Matthew Van Der Zwan is a chef at Mesa.

Friday:

This Friday afternoon for me is all about three young chefs who are competing in the 11th FHC culinary completion next week. The International Hospitality Exhibition running from November 14 to 16 is coming up and I will be helping them with some fine tuning on their dishes to ensure a good showing. I think it's important for them as local chefs to be exposed to events such as this in order to grow and develop their abilities cooking Western food. Although the competition is very dissimilar to the ones I remember from back home, it's still a good experience for them nonetheless. So I just want to send out a "good luck" to everyone competing.

Fridays nights, though, it's business as usual, and I'll be cooking for those of you who choose to dine at Mesa.



With work out of the way, I will find myself on my nightly walk with my golden retriever, Oscar. It's something that you'd think would be the last thing you want to be doing on a Friday night after a long day of work, but I think I get as much out of it as he does. It's also a good way to clear the mind after the daily stresses of work.

After that, refreshed and thirsty, maybe it'll be time for the Velvet Lounge.

Saturday:

Tomorrow, I'll be up early at 9am for a full day of work. I'm heading up an outdoors catering event, and I am sure it's going to be a long and eventful day.

Myself and some of my crew are off to Gubei for an event celebrating the 35th anniversary of bilateral relations between my home land Australia and China. The affair will involve some 100+ children, 60 adults and distinguished guests, who all need to be fed.

Then it's back to the Mesa kitchen by 4pm, to catch up on what I've missed of the day in emails, calls, meetings and briefings. With two groups booked and a restaurant that will fill up for Saturday night, it's a lot of bouncing around in the glass-enclosed cage, making sure everything is on track for the evening ahead.

For Saturday night, I'll be catching up with an old friend that I worked with in Melbourne, who recently arrived in Shanghai a few weeks ago. It’s a little hard to say where I’ll be, because the evening will be more about swapping stories and catching a few casual drinks. Probably best not to plan about kicking on with it but you never know.

Sunday:

I try to make my Sundays pretty slow and chilled. If it's not sleeping in and making little effort for the day, I'll be up grabbing a simple bite, followed by looking for some DVDs on Dagu Lu. Maybe in the afternoon I'll go for a bike ride, then go to eat at some of the restaurants that I rarely get time to go: Eduardo's new venue, Zoco, Haiku, Crystal Jade, Franck, Le Bouchon, the list could go on for ever. Oh then of course, Oscar's taking me on another walk.

Taikang Lu could be on the agenda at some stage to check out Vision Photo, a cool little photography place. I'm really into some of the photos being sold there. Take a look: www.ruiyuanc.com

Enjoy yours.

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