DUBROVSKOYE, RUSSIA — Russian businessman Oleg Sirota thinks he knows why the French soccer team got off to a winning start at the World Cup: he is supplying their hotel with cheese and yoghurt from his dairy.

LAST WEEK, Rob Wilder, the co-founder of ThinkFoodGroup, announced the release of WineGame, a simple app that instantly turns any bottle into a fun, multiple-choice blind tasting game. Even if you don’t know Wilder’s name, you certainly know his partner’s: star chef and humanitarian Jose Andrés. The game began as a late-night lark between Wilder and Andrés who would challenge each other to blindly taste and then correctly name the wine hidden inside a paper bag.

PARIS — It might seem like there are two on every corner in Paris, but old-style bistros and street cafés are dying out to such an extent that a movement has started to try to protect them.

MARCO POLO Ortigas Manila has announced a special promotion at its all-day dining restaurant Cucina — it will be offering its lunch and dinner buffet spread for P1,399 until the end of August.

THE official festivities of the bi-annual VinExpo Asia Pacific Hong Kong normally commence with the staging of the most prestigious by-invitation-only Jurade de Saint-Emilion Gala Dinner (held since 2010) on the eve of the wine fair.

ENGAGING and fun — these are how CANVAS, or the Center for Art, New Ventures and Sustainable Development, conceptualizes how a children’s museum should feel like. And the group has put its idea to the test in its ongoing public exhibition, Tumba Tumba Children’s Museum of Philippine Art.

NO visual artist is ever one dimensional. They may start off working on still lifes, and end up pursuing abstract images, or the other way around. They may even start playing with sculptures and installations. But it is almost always certain that artists have one medium they are most comfortable to work with. But Renaissance Art Gallery’s ongoing exhibition called Ambidextrous recognizes and celebrates the duality, even multiplicity, of some visual artists’ skills in moving from one medium, technique, or style to another.

JULY is Philippines-Japan Friendship Month and to mark the occasion, the Embassy of Japan and the Japan Foundation, Manila, in cooperation with various partner organizations, are co-presenting a variety of cultural events.

PARIS — More than 50 years after his death, art lovers can see sculptor Alberto Giacometti’s Parisian studio exactly as he left it, right down to half-finished sketches and his ashtray.

SPAIN’s 2016 entry at the Venice Architecture Biennale has found a temporary home at the reconstructed San Ignacio Church in Intramuros, the Walled City of Manila.

PARIS — An image of a woman veiled in mourning appeared next to the Bataclan concert hall in Paris Monday, the latest attributed to the mysterious British street artist Banksy.

BERLIN — A Berlin museum Monday said it had formally restituted a 15^th century religious wooden sculpture to the heirs of former owners, a Jewish couple who fled the Nazi regime.