interested in Ayurveda or Thai massage, but by the populations of Asia who had such treatments as part of their cultures for decades and even centuries, but rarely had a place to take advantage of them.

The Japanese have always maintained their tradition of going to onsens (hot springs) to relax, but in the rest of Asia, the traditional therapies and healing techniques often performed by village women for generations were in danger of being forgotten before the spa trend began taking off.

While shiatsu (Japanese), tui-na (Chinese) and Ayurvedic (Indian) techniques have been joining the ranks of Swedish massages at spas in the United States and elsewhere in the West, many of the traditional Malay, Vietnamese, Balinese, and even Indian health techniques are just starting to see a huge revival and adoption by Asia's emerging middle class. "It's the gentrification of their traditions," Bodeker says. "We're in the process of a big transition from simple village treatments to 21st century resort standards."

Call it a sort of globalization in reverse, or at least the opposing trend of the spread of KFCs and McDonald's franchises around the world. Despite the recession -- and in part fueled by cheaper commodity prices -- Asia now has the largest number of spas under development of any

region

of the world, says Bodeker. Increasingly, Asian luxury hoteliers like Aman Resorts, Mandarin Oriental, and the Banyan Tree -- a Thai luxury resort chain that opened a spa resort in Lijiang in southwest China in 2006 -- are building wellness retreats, not just adding spa facilities to their urban or beach resort properties.

In Thailand, 19% of respondents polled online by the International SPA Association said they had stayed at a destination spa, as did 21% of Chinese and 15% of Indians. And more than half of the people of those three nationalities said they had visited a day spa. (The ISPA survey, conducted in Asia for the first time last year, reaches only those with Internet access and is therefore considered a self-selected sample of the urban elite.)

While the global spa industry is valued at $255 billion annually, according to the Global Spa Summit, data about the trend in Asia is only now being gathered. A 2007 study by the GSS -- also its first-ever tracking Asian spas -- found 82 destination or wellness spas in the Asia-Pacific regions, which includes spas in Australia and New Zealand, as well as Ayurvedic facilities in India, out of a global total of 1,485 destination or wellness spas. A decade ago, Bodeker says it's safe to say, there were almost none of these facilities in Asia.

Thailand was the first Asian country to develop a spa industry, which was natural given its status as a rest-and-relaxation center for American soldiers during the Vietnam War. "There's been an effort to separate out the sex industry from the spa industry," says Bodeker. "Previously the word 'massage' was a synonym for sexual services." Plus, Thailand has a rich heritage of unique massage, herbal treatments, and meditation, a philosophical framework of mind/body balance, a well-trained service sector, and a highly developed tourism industry.

Now India, Bali, China, and even Malaysia -- with its highly lauded Pangkor Laut Resort -- are building up their spa industries, too. A destination resort called Life Wellness Resort Quy Nhon -- based on local health practices -- has even opened in central Vietnam.

At Chiva-Som, while Europeans made up 51% of the visitors in May (the most recent data available), Asians were second at 26 % of guests. And their numbers jump considerably during Asian holiday periods such as the Lunar New Year of January-February. With the recession, the fact that Chiva-Som costs about 30% less than a comparable American or European spa -- or even a regular vacation abroad -- means that many Asians are choosing to stay closer to home this year, says Paul Linder, Chiva-Som's general manager.

Americans and Europeans realize that they can combine a Thai vacation with a spa experience for the same price as a trip to, say, the Canyon Ranch or Golden Door spas in the United States, or the Kempinski St. Moritz spa in Switzerland. "People are being more careful in how they spend their money," Linder says, "but more people are coming to spend it on their bodies than on luxury products."

At Chiva-Som, treating the body both inside and out is the norm. Daily routines start with a sunrise walk on the beach or Tai Chi Chuan, then meditation, morning yoga, stretch class, and a break for breakfast. (No oil, salt, or sugar, remember?) Then there's water aerobics, regular aerobics, and an array of Pilates, kinesis, cardio, and other classes.

Most patrons schedule massage and beauty treatments for the rest of the afternoon: One daily massage is mandatory, and most massage options include adaptations of Thai massage techniques. With that kind of regimen, even the most unfit and overweight urban Asians can't help but get healthier -- and feel inspired by their own traditions while they're doing it.

http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/20/news/international/spas_asia_boom.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2009082110

The Mexican Riviera

Local celebrity the Italian Duchess d' Ferrari offers her private residence (Esencia Estate), for a week-long Mayan Retreat. The retreat provides hours of relaxing and invigorating spa treatments based on the indigenous and therapeutic techniques of the surrounding Mayan culture. Some of the fabulous treatments include: “Sea and Sky Ritual” on the beach, a toning Lemon Ritual, a Mayan Wrap to relive muscle tension, an aromatic Royal Ritual, a stretching and strengthening Baxal Ritual, and a renewing Cacao Ritual. Available through December 31, 2009, the seven day Mayan Retreat starts at $1,410 per person. Guest rooms and suites start at $605 per night. Two-story cottages are $1,729 per night with such features as a private beach house staffed by Esencia's butlers, housekeepers and chefs. This is perfect holiday tranquility in beautiful surroundings.  

For more information and full spa menus visit: www.hotelesencia.com

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by JESSICA BENAVIDES CANEPA