Eat beat

Beijing

3-star chef, Chicago style

Chicago-based chef Curtis Duffy, whose culinary direction has won his Grace restaurant a three-star Michelin rating for three consecutive years, will be in Beijing for four nights of special dinners to showcase his artful way with food. Duffy calls his style "personality cuisine" - cooking the way he wants to eat because he thinks that can best represent a chef. With accolades from Forbes and the James Beard foundation as well as Michelin, he sits on the advisory board of the Auguste Escoffier School of Culinary Arts, with a $25,000 scholarship in his name. The dinners in Beijing are limited to 40 seats each night. The 1,880 yuan ($272) price includes wine.

6-10 pm, April 12-15, at Flames Grill, 5/F of Hilton Beijing Wangfujing. 010-5812-8888.

Embassy chefs to compete

Chefs from a number of embassies will compete in the first "gastrodiplomacy chef's competition" in Beijing on May 22. The event is hosted by the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, the East Eat Group of China and the Global Center of Gastrodiplomacy. Culinary diplomacy or "gastrodiplomacy" is defined as the use of food and cuisine as instruments to create cross-cultural understanding and platforms for economic development. The chefs will use ingredients from their countries to show their best national products, which the public will be invited to taste during the event.

9 am-4 pm, May 22, at the National Exhibition Center near Beijing's Olympic Park; awards ceremony May 24.

Hong Kong

Sweet spin on Wimbledon

Does a tart with a white chocolate shell and an inner core filled with a light citrus mousse of lemon confit and lemon basil sauce make you think of ... Wimbledon? Langham pastry chef Matthiew Godard's tennis-themed dessert sets the spherical tart on a "court" of green coconut shavings in honor of the only Grand Slam tournament that's played on grass. The sweet is packaged with a bottle of Champagne Lanson, the official bubbly of Wimbledon for 40 years. Guests who enjoy this treat from now through May 31 have a chance to win two round-trip economy tickets from Hong Kong to London - and a day pass for two at one of the final rounds at the tournament.

Bostonian Seafood and Grill, 8 Peking Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. 852-2375-1133.

United States

Eel-smuggling crackdown

A massive, years-long undercover operation has led to arrests and guilty pleas up and down the US East Coast of poachers and traffickers who dealt in a slippery, squiggly and valuable commodity: baby eels. The Washington Post reports that while the eels are not considered endangered in the United States, restrictions have been set to keep the population strong. In 2011, because of a policy change and a natural disaster, the American eel market began to soar. A year earlier, the European Union had banned the export of eels in fear of the European eel's extinction. That spring, a tsunami devastated Japan's fishing industry. Asian customers turned to the United States for baby eels, which are then raised in tanks and turned into barbecue.

China Daily