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Matt Accarrino, chef at the Michelin-starred SPQR in San Francisco, has a close, working relationship with Peter Jacobsen, who has an orchard and garden in Yountville.  Jacobsen used to supply a lot of fruit to The French Laundry, and now supplies fruits and vegetables to SPQR.  Accarrino drives up to help work the garden as often as possible.  

On a sunny, balmy afternoon, Accarrino and I visited Jacobsen’s garden, where I marveled at the rows of fruit trees, including an ancient-looking fig tree.  Despite the wintry starkness of the barren trees, the garden beds were full of life.  We clipped and tasted a variety of arugula and cress (including one that tasted intensely of almond extract before turning hot and spicy on the finish), peeked inside the “snail condo,” and pulled year-old carrots out of the ground. 

For his dinner at the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Accarrino took those carrots – too fibrous to eat – and juiced them to make a sformato (Italian for “form,” a sformato is usually  perfumed with curry spices.  He served the sformato with sea urchin and fritters made from carrot top.  He garnished the plate with powder made from the leftover fibers of the old roots.

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Like that sformato dish, much of what Accarrino cooks at SPQR is rooted in Italian cookery. But, also like that sformato dish, Accarrino brings his own modern, more worldly perspective to his food.

For example, one of the canapés he served was a “budino” – a traditional, Italian pudding or custard – of marrow fat and maple syrup bound with bread crumbs. He formed the pudding into cylinders and fried them, wrapped them, right out of the fryer, with with carpaccio of beef, wilted it slightly to create a silky wrapper of fat.  It was creamy. It was crunchy.  It was delicious.

The showpiece of Accarrino’s dishes was his multi-layered “lasagna.”  It’s a dish that is perennially on SPQR’s menu, but with a frequently changing list of components.  I’ve had one version of it before in his restaurant in which he had layered beet pasta with blood sausage.

For the Twelve Days of Christmas, Accarrino made his lasagna with chestnut pasta and layered it with veal, garnished with roasted chestnuts and topped with a shaving of white truffles.

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I loved Kostow’s black chickpea falafel canapé, which was topped with some pimento mayonnaise and pickled peppers and carrots. It was a hot, crunchy meteor of salt and acid.

Kostow’s team also served rosy slices of wild boar with chunky pumpkin seed “risotto.”  I loved the smokiness of the meat, and the texture of the risotto.

For dessert, sous chef Poncho Vasquez poured silicon (that’s not strawberry yogurt) over pans of unshelled walnuts to make a mold in which was piped a walnut-based pudding (stabilized), filled with a chocolate cremeaux, and frozen.  The frozen “nuts” were unmolded and served with roasted chocolate (40%) andshaved black walnuts, and finished with a grating of fresh walnuts.

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The entire menu from Matt Accarrino’s dinner, with wine pairings by the guest vintner Tuck Beckstoffer Wines is below, along with a slideshow from the seventh day of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  If you would like to see the photos in a larger size, click through the slideshow to the Flickr album.

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Canapés

Maple-Marrow Budino
Beef carpaccio.
(Matt Accarrino)

Broccoli-Seeds Chip
White anchovies.
(Matt Accarrino)

Crispy Ribollita
Kale chip, white bean purée.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Black Chickpea Fritters
Pimento mayonnaise, pickles vegetables.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

1st Course
Horseradish Bavarese
Seeds and grains, roasted sunchoke, salmon roe.
(Matt Accarrino)

Semper “Le Conquette” Chardonnay
Sonoma Coast, 2011

2nd Course
Curry-Carrot Sformato
Carrot top “frittele,” sea urchin, lime.

Coal-Roasted Abalone
Scarlet runner bean “miso.”

(Matt Accarrino)

3rd Course
Cod-Octopus Sugo
Potato, chicories.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Semper “Ellenbach Vineyard” Pinot Noir
Sonoma Coast, 2007

4th Course
Chestnut and Veal Lasagna
Fontina, white truffle, mushroom, dried herbs.
(Matt Accarrino)

5th Course
Polenta-Stuffed “Faraona”
Red things, black garlic, mulling spices.
(Matt Accarrino)

Mockingbird, “Green” Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2007

6th Course
Caponata-Rubbed and Smoked Wild Boar
Pumpkin seed risotto.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Mockingbird “Red” Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2007

7th Course
Citrus, Campari, Basil
(Matt Accarrino)

8th Course
“Nocino”
Chocolate.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Petits Fours
Dried Persimmon Caramels
(Matt Accarrino)

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Photos: Matt Accarrino’s maple-marrow budino with beef carpaccio; Matt Accarrino, with his sous chefs Brendan Joy and Seth Turiansky; Matt Accarrino’s chestnut and veal lasagna, with white truffles; and the Restaurant at Meadowood kitchen staff, with Matt Accarrino and his two sous chefs Brendan Joy and Seth Turiansky.

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Mark Ladner and Brooks Headley, chef and pastry chef of the Michelin-starred Del Posto in New York City, are two of my culinarians in America right now.  Together, they are authoring some of the most elegant and exciting interpretations of Italian regional cuisine I’ve encountered this side of the Atlantic. 

Their approach to cooking is encyclopedic, which appeals to the academic side of my interest in food.  For example, the first time I ate at Del Posto in early May of 2009, Ladner served me a bowl of zupetta le virtu alla Marchigiana, a bean soup from Abruzzo, traditionally served on the first of May to celebrate the beginning of the harvest season.

But, their flavors are sophisticated, yet deeply soulful, which, ultimately, appeals to the eater in me.

They marry their form of culinary anthropology with comfort and deliciousness in dishes like cacciucco – a seafood stew, most well-known from Livorno on the Western coast of Italy – is usually on the menu at Del Posto.  Traditionally, it contains five types of seafood.  Last night, on the eighth night of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Ladner served his version of cacciucco, which included clams, mussels, shrimp, and bay scallops, all of which was veiled under a tissue-thin sheet of raw, salted cod that went melty and limp like lardo when the hot, tomato-based broth was poured over it all.  It was, perhaps, my favorite dish from this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas dinner series thus far.

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Ladner shot an exquisite opening volley of cannonballs, made from tuna tartare, into the dining room.  The chopped fish had been mixed with Kewpie mayonnaise and puffed rice, and then rolled in freshly shaved black truffles.  I loved the scattershot crunch from the puffed rice inside the otherwise silky rounds of tartare.

I’ve had Ladner’s veal tonnato at Del Posto before.  He served it last night – thinly shaved veal coated in a creamy, tuna sauce – with nuggets of squid ink croutons and caper sprouts.  

And, there was a wonderful bowl of agnolotti filled with a ground mixture veal, chicken and pork.  The filled pasta was wrapped in a velvety mantle of parsnip purée and finished with a dusting of chocolate cookie crumbles spiked with espresso.

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From Kostow’s side of the menu came a beautiful bowl of sunchokes, enrobed in a viscous arborio rice glaze, and served with sunchoke skin chips and caviar.

Anchoring the menu was a gorgeous medallion of Bryan Flannery’s dry-aged rib-eye. Kostow basted the meat with hot butter and topped it with a slice of smoked bone marrow.  The dish was finished with a drizzle of St. Helena olive oil and bathed in warm beef broth at the table.  Beef dishes are rarely this elegant, rarely this flavorful, rarely this comforting.

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Brooks Headley’s pre-desserts usually feature sorbetto. Last night, it was sorbetto of apricot, scraped onto the lip of a bowl (I’ve come to know this as a distinctly Headley presentation) with caramel-mascarpone parfait and butterscotch.

His dessert last night was based on a pasta dish that chef Fortunato Nicotra has on the menu at Del Posto’s elder sister Felidia.  It’s basically cacio e pepe (pasta with cheese and black pepper) with pears.  Headley made a cake out of Pecorino cheese, and served it with Pecorino chips, honey spiked with black pepper, honey gelato, and shaved black walnuts.  Instead of using pears, Headley used apples last night – both roasted and raw.  Like much of Headley’s repertoire and style of pastry making, this dessert walked a fine line between salty and sweet.

Headley ended our night with bowls of biscotti, chocolate truffles, and candied grapefruit.

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The entire menu from Mark Ladner’s and Brooks Headley’s dinner, with wine pairings by the guest vintner Antica Napa Valley & Antinori Family Estate is below, along with a slideshow from the eighth day of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  If you would like to see the photos in a larger size, click through the slideshow to the Flickr album.

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Canapés

Pecorino-Kale Fritto
Chickpea.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Punterella-Lardo
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Squid Chip
Cured aji, fried artichokes, lemon.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

1st Course

Tuna-Black Truffle Sphera
Puffed rice.
(Mark Ladner)

Tenuta Guado al Tasso Vermentino
Bolgheri, 2012

2nd Course
Sunchoke Glazed in Arborio
Rice, caviar, borage.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Antica Chardonnay
Napa Valley, 2012

3rd Course
Vitello Tonnato
Caper sprouts.
(Mark Ladner)

Marchesi Antinori “Tignanello”
Toscana, 2010

4th Course
Agnolotti
Parsnip, chocolate.
(Mark Ladner)

Antica “Townsend Vineyard” Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2009

5th Course
Livorno-Style Cacciucco
(Mark Ladner)

Antica Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2003

6th Course
Salt-Baked Beef
Smoked marrow, herbs.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

7th Course
Butterscotch
Mascarpone, apricot.
(Brooks Headley)

Castello della Sala “Muffato della Sala”
Umbria, 2008

8th Course
Pecorino Cake
Honey, black pepper, apple.
(Brooks Headley)

Petits Fours
Biscotti, truffles, candied grapefruit.
(Brooks Headley)

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Photos: Matt Accarrino’s maple-marrow budino with beef carpaccio; Matt Accarrino, with his sous chefs Brendan Joy and Seth Turiansky; Matt Accarrino’s chestnut and veal lasagna, with white truffles; and the Restaurant at Meadowood kitchen staff, with Matt Accarrino and his two sous chefs Brendan Joy and Seth Turiansky.

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The woods above Napa Valley were quiet when we arrived mid-morning. 

Cameron Rahtz, the resident forager at The Restaurant at Meadowood, took us up and off a trail, teetering across fallen trucks and trickling creeks, into a thick carpet of leaves.  It’s been a dry year here.  Last year, the Napa Valley saw close to thirty inches of rain.  This year, barely ten have fallen.  So, we knew that the chance of finding mushrooms – especially matsutakes, which Rahtz and I hauled in last year by the bag-full – would be slim.  But, we did find red bay (that smelled of spice and pink bubble gum), and mossy logs overgrown with oyster mushrooms.  There was an abandoned orchard with a few, dried apples still hanging, and wild herbs everywhere.

Rasmus Kofoed, chef of the Michelin two-starred restaurant Geranium in Copenhagen, and the only chef who has won all three statues at the Bocuse d’Or, marveled at the beauty, at the aromas, at the textures in these woods.   A continent away from home, he told us that these woods reminded him of his childhood, much of which was spent in the woods of Denmark.  

He tugged at Spanish moss, asking if it was edible.  He collected twigs, crusted with dusty green lichen.  And he asked Rahtz if he could gather enough rocks to line twenty family-style plates on which Kofoed would nest “dill stones” – nuggets of cured mackerel dipped, repeatedly, in gelatinized dill juice (alternating with liquid nitrogen) to create a shiny, green coat.  They really did look like stones.  Kofoed garnished these “stones” with feathery sprigs of dill and served them with a side of tangy horseradish cream.  Together, it was a one-bite postcard from Scandinavia.  

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Kofoed knew that he couldn’t accurately reproduce the food that he cooks in Denmark at The Restaurant Meadowood for the Twelve Days of Christmas.  He focused, instead, on immersing himself in the local terroir, and drawing inspiration and ingredients from the land. 

He methodically combed the hoop house at The Restaurant at Meadowood’s garden at the Montessori School of St. Helena with head gardener Christine Kim for herbs, tasting as he moved from tray to tray.  With these herbs, he ringed a bowl in which was poured a warm cheese and onion soup over pickled onions.  Normally, he’d use a specific, aged cheese from Denmark.  Here, he used a local gruyere that was most-similar to the Danish version, one with a sharpness that cut wonderfully against the sourness of the pickled onions.

And, he took those red bay leaves we found in the forest and charred them, lending their smokey, spicy aroma to plates of deboned and stuffed chicken wings served with a creamy black truffle sauce.  This dish really showed off the techinique-driven side of Kofoed’s cooking.

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Kofoed only brought one ingredient with him to Napa Valley – woodruff powder.  This, he infused into a white chocolate cremeaux over which he poured a thin layer of gelatinized chervil juice and topped, table-side, with a spoonful of pine tea granité.  To complete the smells and sights of the forests of Napa Valley and his childhood, Kofoed served this dessert with a garland of things we found on our hike through the woods with Rahtz – pine cones, wispy tufts of Spanish moss, bits of lichen, round-lobed leaves of oak, and spiny chestnuts.

It was a beautiful and incredibly fragrant dessert, with wonderfully evolving flavor profile: almond extract gave way to flavors of matcha and coconut.  It was beautiful. It was evocative. I loved it.

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Kostow presented one of my favorite dishes from my many meals at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  It’s a delicate bean soup, which he garnishes with different ingredients, depending on the season.  This night, Kostow coupled his beautiful assortment of legumes with slices of dried abalone.

I also loved Kostow’s canapé of pommes soufflé, which involves a very classic French technique (a collaborative nod to Kofoed’s technique-minded cooking) of frying two laminated sheets of potato until they puff into a light, crunchy pillow.  He filled these pommes soufflés with rutabaga cream and dusted them with buttermilk powder.  It was like chip and dip, without having to dip.

For dessert, Kostow also went into the woods.  He pulled out spicebush, a plant with fragrant oils in its stems and dried blossoms.  When fresh, it smells of melons and spice. When dried, the rounder, softer melon notes disappear, and the spicier smells become sweeter and warmer.  Kostow infused the spicebush into a cake, which he glazed with a  shiny coat of dark chocolate glaçage.  It tasted of the forest, and of Christmas.

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The entire menu from Rasmus Kofoed’s dinner, with wine pairings by the guest vintner Spring Mountain Vineyard is below, along with a slideshow from the ninth day of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  If you would like to see the photos in a larger size, click through the slideshow to the Flickr album.

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Canapés

“Wheat Crackers”
Cheese.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

Apple “Ravioli”
Marigold, dried apples, chrysanthemum.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

Amaranth Chip
Duck liver, hibiscus.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Pommes Soufflé
Rutabaga, buttermilk powder.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

1st Course

Cep Soup
Pickled quail egg yolks.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

Spring Mountain Vineyard Sauvignon Blanc
Napa Valley, 2010

2nd Course
Sunchoke Granola
Coastal grasses, char roe, toasted rice milk.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

3rd Course
“Charred Potato”
Lightly smoked goat butter.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

Spring Mountain Vineyard Chardonnay
Napa Valley, 2011

4th Course
Abalone, Bean
Epazote, avocado.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

5th Course
Tomato Water
Ham jelly, thyme oil, the last flowers.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

6th Course
“Dill Stones”
Horseradish, pickade cucumber granité.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

7th Course
Onions
Chamomile, vinegar, melted cheese.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

Spring Mountain Vineyard Pinot Noir
Napa Valley, 2010

8th Course
Chicken with Wild Bay Aroma
Buttermilk with black truffle.
(Rasmus Kofoed)

Spring Mountain Vineyard “Elivette”
Napa Valley, 2010

9th Course
Beef
Fermented turnips, wild mushrooms.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Spring Mountain Vineyard “Elivette”
Napa Valley, 2005

10th Course
“Impression of the Forest”
Woodruff, chervil, pine.

11th Course
Glazed Chocolate
Spicebush.

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Photos: “Dill Stones” by Rasmus Kofoed; Rasmus Kofoed crossing a redwood trunk in the woods above Napa; stuffed chicken wing with burnt bay leaves by Rasmus Kofoed; woodruff custard, with chervil and pine by Rasmus Kofoed; Rasmus Kofoed at line-up.

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The first time I ate at Bar Tartine in San Francisco, I noticed a particularly dark spicing and foreign sense of boldness to chef Nicolaus Balla’s hearty style of cooking.  I recall unique combinations of flavors, that, although were not common, were not entirely unfamiliar to – beef tongue under a canopy of tart purslane, with radishes and fried shallots; lentil “croquettes” (basically, lentil falafels) with hatch chilies and sprouts drowned in house made yogurt, slightly sweetened with sour cherry molasses; smoked and blistered potatoes with ramp mayonnaise; and langos – a potato fry-bread, drizzled with sour cream and dotted with dill (the herb that holds the key to my heart).  

And, of course, there was Chad Robertson’s amazing bread from Tartine Bakery.  Balla buttered slices of Tartine’s kamut bread and topped them with shavings of bottarga, clusters of crunchy dulse, and fleshy bolete mushrooms.  That was really delicious.

When I asked my server where chef Balla had cooked before, I was told that he drew a lot of inspiration from the years he spent as an adolescent in Hungary.  I’ve been to Hungary and tasted the dynamic mix of Eastern and Western flavors there, and, having that context really helped me place and appreciate Balla’s cooking at Bar Tartine.  

That first visit to Bar Tartine last year had me hooked.  Since, it’s quickly become one of my go-to spots in San Francisco for a quick lunch, or a casual night out with friends.

I was particularly thrilled when Christopher Kostow announced that Nicolaus Balla and his co-chef Cortney Burns, would be cooking at this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.

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Balla and Burns brought their dark spicing and foreign sense of boldness to Napa Valley.  And they brought amazing bread too; lots of it.

They paved silky beef tartare onto fluffy strips of koji bread, along with potato cream, bottarga, and cress.  They served sprouts and grated blue cheese in an inky red mix of beet and apple juices.

They made turo cheese – a soft, Hungarian cottage curd – and served it warm with some paprika purée. Together, the two tasted just like pimento cheese.  They also steamed the curds into a soft round that had the delicate, spongey texture of quenelles.  This, they served with a spot of warm mushroom broth.

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In a panel discussion at the Twelve Days of Christmas with Balla and Burns, they mentioned how their cooking focuses mostly on vegetables, using meat more for flavor rather than as a showpiece.

We saw this in a dish of charred greens that they served – there were Chinese broccoli and baby turnips – with thin shavings of air-dried beef (they get their beef from Mindful Meats, which gets their meat from pasture-grazed dairy cows).  On the side, they served a dish of smoked potatoes whipped with marrow fat, a modified version of the smoked and fried potatoes with ramp mayonnaise that I mentioned above (it’s a Bar Tartine staple).  The bitter char on the greens and the smoke in the potatoes paired especially well with the El Molino Pinot Noir, Rutherford, 2006 that was poured alongside this course.

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I really loved Kostow’s lobster dish at this dinner.  He coupled velvety lobster tartare with cauliflower cooked in buttermilk. Over this, he tented tuiles made from flax seeds, which he topped with caviar.  Together, it was creamy, crunchy, salty, and a tinge sweet from the lobster meat.  It was great.

To celebrate Tartine’s bread-baking tradition, Kostow baked entire guinea hens in sourdough rounds.  The birds were carved, and the tender, juicy meat – a mix of white and dark – was served with dumplings (made with fat, thickened with kudzu) and a light, guinea hen broth.  With that dish, Kostow served torn pieces of the sourdough loaf, which had a sturdy, golden-brown crust on one side, and a moist, flavorful mie – glistening with schmaltz – on the other side.  

To complement Balla’s and Burns’s cheese dishes, Kostow spooned whipped, funky Epoisses cheese over sweet apriums.  It was a wonderfully light, two-bite transition into dessert – a steamed parsnip cake, with cider molasses and kefir, made by Cortney Burns.

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The entire menu from Nicolaus Balla’s and Cortney Burns’s dinner, with wine pairings by the guest vintner El Molino Winery, is below, along with a slideshow from the tenth day of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  If you would like to see the photos in a larger size, click through the slideshow to the Flickr album.

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Canapés

Beef Tartare on Koji Toast
Potato, katsuobushi, grated mullet roe, cress.
(Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns)

Beet & Apple Juices
Blue cheese, sprouts, herbs.
(Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns)

Grilled Geoduck
Shaved walnuts.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Pommes Soufflé
Rutabaga, buttermilk powder.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

1st Course

Catfish Cabbage Roll
Chilled broth.
(Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns)

El Molino Chardonnay
Rutherford, 2011

2nd Course
Lobster
Flax, cauliflower cooked in buttermilk, caviar.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

El Molino Chardonnay
Rutherford, 2006

3rd Course
Turo Cheese Porridge
Tartine bread, paprika, mushroom broth, curds.
(Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns)

El Molino Pinot Noir
Napa Valley, 2000

4th Course
Guinea Hen Baked in Sour Bread
Fat dumplings, dried vegetables, caraway.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

5th Course
Charred Greens with Air-Dried Beef
Smoked potato marrow.
(Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns)

El Molino Pinot Noir
Rutherford, 2006

6th Course
Pork Belly
Salted apple leaf.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

El Molino Pinot Noir
Rutherford, 2010

7th Course
Epoisses
Apriums, rye.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

8th Course
Steamed Parsnip Cake
Cider, molasses, kefir, bee pollen.
(Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns)

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Photos: Hands plating lobster topped with a flax tuple and caviar; cook Adam Ross with the guinea hen baked in a sourdough round; Balla’s & Burns’s charred vegetables with air-dried beef and a side of marrow-whipped smoked potatoes; Kostow’s whipped Epoisses with apriums and rye; and Christopher Kostow, Cortney Burns, and Nicolaus Balla.

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“Lovely,” David Kinch sighed repeatedly as he walked through the hoop house at the The Restaurant at Meadowood’s garden, running his hands over trays of feathery herbs.  The head gardener here, Christine Kim, used to work at Love Apple Farm, a biodynamic garden with which Kinch partnered to grow produce for his restaurant, Manresa in Los Gatos, California.  Now, he admired her work here in Napa Valley. 

Kinch knows quality.  He understands it, and he appreciates it.  And for that, he has become one of our country’s most-respected chefs.  

Since I first ate at Manresa in 2006, I’ve seen his food evolve from having a more European influence to having a more Asian one.  Kinch brought a spectrum of these influences with him to the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  

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There is a regular diner at Manresa who once suggested that Kinch try eating caviar with Brillat-Savarin cheese.  What seemed like an odd combination turned into a dish that Kinch served me at Manresa a few weeks ago, and then again on the eleventh night of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  The cheese he turned into a creamy sauce, which was drizzled around crispy sunchoke skins and a generous spoonful of caviar.  It is an unlikely combination.  But, it’s an undeniably delicious one.

He also brought his “tidal pool” to Napa Valley.  This dish is an expression of the coast.  Regularly on the menu at Manresa, it changes with the seasons.  In this “late-autumn” version, there were meaty mushrooms, slivers of abalone, creamy sea urchin roe, and silky duck liver, all bathed in a warm, sea-rich broth brightened with fragrant yuzu.

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Kinch’s game tourte caused quite a stir.

It was so unlike anything else he served, everyone noted.  This was classic, European cookery.  And yet, it was, perhaps, the dish that got the most votes (in my very unscientific polling).  

Kinch’s tourtes were formed into long logs, vented with chimneys, and baked until golden-brown.  The tourtes were sliced into inch-thick slabs and served, simply, with some young greens and Agen prunes.

What impressed me most about Kinch’s tourte was the filling.  It contained three types of game meat (duck, deer, and pigeon), all of which was marinated in Armagnac and bound with a mix of duck liver and lots of black truffle.  The three meats were perfectly and uniformly cooked.  The tender, rosy nuggets of meat were suffused together such that, texturally, I could not tell where once piece ended and the next began.  From a technical standpoint, the filling was a masterpiece.

Amidst all the creativity and envelope-pushing of modern-day restaurant cookery, much of which is aimed at impressing an increasingly savvy dining public, it was wonderful to find a relic and reminder of the past provoke and thrill with as much excitement as this tourte did.

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My two favorite dishes from Kostow’s side of the menu included a stunning aji escabeche with parsnip cream, and a straightforwardly delicious beef dish (bavette with fermented onions and grated Asian pear).

I also loved the sour cherry-chocolate “tart” that Kostow’s team served for dessert.  The “crust” of the tart was a frilly disc of chocolate feuilletine.  It was topped with preserved cherry purée and sour cherry “dippin dots.”

This dinner was book-ended by David Kinch’s madeleine and pâté de fruit duo (which bookends every dinner at Manresa).  As a canapé, Kinch served black olive madeleines with red pepper pâté de fruit at the beginning of dinner.  At the end, he served chocolate madeleines and strawberry pâté de fruit as petits fours.

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The entire menu from David Kinch’s dinner, with wine pairings by the guest vintner Malbec & Malbec is below, along with a slideshow from the eleventh day of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  If you would like to see the photos in a larger size, click through the slideshow to the Flickr album.

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Canapés

Chestnut “Truffles”
(David Kinch)

Scallop Chips
Seaweed.
(David Kinch)

Black Olive Madeleines
(David Kinch)

Red Pepper Pâté de Fruit
(David Kinch)

Marinated Beef Nuggets
Shiitake mushrooms.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

1st Course

Sunchokes
Brillat-Savarin, caviar.
(David Kinch)

Alienor Sauvignon Blanc
Lake County, 2010

2nd Course
Aji Winter Escabeche
Parsnip cream.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

3rd Course
Oyster in Seaweed-Citrus Ice
(David Kinch)

4th Course
Potato Cooked in Beeswax
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Alienor “Grand Vin”
Lake County, 2008

5th Course
A Late Autumn Tidal Pool
(David Kinch)

6th Course
Chilled Pork Broth
Juiced lettuce, mustard.
(David Kinch)

7th Course
Bavette
Fermented onion, Asian pear.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Notre Vin “Clos Camille”
Pinot Noir
Sonoma Coast, 2008

8th Course
Game Tourte
Black truffle.
(David Kinch)

Notre Vin Cabernet Sauvignon
Howell Mountain, 2004

9th Course
Chocolate-Cherry Tart
Preserved cherries.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Alienor “Luna de Miel”
Late-Harvest Sauvignon Blanc
Lake County, 2010

10th Course
Petits Fours
Strawberry pâté de fruit, chocolate madeleines.
(David Kinch)

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Photos: David Kinch and Christopher Kostow at The Restaurant at Meadowood’s garden at the Montessori School of St. Helena; plating Kinch’s Late-Autumn Tidal Pool; David Kinch and Jessica Largey plating sunchokes with caviar and Brillat-Savarin; David Kinch slicing game tourte; chocolate-cherry “tart.”

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The twelfth day of Christmas dawned with a second wind of excitement at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  

When I arrived at the kitchen in the morning, as I did every day of this dinner series, the cooks seemed to move with the efficiency and confidence of having their home field back.  In the days leading up to this last dinner, Christopher Kostow and his team had, essentially, been working in eleven different kitchens with eleven different personalities, and learning eleven different styles of management, workflow, and plating.

But on this last day, with all of the guest chefs gone, the staff seemed to fall back into their familiar corners and routine.  The kitchen hummed along; leaner, quieter, calmer.

As Perry Como crooned about a white Christmas on the speakers, I plugged in at my usual perch at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and my Model Bakery English muffin.

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Until now, I’ve only been giving you short summaries of the dinners.

But, the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood is a much greater endeavor, one that I’ve had the great privilege of experiencing twice now (last year, as a guest participant, this year as the official, hired photographer).  It not only moves the culinary spotlight, for two weeks, to Napa Valley – pointing it at the community that supports and works with The Restaurant at Meadowood – but also benefits a local charity – the Holly Cranston Memorial Fund.  I’d like to take a moment, in this last post, to tell you a bit about what happens beyond dinner service, and the amazing people who make it happen.

Coordinating eleven guest chefs (often, this included an assistant chef as well) is not an easy task.  (Actually, this year, there were thirteen guest chefs, since Del Posto was represented by both Mark Ladner and Brooks Headley, and Bar Tartine was represented by both Nicolaus Balla and Cortney Burns).  But Heidi Brown, the culinary liaison (and Christopher Kostow’s assistant) at The Restaurant at Meadowood made it seem effortless.  She was basically administrative command central for the the Twelve Days of Christmas, and an all-around concierge to the guest chefs.  She scheduled their flights (and mine) – all of which were sponsored by United Airlines, by the way – and our airport transfers.  She also worked with Meadowood Napa Valley to reserve our rooms, and make sure that our amenities and gift packages (which included personalized chef coats and aprons) were correctly assigned.

Brown was in charge of scheduling daily interviews for the chefs with local press.  She was also the mastermind behind the five panel discussions that I helped moderate, two of which took place at the Culinary Institute of America’s Greystone campus, and three at Meadowood Napa Valley.

When she wasn’t triangulating chefs, packages, or the restaurant’s Instagram accounts (along with Martina Kostow), she was problem-solving and fulfilling special requests for the guest chefs – Rodolfo Guzman, for example, needed seventy buckets of a specific size for his curanto dish; Andy Ricker needed woven baskets in which to serve sticky rice.

And, if someone needed a ride to late-night karaoke at Ana’s Cantina after dinner service – Heidi Brown was always your gal.

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Nathaniel Dorn, the restaurant’s general manager, oversaw the front of the house service.  

Each day, the dining room had to be reconfigured to accommodate different party sizes and different seating requests (managing the reservation requests, alone, is a monstrous task, overseen by Brook Herrema and Makayla Harp).  At 16.00, Dorn gathered the front of the house staff to meet the guest chef(s) and Kostow, and to go over the night’s menu: proper markings (utensils) for each dish, dietary restrictions, and table-side presentations, as well as wine service (under the direction of head sommelier Benjamin Richardson, formerly of Frasca Food + Wine, with the two assistant sommeliers, Victoria Kulinich and Marty Winters).

At 17.00, the front of the house lined-up for a second time to run through the guest list, making note of special requests, re-reviewing the list of dietary restrictions, and flagging VIPs.  By the end of this meeting, the front-of-the-house staff was expected to have memorized the entire menu for that night (including the provenance of many of the ingredients), as well as the entire guest list.  

At 18.00, the front of the house staff had to be in place to welcome guests, who were ushered into the kitchen for an hour of Champagne and canapés.  At the end of that hour, by some magical combination of memory and careful note-taking, Herrema and the hostess, approached each guest by name to take them to their seat in the dining room.

During service, Dorn stood at the pass with head expeditor Jeremy Rupp, to ensure that the dishes left the kitchen neatly, quickly, and in the right order.

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Months in advance of their arrival, guest chefs were assigned to a sous chef at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each sous chef became the point of contact for their assigned guest chefs.  These sous chefs were responsible for learning about their guest chefs, researching their food, working with them on their menu and dishes, compiling ingredient and prep lists, and assigning tasks to the rest of the kitchen.  They were also in charge of coordinating with Brown, Dorn, and others for their chef’s special needs (e.g. Guzman’s buckets; Ricker’s rice baskets).  If their guest chef needed specific vegetables or herbs grown to a certain size for their dinner, the appointed sous chef would work with Christine Kim, the restaurant’s head gardener, to have those plants seeded at the appropriate time.  If they required certain items foraged, the appointed sous chef would work with Cameron Rahtz, the resident forager, to have those items found – Rasmus Kofoed, for example, needed rocks of a certain size and shape for one of his presentations, as well as spiny, unshelled chestnuts, and moss. (Currently, there are four sous chefs at The Restaurant at Meadowood: Katianna Weiner, John Hong, Poncho Vasquez, and Oliver Antunes.)

After each dinner service, the appointed, or lead sous chef for the following day would convene a short kitchen staff meeting to review the next day’s prep list.   In the mornings, the lead sous chef for that day was often the first one in the kitchen (I know, because I would often be the only other person to arrive that early). For the rest of that day, the lead sous chef directed traffic and made sure that all of their guest chef’s needs were met.  Additionally, the lead sous chef of the day was responsible for running the morning kitchen line-up with their guest chef, as well as giving Kostow’s menu notes to the front-of-the-house staff in the afternoon line-up.

By entrusting the logistics of prep and service to his sous chefs, Christopher Kostow is cultivating a kitchen of managers.  While this kind of responsibility put an incredible amount of pressure on these sous chefs, the Twelve Days of Christmas presented an incredible opportunity and education for them.  Not only did they get hands-on experience managing a Michelin three-starred kitchen, but they also got the chance to work with some of the most-seasoned and respected leaders in their industry.

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If anyone was omniscient and omnipresent during the Twelve Days of Christmas, it was Christopher Kostow, host of the Twelve Days of Christmas and chef of The Restaurant at Meadowood.

He not only had his mind wrapped around all of the activity in and outside of the restaurant, but, I’m convinced that he often appeared in two or more places at the same time.

Over the course of twelve dinners, he and his team managed to produce at least sixty different dishes, most of which had never been attempted before.  While I can’t say that every dish succeeded on equal footing (Kostow would be the first to admit this), I was impressed by the overall strength and quality of the food that he and his cooks produced on a consistent basis.  And this is one of my favorite aspects of the Twelve Days of Christmas: there is an excitement and sense of adventure in Kostow’s collaboration with the guest chefs.  For those who embrace and appreciate this collaborative spirit, these dinners can be a incredible place of discovery.

I don’t think you had to have eaten all twelve dinners to feel and taste the dynamic dialogue that transpired between this year’s guest chefs and Kostow.  All of this year’s guest chefs had their own unique and vivid voices. I count myself incredibly lucky to have heard all of them sounding off the hills of Napa Valley in their various pitches and tenors.

If you studied them closely, each of this year’s menus presented lively, intelligent conversations about culture, history, and perspective. One chef brought with him the flavors of the Mapuche Indians of South America; another cooked soulful dishes of her American South. We experienced Thai, Japanese, and Italian cuisines through non-Thai, non-Japanese, and non-Italian lenses. Rasmus Kofoed took us to the forests of Denmark by way of Napa; David Kinch took us to the tidal pools of California.

There is an excitement to new and developing dishes; a special kind of energy to food that is striving upwards and outwards. And I don’t say this apologetically.  Of course, the food needs to be executed properly, and the flavors need to be somewhat balanced (at The Restaurant at Meadowood, this isn’t a problem).  But I see value in risk, and find lessons in the unperfected.  Some of my best meals are those that demonstrate a palpable momentum towards an unachieved target.  Flawless though products by rote may be, often, I find their color muted by repetition.  Better instead, it sometimes is, to experience the honesty of trial and error.

And so, even though many of Kostow’s dishes at this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas weren’t, by his standards, “finished,” I count many of them among my favorite ones.  In fact, a couple of the best dishes I’ve had in 2013 appeared during this dinner series (as soon as this post publishes, I turn to compiling my year-end lists of best dishes, desserts, and restaurant meals).

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I have to admit that I was a bit worried about Kostow’s “brown rice risotto” at this last dinner.  The sound of it immediately prompted fears of soggy, broken kernels swimming in a soupy broth.  To the contrary, the rice kernels were shockingly firm; perfect, actually.  The porridge was thick and  velvety, rich with the flavors of cuttlefish, matsutake, and pine.  I loved it.

Kostow smoked eel over burning staves of cabernet oak barrels.  He served the eel, along with tender cubes of beef tongue, on staves stained with cabernet sauvignon for added flavor and aroma. This was delicious.

I had never noticed the similarity in flavor and aroma of celery and white truffles before, but the overlap, found in a veal blanquette dish that Kostow served on this last night, was undeniable.  (Pro tip: the twelfth night is when all of the white truffles have to be used up…)

Ending on a particularly strong note, Kostow wrapped up this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas with an amazingly fragrant apple lees sorbet, served with a fennel cake and roasted white chocolate.  It was, by far, my favorite dessert of the entire dinner series.

Perhaps, it was the home field advantage.  Perhaps, it was the excitement of the final night.  Or, perhaps, it was the wine – Krug flowed like water, followed by a vertical tasting of Harlan Estate cabernet sauvignon.  Regardless, this last night was my favorite night of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas.

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The entire menu from Christopher Kostow’s dinner, with wine pairings by the guest vintner Harlan Estate is below, along with a slideshow from the twelfth day of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  If you would like to see the photos in a larger size, click through the slideshow to the Flickr album.

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Canapés

Crispy Chicken Skin

Catfish Salad
“Everything” crisps.

Duck Liver-Brioche

Cured Tuna Belly
Turo cheese.

1st Course

Raw Spiny Tail Lobster
Lardo, sudachi, caviar.

Domaine Leflaive “Sous les Dos d’Ane”
Meursault Premier Cru, 2011

2nd Course
Eel Smoked Over Cabernet Barrel
Mustard of must, poached tongue.

Harlan Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2000

3rd Course
Brown Rice Risotto
Cuttlefish, matsutake, pine.

“The Maiden”
Napa Valley, 2004

4th Course
Cured Christmas Goose
Persimmon, beet, spicebush.

Harlan Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2009

5th Course
Veal Shortrib
Celery, foraged mushroom, blanquette, white truffle

Harlan Estate Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 2005

6th Course
Vacherin Mont d’Or
Grains, cranberry, salad, rye.

7th Course
Apple Lees
Fennel, roasted white chocolate.

8th Course
“Chestnut”~

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Photos: The staff of The Restaurant at Meadowood after the last dinner service; Brooke Herrema, Heidi Brown, Matt Accarrinio, Catherine Schementi, and Martina Kostow;  Nathaniel Dorn runs front of the house line-up at The Restaurant at Meadowood; Christopher Kostow and Miles Pundsack-Poe, with sous chef Katianna Weiner running line-up; Christopher Kostow plating; servers lined up in the kitchen ready to run food; Harlan Estate wines paired with the dinner.

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At the end of each of the last two years, I’ve looked back in awe at a calendar filled with adventures.  At the same time, I’ve stared nervously into the new year, wondering how it might fill up, if at all.

We are at the bottom of December, once again.  And, once again, I marvel at a year that brimmed with excitement and opportunities that, just twelve months ago, I never dreamed would be possible.  With every corner I’ve turned, God has met me with more than I could have ever expected.  And for that, I am immensely grateful.

2013 flew by.  Literally.

I think I spent just as much time on planes as I did in restaurants and hotels.  I hopped around the globe, logging more than 120,000 miles across a dozen U.S. states, five countries, and three continents.  I was home (in Kansas City) fewer than 100 days this year, and not more than two weeks in the last three months.  The good news is that my busyness was evidence that my new-found career as a photographer and writer gained important ground this year.  I worked with and for some amazing people in some amazing places (more on that later).  And, of course, I managed to eat some pretty great food along the way too.

The unfortunate result, as some of you know, was that I had little time to write about it all.  This blog was a bit of a sleeper in 2013. And that makes me sad.  I started writing this blog (now nearing its tenth anniversary), primarily, as a personal journal about my relationship with food.  It also provided a convenient medium in which to adjoin my interests in writing and photography.  This year, my record lagged – in certain months, it came to a halt – leaving silent, gaping holes that should have otherwise been filled with colorful and delicious tales from the road.

But, also, over the years, I’ve derived much joy from sharing my experiences with those who care to read about them.  Although I appreciated the privacy I maintained as a blogger during the seven years that I spent in self-imposed anonymity, in the years since I went public with my identity, it has been incredibly gratifying to meet many of you who have been reading my blog over the past decade.  You – cooks, bloggers, writers, chefs, photographers, waitstaff, artists, and eaters-at-large – whom I’ve met at events, who have cooked for me, who have introduced yourselves to me on the streets, who have reached out to me through email – thank you for giving me the encouragement and incentive to continue writing and photographing.

Although I can’t make up for a spotty year of blogging, I will take this opportunity to give you a tour of my year – what I’ve been doing, where I’ve been, and, of course, where I’ve eaten.

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First, I think it’s important for me to tell you, briefly, about the work that I’ve done this year.  Despite what some might believe – that I’m perpetually on vacation – I actually do work.

Truth be told, part of the reason why I’ve remained so silent, recently, is because I’ve realized that I’ve crossed the line from being “just a blogger” to being something else.  The problem is, I’m not quite sure what that something else is – yet.  But, I do know that that something else means that the borders and course of my blog have been irreversibly altered. The lines have been blurred.  And I must be careful.

Those of you who know me, know that I have strong opinions, and I am not easily swayed by charm, or glamor, or hype, or money.   I have always taken pride in my honesty, my ability to separate opinion from judgement, and my willingness to wade against the popular tide.  As I’ve written on this blog (more and more, recently), the single-most important thing to me, when it comes to food (and most other things in life, actually), is integrity – integrity of ingredients and cooking.  For the past nine years, I’ve approached food writing on this blog as a consumer advocate – eager to celebrate the good, but unafraid to point out the bad.  I’ve never claimed to be an expert, or a formal critic – because I am neither (and you should be wary of anyone who claims to be either).  The only credentials I have as a food writer are pretty much contained within the four corners of this blog.  I’m just one guy on a cyberspace soapbox voicing my opinion.  I’ve never pretended to be or do anything more.  And, I insist that none of that will change here.

However, as impartial as I believe I am, I am human.  And with that, come all the tangled spaghetti strings of emotions that often escape reason and logic.

This year, much more than previous years, my life as a blogger commingled with my life as a paid photographer and writer.  This wouldn’t be a problem if so many of my clients weren’t in the hospitality industry, which, as you know, happens to be the primary subject of my blog – chefs, restaurants, and food and wine-related events.   But I want to be clear: I was never paid to write about them, or for them on my blog.  Neither was there the expectation that I would write about them (and, as you can see from my infrequent posts this year, I barely wrote at all).  I was hired strictly to photograph for them.

I could tell you that all of this has, and will have no affect on my opinions, or my writing.  But, I won’t.  It’s a simple fact, for example, that where I ate this year had a lot to do with where my clients were located.  I spent a good deal of time in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York because that’s where my job took me.

Do I stop writing altogether?  No, I won’t do that either.  I maintain my right to tell the stories that I think should be told; to continue celebrating the good, and pointing out the bad.

So, to bring as much transparency to this situation as possible, I will simply disclose my conflicts so that you can decide whether, or how much, to trust what I have to say.

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As the official  photographer for the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation, I traveled to Lyon, France with Team USA in January to record Richard Rosendale’s bid for the podium.  Although I was not paid for my work or my photographs, my expenses were covered.

In February, All-Clad Metalcrafters hired me to photograph eight chefs for an advertising campaign.

Chef Justin Cogley invited me to attend and asked me to photograph the first-annual Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine dinner at Aubergine in Carmel-By-The-Sea in March.  My expenses were covered for this trip, including two dinners at the restaurant, and I was provided a small stipend.  On a return visit earlier this month, Chef Cogley took care of a third meal at Aubergine.

In April, Rodolfo Guzman, chef at Boragó, worked with the government of the Chile to bring me to tour his country.  He worked to get me invited back to Chile in October. Between those two trips, he invited me to his restaurant three times, never accepting any money from me (he did let me tip for service).

All-Clad Metalcrafters hired me to photograph at the James Beard Foundation Awards in May, an event that is partially sponsored by that company.  While I was in New York, I also did a quick ad shoot for Boulud Sud and Epicerie Boulud.

In June, chef Chris Hastings hired me to photograph a fundraising dinner for the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation at his restaurant, Hot & Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Alabama.  As a part of my visit, Chef Hastings invited me as his guest to dinner at Hot & Hot Fish Club.

In July, I was paid to photograph the opening of Qui for Paul Qui in Austin, Texas.  All of my expenses were covered for that trip, including dinner at Qui.  Later that month, I flew to West Virginia to photograph for Richard Rosendale’s recently launched website.

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In November, I was invited to speak at a food film festival (aptly named Devour!) in Nova Scotia (I was paid an honorarium). And, I was hired to photograph the Music To Your Mouth Festival in South Carolina, a food, music, and wine event at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff that I had attended twice before as a guest of the resort.

In December, I was hired by The Restaurant at Meadowood to photograph the Twelve Days of Christmas. As a part of that, I was given a seat at all twelve dinners.  In addition, Chef Christopher Kostow treated a couple of the guest chefs and me to dinner at the restaurant the night before the dinner series started.

And throughout the year, I photographed a number of times for my friends Colby and Megan Garrelts’s new restaurant Rye in Leawood, Kansas, and their flagship bluestem in Kansas City, Missouri.

In between, I had a wide range of photography jobs that did not involve restaurants or the hospitality industry (For example, I spent a very unglamorous week in the jungles of Mexico photographing for a fish company.).  But the one, ongoing project that I must disclose is my working relationship with Joshua Skenes, chef of Saison.  Earlier this year, Skenes and I signed a collaboration agreement to work on a cookbook together.  While we initially agreed to remain silent about the project until we felt confident about our progress, I am now taking the first opportunity available to go public with this information.

I will also disclose that I have, this year, had four, full dinners at saison, three of which were paid out of the cost of our collaboration (that is, I did not pay for those three meals out of my pocket).  I did, however, pay for the fourth meal.  In addition, Skenes hired me to photograph a series of guest chef dinners in October (the proceeds benefitted the S.F. Food Bank) at saison.  I was paid for my work, and was also given a seat at all five dinners.

Did I have other “free” meals this year?  Yes. But probably not as many as you might imagine.  (And, by the way, I always insist on paying.  Sometimes, they just don’t let me, in which case, I try to leave a generous tip.)  Instead of listing those meals here, I promise to disclose the situation if I write about them.

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So, what, in all of this – this work, this association with chefs and restaurants – is the chicken, and what is the egg?  I’d like to think that all of this – this indescribable, intangible circumstance that now finds me in the “something else” territory – came about organically, growing out of mutual respect and shared values.

I liked what I tasted and saw when I visited The Restaurant at Meadowood, for example.  So, I invited Christopher Kostow to come cook in Kansas City.  Then he invited me to participate in the Twelve Days of Christmas last year, where I had the opportunity to get to know him, to observe him working and interacting in his environment.  I came to admire his style of management and the culture that he has cultivated for his corner of the world.  So we started a dialogue that, now, has resulted in a wonderful, professional partnership. The Twelve Days of Christmas is a spectacular, high-quality event that not only raises money for a charitable cause, but focuses on celebrating the best that Kostow’s community – vintners, chefs, gardeners, and more – have to offer.  I would be thrilled to tell the world about this kind of event regardless of my personal or professional relationship with Kostow.

Joshua Skenes isn’t vying for any Mr. Congeniality awards. He knows that.  I know that.  And the food media certainly knows that.  But Skenes understands quality.  He demands it and fights for it, even when the rest of the world raises an eyebrow at the way he goes about it.  I’ve eaten at saison nearly a dozen times this year, and I’ve spent hours talking with him, observing him, and tasting with him.  And I can tell you that the most important thing to Joshua Skenes is the quality of the food that lands in front of his guests.  He scours for the best, and scrutinizes everything that enters his kitchen, from his cooks to the produce that his purveyors bring.

Whether you view him as a martyr or a crazy, Skenes is undeniably dedicated to his craft and his clients.  In an age when many high-end chefs have become circus acts, jetting across the world in a understandably tempting bid for fame and fortune, Joshua Skenes stays in his kitchen.  He knows that he’ll never achieve perfection.  But he also knows that every minute he spends behind the pass is a minute closer to his target.  I appreciate that about him.  And so, when he asked me to help him tell his story, I said yes.

This is just a glimpse into the reality of the choices I have made and am making. The skeptics and cynics among you will question and distrust.  You have every right to do that.  And, if you feel that I cannot write intelligently, objectively, or – most importantly – thoughtfully about my subjects, then I invite you to stop reading here.

But, for the rest of you, my blogging apologetics end.  Let’s move on with the rest of my year, one that was full of great views, great smells, and great flavors.

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I went to amazing places this year and saw amazing things.

In California, I saw a waterfall on a beach (yes, that is actually a photograph that I took, and not a computer-generated graphic).  In Chiapas, Mexico, I saw a waterfall on a lake.

In Nova Scotia, I walked along four hundred year-old dykes at sunset, watching the clay marshes turn from orange to purple.  It was a mysterious and wonderful sight.

I saw prehistory in the windswept coast of Carmel and gazed at starfish and sea urchins in the crisp, clear tidal pools.  And under a pier in nearby Monterey, I teetered along planks, suspended just a few feet above the water, from which hung dozens of crates of live abalone feeding away on miles of kelp.

I went foraging in the hills above Napa Valley with Cameron Rahtz, forager to The Restaurant at Meadowood.  It was much drier this year than last year, so we didn’t find the treasure trove of matsutakes that we did last year.  But, I smelled red bay and spice bush along the way, and we found a hidden orchard of apple trees among the big, trunky redwoods.

In Paris, my friends gave me a paper coronation out of a stunning galette de rois by pastry master Jacques Genin.

I spent an afternoon eating cheese and drinking wine on a hilltop overlooking an old turkey farm in Sonoma County.  Then to far-flung Suisun Valley my friend Marty and I drive, to climb the barrels at Scholium Project for a taste of the raw and funky.

And in Copenhagen, I traced the canals at night, mesmerized by the glistening cobblestones, and heard Horatio whisper in my ear at the palace gates.

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I need to learn Spanish.  I’ve been to Latin America nearly two dozen times in the past three years, and all I can do is order “agua minerale” and hack my way out of a conversation with over-solicitous street vendors. It’s embarrassing, really.

This year, I was in Mexico twice. Once in way-down Chiapas, and once in Mexico City to attend the second-annual Mesamérica conference.

I spent a month in Chile: two weeks there in April, and two more weeks in October.

I’ve already written about my first trip.  Here are a few highlights from second one:

I was invited to speak at FEGAM, a fledgling seafood conference focused on bringing awareness and protection to sustainable fishing in Chile.  One of the most memorable parts of that conference was visiting the fishing co-op in the remote, seaside village of Bonifacio.  As our van descended the steep, seaside trail, I saw two boats launch into the rough surf.  By the time we got down to the village and warmed up near the hot embers (in which dough had been buried and was baking; locals call this ashen bread “rescoldo”) the old fishermen – the oldest is Delfino, who is in his seventies – had returned from their dive, hauling back nets full of spiny urchins and clods of dirt containing piure (One of the oddest animals I’ve ever encountered, these ruby red creatures live in colonies buried in the mud. Piure have the texture of clams, and a strong, briny flavor. Chileans will either eat them raw, or smoke and cure them.).  One of the old fisherman pried open a sea urchin, revealing the creamy sacks of roe within, and a tiny parasitic crab that is known to live in symbiosis with the urchin (they call this crab “pancora”).  The fisherman plucked the crab out – no larger than a thimble – and told me to pop it in my mouth, alive.  It gushed a briny juice that tasted of sea water and blue cheese.

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In Patagonia, I ascended nearly 6,000 feet in one day and arrived at a glacial lake at the foot of the three, iconic towers of the Parque Nacional Torres del Pine.  If you like a challenging, but not a terribly technical hike, consider trekking up to this “Mirador.”  It’s a breathtaking journey, one that will lead you through beautiful forests and have you clinging to rock faces on dizzyingly narrow cliff-side passes.

Actually, all of Patagonia was breathtaking.  I went horseback riding through the brush and found wild hare the size of raccoons scurrying about. And by the roadside, we stopped to watch wild llamas (“guanaco”), unexpectedly elegant and majestic creatures, scaling the steep hillsides.  For dinner, at the stunning The Singular resort, where I was put up, I ate both.

In northern Patagonia, on the quiet island of Chiloé, I spent two, peaceful days at Refugia, a lovely, twelve-room boutique hotel overlooking a lawn of rainbows and ponies, and beyond that, the sea.  It was magical.

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I visited Seattle twice this year.  I loved it.  The weather’s great. The people are great. The produce is great. The restaurant scene there is strong.  I want to move there.

I visited Chicago and New York thrice each (to get my latest thoughts about dining in New York, read this).  Both cities seemed content with the status quo, unlike San Francisco, to which I traveled six times this year.  Some of it was for work.  A lot of it was for pleasure.  It’s an exciting time to be eating in and around the Bay Area.

I went to Austin, Texas for the first time.  Given all of the great things people have said about the food scene there, I went in with high expectations.  Perhaps, they were unrealistic expectations.  I left disappointed.  There was certainly a lot of enthusiasm for food there. And, for a city of its size, Austin’s dining culture is unbelievably active.  Unfortunately, I found the quality of ingredients and attention to detail lacking.  But, for having only been open a week, Qui was off to a strong start.  I had some tasty dishes at Barley Swine, and some truly great barbecue in nearby Lockhart (I’m looking at you, Black’s, and not at you, Smitty’s).  But most of what I found there had more style than substance, with a side of grunge.  There were quite a few places on my list that I didn’t get to visit on this trip to Austin.  I hope that my next visit is more uplifting.

And, in my never-ending quest to explore the Southerner in me, I took a road trip through the Carolinas.  Starting in Raleigh-Durham, I ate my way through the “Triangle,” making sure to stop by Daniel Ryan’s and Kim Floresca’s One in Chapel Hill (they wouldn’t let me pay, even though they let me eat), swung through Ayden for vinegary barbecue at the Skylight Inn, and down to Charleston for my annual haaj to Husk (“Drop by for a little fried chicken snack,” Sean Brock said.  Of course he overfed me, and then, wouldn’t let me pay either. Southerners.).  A lot of pie, a lot of fried chicken, and a lot of bourbon happened on that week-long trip, which ended at an oyster roast and a surprise concert by Kristian Bush of Sugarland under a canopy of Spanish moss.  Every trip through the South should be so charmed.

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I wish I had more time to tell you about all of the amazing experiences I had this year.  Perhaps, if I find time in 2014, I will.  But, first, I must turn my attention to finishing my annual year-end lists of my favorite twenty-five dishes, favorite twenty-five desserts, and ten best restaurant meals, all of which I plan to publish this coming week.

So that you have a better idea of the volume of dishes and restaurant meals that I must consider, below is a list of all the meals I’ve had in 2013.  It includes over a hundred different restaurants, representing well over fifty Michelin stars, spread across a dozen U.S. States, five countries, and three continents.  (Restaurants that have been struck-through have already closed.)

~

JANUARY

akrame (Paris, France)
Auberge due Fond Rose (Lyon, France)
Bar Tartine (San Francisco, California)
Brasserie le Nord (Lyon, France)
Brasserie l’Ouest (Lyon, France)
Daniel & Denise (Lyon, France)
duende (Oakland, California)
F & B at the Institut Paul Bocuse (Ecully, France)
Le Bouchon des Filles (Lyon, France)
Le Caro de Lyon (Lyon, France)
Le Centre (Lyon, France)
kadeau (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Têtedoie (Lyon, France)
relae (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Saigon Sandwich (San Francisco, California)
Salumeri (San Francisco, California)
septime (Paris, France)

FEBRUARY

aaman’s of Copenhagen (New York, New York)
aldea (New York, New York)
Bacaro (New York, New York)
bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Café Boulud (New York, New York) (once, twice)
Di Fara’s Pizza (New York, New York)
dovetail (New York, New York)
Fatty Crab (New York, New York)
Geranium (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lincoln Ristorante (New York, New York)
maialino (New York, New York)
noma (Copenhagen, Denmark)
per se (New York, New York)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Sarabeth’s East (New York, New York)
Soto (New York, New York)
wallsé (New York, New York)

MARCH

1833 (Monterey, California)
alinea (Chicago, Illinois)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Aubergine (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California) (once, twice)
Big Star (Chicago, Illinois)
Eleven City Diner (Chicago, Illinois)
Flying Saucer (Chicago, Illinois)
graham elliot (Chicago, Illinois)
GT Fish & Oyster (Chicago, Illinois)
Justus Drugstore (Smithville, Missouri)
Lou Mitchell’s (Chicago, Illinois)
next: The Hunt (Chicago, Illinois)
Publican Quality Meats (Chicago, Illinois)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Spiaggia (Chicago, Illinois)
Trencherman (Chicago, Illinois)
yusho (Chicago, Illinois)

APRIL

Alegre at the Palacio Astoreca (Valparaiso, Chile)
Ana Maria (Santiago, Chile) (once, twice)
Antulican (Santiago, Chile)
Aqui Esta Coco (Santiago, Chile)
Arola at the Ritz Carlton (Santiago, Chile)
Bar Tartine (San Francisco, California)
bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bocanariz (Santiago, Chile)
Boragó (Santiago, Chile) (once, twice)
Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California)
Canela Patisserie (Santiago, Chile)
Casa Mar (Santiago, Chile)
Casa Mirador (Casablanca Valley, Chile)
Empire State South (Atlanta, Georgia)
flour + water (San Francisco, California)
haus (Kansas City, Missouri)
La Folie (San Francisco, California)
La Fuente Vitacura (Santiago, Chile)
Liguria (Santiago, Chile)
Marisqueria Bahamondez (Santiago, Chile)
Mercado Vega (Santiago, Chile)
Mesón de la Patagonia (Santiago, Chile)
Mill, The (San Francisco, California)
Noi at the Hotel Noi (Santiago, Chile)
Osaka (Santiago, Chile)
Pigwich (Kansas City, Missouri)
Pilar Rodriguez Food + Wine Studio (Colchagua Valley, Chile)
Rancho Doña Maria (Santiago, Chile)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Slanted Door, The (San Francisco, California)
State Bird Provisions (San Francisco, California)
Sukalde (Santiago, Chile)
Viña Lapostolle (Colchagua Valley, Chile)
Viñedos de Alcohuaz (Elqui Valley, Chile)
Viñedos Montgras (Casablanca Valley, Chile)

MAY

aaman’s of Copenhagen (New York, New York)
abc kitchen (New York, New York)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Blue Hill at Stone Barns (Pocantico Hills, New York)
Boulud Sud (New York, New York)
Butcher’s Daughter (New York, New York)
Carbone (New York, New York)
De Gustibus (Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson; New York, New York)
Eleven Madison Park (New York, New York)
eno (Mexico City, Mexico) (once, twice)
Gramercy Tavern (New York, New York)
Green Dirt Farm (Brandon Winn; Weston, Missouri)
Gotham Bar & Grill (New York, New York)
il buco alimentari (New York, New York)
ippudo (New York, New York)
Keen’s Chophouse (New York, New York)
kokage (New York, New York)
Lady M. Confections (New York, New York)
Lafayette (New York, New York)
maialino (New York, New York)
mero toro (Mexico City, Mexico)
Nicos (Mexico City, Mexico)
Paxia (Mexico City, Mexico)
per se (New York, New York)
pok pok (New York, New York)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Pujol (Mexico City, Mexico)
Quintonil (Mexico City, Mexico)
Rosetta (Mexico City, Mexico)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas) (once, twice, thrice)
Wong (New York, New York)

JUNE

American Restaurant, The (Harvesters Chefs Classic; Kansas City, Missouri)
Bettola (Birmingham, Alabama)
Black’s BBQ (Lockhart, Texas)
bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Café Europa (Kansas City, Missouri)
commonwealth (San Francisco, California)
Fifth Floor, The (San Francisco, California) (To close in January, 2014)
Genessee Royale (Harvesters Chefs Classic; Kansas City, Missouri)
Green Dirt Farm (Alex Pope; Weston, Missouri)
Highlands Bar & Grill (Birmingham, Alabama)
Hot & Hot Fish Club (Birmingham, Alabama) (once, twice)
Knead Patisserie (San Francisco, California)
Lidia’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Little Donkey (Birmingham, Alabama)
niche (St. Louis, Missouri)
Niki’s West (Birmingham, Alabama)
Outerlands (San Francisco, California)
pastaria (St. Louis, Missouri)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Red Door Grill (Leawood, Kansas)
Rieger Grill & Exchange (Kansas City, Missouri)
saison (San Francisco, California) (once, twice)
Smitty’s BBQ (Lockhart, Texas)
Sno Beach (Austin, Texas)
spqr (San Francisco, California)
State Bird Provisions (San Francisco, California)
Thien Long (San Jose, California)
una pizza napoletana (San Francisco, California)
Vittoria Macellaria (Birmingham, Alabama)
Winslow’s Home (St. Louis, Missouri)

JULY

À La Mode (Seattle, Washington)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Au Cheval (Chicago, Illinois)
Bakery Nouveau (Seattle, Washington)
Barley Swine (Austin, Texas)
Bar Sajor (Seattle, Washington)
Beach Store Café (Lummi Island, Washington)
Belly Q (Chicago, Illinois)
Canlis (Seattle, Washington) (once, twice)
Canon (Seattle, Washington)
Carlitos (Lewisburg, West Virginia)
Carriage House (Chicago, Illinois)
Cascina Spinasse (Seattle, Washington)
East Side Kings at Hole in the Wall (Austin, Texas)
Easy Tiger (Austin, Texas)
Fuji Bakery (Seattle, Washington)
Genessee Royale (Kansas City, Missouri)
grace (Chicago, Illinois)
Hoosier Mama Pie Co. (Chicago, Illinois)
Irish Pub (Lewisburg, West Virginia)
Josephine House (Austin, Texas)
La Condesa (Austin, Texas)
Little Goat (Chicago, Illinois)
next: Vegan (Chicago, Illinois)
Nightwood (Chicago, Illinois)
Pleasant House Bakery (Chicago, Illinois)
qui (Austin, Texas)
Red Door Grill (Leawood, Kansas)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Salt & Time (Austin, Texas)
Sitka & Spruce (Seattle, Washington)
Spin Modern Thai (Austin, Texas)
Staple & Fancy (Seattle, Washington)
uchi (Austin, Texas)
Walrus and the Carpenter (Seattle, Washington)
Wiener Circle (Chicago, Illinois)
Willow’s Inn (Lummi Island, Washington)

AUGUST

American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
aziza (San Francisco, California)
bouli bar (San Francisco, California) (once, twice)
blue ribbon (New York, New York)
bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
bluestem (BBQ Block Party; Kansas City, Missouri)
Café Boulud (New York, New York)
Cemitas Mexican Sandwiches (New York, New York)
Diane’s Bakery (Roslyn, New York)
elm, the (New York, New York)
extra virgin (Kansas City, Missouri)
Genessee Royale (Kansas City, Missouri)
Greenvale Bagels (Roslyn, New York)
Hummus World (Roslyn, New York)
Lidia’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Louro (New York, New York)
Minetta Tavern (New York, New York)
novel (Kansas City, Missouri)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
rice & miso everyday (New York, New York)
Runner & Stone (New York, New York)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
saison (San Francisco, California)
zero zero (San Francisco, California)

SEPTEMBER

abc cocina (New York, New York)
Ada’s Latin Flavor (Long Branch, New Jersey)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Café Shirin (Manalapan Township, New Jersey)
casa mono (New York, New York) (once, twice, thrice)
Danji (New York, New York)
Del Posto (New York, New York)
Drew’s Bayshore Bistro (Keyport, New Jersey)
elements (Princeton, New Jersey)
Epicerie Boulud (New York, New York)
Flying Saucer (Josh Eans; Kansas City, Missouri)
Green Dirt Farm (Rye; Weston, Missouri)
Jean-Georges (New York, New York)
Lincoln Ristorante (New York, New York)
Mistral (Princeton, New Jersey)
Modern, The (New York, New York)
Peacock Inn, The (Princeton, New Jersey)
perry street (New York, New York)
Pines, The (New York, New York)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas) (once, twice)
sushi azabu (New York, New York)

OCTOBER

Acadia (Chicago, Illinois)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
American Royal, The (World Championship of Barbecue; Kansas City, Missouri)
Aqui Esta Coco (Santiago, Chile)
Bar Tartine (San Francisco, California)
Boragó (Santiago, Chile)
bouli bar (San Francisco, California)
Café Haussmann (Valdivia, Chile)
Cuidad Vieja (Santiago, Chile)
Doña Tina (Santiago, Chile)
Handle Bar (Chicago, Illinois)
izakaya yuzuki (San Francisco, California)
Little Goat (Chicago, Illinois)
Mar, La (Santiago, Chile)
Mestizo (Santiago, Chile)
next: Bocuse d’Or (Chicago, Illinois)
Pizzeria Delfina (San Francisco, California)
refugia (Chiloe, Chile)
Room 39 (Leawood, Kansas)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
saison (San Francisco, California) (Gras, Lightner, Kreuther, Seeger, Shields)
Singular, The (Puerto Natales, Chile)
Tilapia (Niebla, Chile)
Turtle Tower (San Francisco, California)
Ultima Frontera, La (Valdivia, Chile)

NOVEMBER

American Restaurant, The (Friend of James Beard Foundation Dinner; Kansas City, Missouri)
Arthur Bryant’s BBQ (Kansas City, Missouri)
Beasley’s Fried Chicken + Honey (Raleigh, North Carolina)
bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
commis (Oakland, California)
Corson Building, The (Seattle, Washington)
Crush (Seattle, Washington)
Front & Central (Wolfville, Nova Scotia)
Husk (Charleston, South Carolina)
Lantern, The (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
La Farandula Taquería y Antojería (Tuxtla-Gutierrez, Mexico)
Las Picahanchas (Tuxtla-Gutierrez, Mexico)
Nana Tacos (Durham, North Carolina)
Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
One (Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Parallel 37 (San Francisco, California)
Poole’s Diner (Raleigh, North Carolina)
Privet House (Wolfville, Nova Scotia)
Quince (San Francisco, California)
Sitka & Spruce (Seattle, Washington)
Skylight Inn BBQ (Ayden, North Carolina)
Willow’s Inn (Lummi Island, Washington)

DECEMBER

ad hoc (Yountville, California)
akiko’s (San Francisco, California)
Alta (San Francisco, California)
Aubergine (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)
Bouchon (Yountville, California) (once, twice)
bouli bar (San Francisco, California)
Gott’s Roadside (St. Helena, California)
Fremont Diner (Sonoma, California)
French Laundry, The (Yountville, California)
Hog Island Oyster Co. (Marshall, California)
La Luna Market & Taqueria (Rutherford, California)
Manresa (Los Gatos, California)
Quince (Sean Brock & Frank Stitt; San Francisco, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (Twelve Days of Christmas; St. Helena, California) (Ricker, Guzman, Mirarchi, Cushman, Christensen, Chang, Accarrino, Ladner & Headley, Kofoed, Balla & Burns, Kinch, and Kostow)
saison (San Francisco, California)
Tadich Grill (San Francisco, California)
Torc (Napa, California)
redd wood (Yountville, California) (once, twice)

~

Photos: Alone, a single sail boat moored off the coast of Lummi Island, Washington; a trophy deer head at Richard Carter’s beautiful ceramic studio in Pope Valley, California; chefs Paul Kahan and David Chang, winners at this year’s James Beard Foundation Awards in New York, New York; an oyster roast under a canopy of Spanish moss at The Music to Your Mouth Festival, Moreland Landing at Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina; and old barn in the fields of Weston, Missouri; the stunning McWay falls at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park along Highway 1 in Big Sur, California; the sleepy fishing co-op in Bonifacio, Chile; a rainbow and some horses, the view from my room at the Refugia hotel in Chiloe, Chile; the timeless Golden Gate Bridge at dusk, seen from the Marin Headlands in Marin County, California; the clammers have come in for the night, sunset in Niebla, Chile.

~

I literally sat in front of my computer and scrolled through every single dish I ate this year.  When I was finished, I did it again.  And then again.

Eight years ago, I surveyed all of the dishes I had eaten in that year and compiled a list of my favorites, more for my own record than for posterity.  Since, it has become an annual tradition.

Considering the two incredibly packed years that preceded it, it’s unbelievable that 2013 was busier.  I spent more time traveling and eating this year than any year before it.

Like last year, this year, I continued to find joy in simplicity.  Dishes that focused on the integrity of products pleased me more than those that were unique or interesting. Many of my favorite dishes this year did nothing more than celebrate one or two excellent ingredients.  Some of them explored texture in wonderful ways. Others took me through foreign lands. But the destination in all of them was flavor.

Don’t be fooled.  Although much of what you’ll find listed below seem like uncomplicated propositions – a roasted rib, a slice of smoked fish, a tortilla and some sauce, a rustic stew, or some porridge – all of them demonstrated a sophistication and confidence that only a skilled craftsman could produce.

This year’s list is comprised of dishes from all over the world – the dusty Hill Country of Texas, the destination tables of Denmark, and a Michelin-starred gem in the 16th arrondissement.  I found a couple of them among the archipelagoes of the Pacific Northwest, and one at a roadside stand in Chile.  Together, they proved to me that exceptional cooking can happen anywhere, and can come from anyone – even an octogenarian in a polyglot borough of New York City.

It’s also worth noting that I ate quite a few of this year’s best dishes more than once.  In fact, I had three of them – all three from saison – more than half a dozen times. [n.b. The frequency with which dishes from saison appear on this list (four in the top twenty-five) can be partly attributed to the fact that I ate at saison nine times this year. I've made disclosures about my meals at this restaurant, and others that appear on this list, and my relationship with its chef, and other chefs who appear on this list, in a prior post.]   And three other dishes – all in the top ten – I’ve had twice, one of them in two slightly different versions.  The fact that these dishes were among my favorites is no coincidence.  Although I travel and eat widely, both at the high end and the low end, I tend to return to places that have earned my trust, providing those chefs and restaurants multiple opportunities to impress, to improve, or, simply please again.

Outstanding, in a field of thousands of others gathered from hundreds of meals, are these twenty-five dishes. (1. The title of each dish below is hyperlinked to a photo of that dish; 2. Please see the footnote about bread; and 3. A link at the bottom of this post takes you to ten more dishes from 2013 that I found worth mentioning.)

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25. CAVIAR
With all its accompaniments, and potato blini.
(alinea; Chicago, Illinois)

Yes, it was my birthday. But that wasn’t the reason chef Grant Achatz pulled out the stops for my friends and me at a dinner at alinea in March. [Preparing you for a disclosure.]  He did it to impress one of my dining companions, who had worked with him.  She was the one who got our reservation.  And she, not I, was, undoubtedly, the reason our entire table was refused a bill at the end of the night. [Disclosure!]  We insisted on paying, of course. [Still disclosing.] But the server to whom we insisted, and who allegedly went to fetch our bill, never returned and was never seen, nor heard from again. [Ugh, you see how it's easier if you just let me pay the bill?]  All joking [and disclosures] aside, there was caviar.  Lots of it.  I’m sure the fact that Achatz served it to us, seated at a table that wasn’t supposed to be in the kitchen, and by candlelight – he turned off all the lights in the kitchen, so all the poor cooks had to squint especially hard while tweezering their microscopic mise en place; a special shout-out to the poor fellow stuck on the “Duck 86″ dish station that night – made this course especially memorable.  But, the warm, buttery potato blinis that another poor cook was dedicated to griddling – just for our table – were pretty memorable too (by the way, the blini guy was the only guy in the kitchen who was allowed to have a light at his station).  A fresh plate of them arrived every few minutes. There was also tangy crème fraîche (or, a chalice of drawn butter, if you’d rather), and chopped onions, and chopped eggs too (whites separated from the yolks, of course).  And chilled vodka. None of it was terribly complicated.  But each part was perfect.  And together, it was one of the best things I ate in 2013. [This ends the most ridiculous paragraph I've ever written.]

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24. MADRE MOLE
Tortilla and sesame seeds.
(Pujol; Mexico City, Mexico)

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23. COQUES DE NOIRMOUTIER
Pomelo, Campari, feuille de laitue, truffe noir.
(Cockles in a lettuce wrap with grapefruit and campari sauce, black truffles.)
(akrame; Paris, France)

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22. CURRY-ROASTED CAULIFLOWER
With naan.
(Next: Vegan; Chicago, Illinois)

Call me crazy, but cauliflower might just be my favorite vegetable. When cooked, it takes on a wonderful meatiness. And, when pushed to dark-brown, it gives off a white truffle-like aroma and flavor.  Or, at least I think it does.  David Beran, chef of Next in Chicago, served a single floret of cauliflower, roasted with curry spices, and warm, fluffy naan as a course on this vegan-themed tasting menu this summer.  Over the top of the cauliflower, he sprinkled a crunchy mix of pine nuts, caraway, fried chickpeas, fenugreek, saffron, and dehydrated white and purple cauliflower.  This dish was delicious, comforting, and entirely vegan. [Disclosure: I was not charged for my "ticket" to this meal.]

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21. ROASTED LAMB RIBS
(El Mesón de la Patagonia; Santiago, Chile)

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20. SALTWATER-CURED DUCK LIVER
Matsutake, spruce, fir, jasmine, yuzu.
(Joshua Skenes presenting at a dinner with Guenter Seeger at saison;
San Francisco, California)

The last time I had saltwater-cured duck liver – at Manresa in 2010 – it made my year-end list of favorite dishes.  The texture: it’s indescribably silky, unbelievably delicate.  But beyond this, what made this dish exceptional is that chef Joshua Skenes used fragrance to halve its heartiness; a woodsy mix of fir and spruce, softened by jasmine and yuzu.

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19. GIANT BEEF RIB
(Black’s BBQ; Lockhart, Texas)

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18. STONE BARNS PORK JOWL
Spring alliums, focea lettuce.
(Blue Hill at Stone Barns; Pocantico Hills, New York)

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17. ABORTED ENTOLOMA
Hazelnut, cauliflower, sweetbreads.
(elements; Princeton, New Jersey)

I know. It sounds gross.  But it was actually quite amazing. Scott Anderson, chef of elements, and his chef de cuisine, Mike Ryan, are avid foragers. In September, they cooked my friends and me an entire tasting menu almost entirely of mushrooms, many of which they had found, including aborted entoloma.  When cooked, this bulbous, undeveloped fungus is nearly indistinguishable from sweetbreads, and has the flavor of toasted hazelnuts.  So Anderson served the three together.  Like I said, it was actually quite amazing.

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16. CAULIFLOWER AND PINE
Cream and horseradish.
(noma; Copenhagen, Denmark)

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15. LUNA PIENA
Castelmagno cheese, Australian black truffles.
(Del Posto; New York, New York)

The “luna piena” was as perfect in form as it was delicious, a tender disk of freshly made pasta – a “full moon” – waxing with butter and truffles.

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14. FRIED KOKOTXAS
Fried cod throats, dusted with vinegar powder.
(relae; Copenhagen, Denmark)

In a complicated world, it’s wonderful to have uncomplicated, but incredibly delicious things, like buttery nuggets of deep-fried cod throat.  The outside was light and crunchy; the inside was molten and melty.  Dusted with vinegar powder, it was terrific take on fish and chips.

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13. SQUARE PIE 
Three different mozzarella cheeses, tomato, and basil.
(Di Fara Pizza; New York, New York)

Matt Accarrino, chef of SPQR in San Francisco, once described this style of Sicilian pizza crust best: “It’s basically olive oil stabilized by gluten.”  As I wrote earlier this year, “The square pie [at Di Fara Pizza] starts off more like focaccia. [Domenico] DeMarco pats the thick, oily dough into a well-greased pan and bakes it naked.  As the dough bakes, he pulls it out of the oven several times…  Each time, he lifts the corners of the crust and bathes it with a generous pour of olive oil.  As the crust crisps, he adds the toppings…  The result is a molten, meteor-like bottom that’s crunchy and oily, with a fluffy, cooked center.  It’s thick, but not heavy. It’s perfect, really.  Unlike Chicago deep-dish pizza, which is rarely cooked evenly or adequately – there’s that fat middle section where you can’t tell when the uncooked dough ends and the cheese begins – this is a thing of beauty.”

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12. MONKFISH LIVER
Wrapped in brassicas, a confiture of passionfruit and potimarron.
(Manresa; Los Gatos, California)

This packet of liver, wrapped in cabbage, was masterfully crafted. The liver was silky and smooth, and clean as a whistle (in my experience, monkfish liver is either glorious, or wretched; there’s very little middle ground). But what impressed me the most was that the cabbage was just as supple. I sliced through it all without resistance.

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11. TOFFEE
Bread, milk, beer.
(saison; San Francisco, California)

This dish defies description. I can tell you what’s in it.  But, even though I’ve had it over a half-dozen times, I really can’t tell you, with any sense of accuracy or confidence, how it tastes.  Neither will the ingredient list prepare you for the experience. There’s duck liver, whipped until airy.  There’s creamy milk, and frothy beer.  There are slivers of grapefruit, tucked underneath it all, that help thin the fat and magnify the bitterness of the beer. Shattered over all of it are wispy shards of toasted bread; they help bring out the roasty flavor of the coffee oil. You’d be tempted to categorize it as a dessert. But it’s not.  It’s usually served before the last meat course.  So, it’s kind of a cleanser, which makes sense given that it’s oddly refreshing.  Like I said, it defies description.  And it’s absolutely delicious.

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10. LAMB TONGUE 
Onion and wild garlic.
(kadeau; Copenhagen, Denmark)

Onions, some wild garlic, a tender slice of tongue – griddled slightly to give it some color and crust – and a drizzle of jus: that’s all this was.  And it was delicious.

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9. FIDEOS
With chorizo, clams, and aioli.
(casa mono; New York, New York)

The fideos at casa mono are not easy to eat.  The noodles, which have been toasted with garlic and simmered with cava and chicken stock, are stacked high in a cazuela packed with clam shells.  And on top, there’s a generous dollop of aioli, the flavor of which has been smoothed and sweetened by a shot of Pedro Ximenes.  But, this is one of those lusty dishes – here, done particularly well – that invites you to jump in and make a delicious mess of it all.

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8. AJI FALL ESCABECHE
(The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

Fat and acid: when they appear in the right proportions, they make an incredible couple, one that helped put this dish on this list.  I had two versions of Christopher Kostow’s aji escabeche.  The first, a “fall” version was served at a regular meal in the dining room at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  Kostow altered the garnishes slightly and served it again,  a “winter” version, on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas.  At the center was a beautiful slice of aji (mackerel), cured in salt to loosen up the oily meat, rendering it slippery and slack. The texture was exquisite. The fish was sauced with a sweet-tart escabeche liquid and glazed with a bit of dashi made from aji stock.  I slightly preferred the first version, which included a variety of vegetables (slightly pickled in the escabeche liquid), apple, dill, and habenero.

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7. POACHED EGGS
Creamed spinach and cardoons.
(Boulette’s Larder; San Francisco, California)

Boulette’s Larder, in its former iteration (I haven’t been back since it closed for renovation earlier this year. From what I understand, it essentially bifurcated into the adjacent space, opening a sister, lunch-only spot called Bouli Bar.  The last time I swung through, I noticed that Boulette’s Larder is serving breakfast, and prepared foods.) was one of the most consistent restaurants I knew. Over the past few years, I’ve had nearly a dozen meals there, and every dish has been flawless.  Amaryll Schwertner’s keen sense of quality and taste is apparent in everything she cooks.  Last year, a simple plate of pasta with pesto at Boulette’s Larder made my list of favorite dishes.  This year, it was a comforting plate of poached eggs nestled on a creamy bed of spinach and cardoons.

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6. SMOKED SOCKEYE SALMON
(Willow’s Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)

Perhaps it was the setting sun, streaming through the dining room windows, that made this sliver of salmon glow a particularly brilliant shade of red when it alighted on our table, glistening with a butter and brown sugar glaze.  Regardless, the flavor of smoke and sea (brined in saltwater and smoked for six hours), lubricated by the fish’s waxy fat, was just as intense as the color.  Left at one bite, I would have felt cheated; at three, it would have been too much.  At two, it was perfect.

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5. PORK RIB
(Rancho Doña Maria; Santiago, Chile)

We drove forty minutes outside of Santiago to Doña Maria’s road-side shack for empanadas, which she bakes in dung ovens (they’re not traditional unless they’re baked in dung ovens, so they say).  Her empanadas were great, especially the crust, which was more lardy than flakey, with golden-brown blisters all over.  But her pork ribs, which we ordered as an afterthought, knocked my socks off.  These hefty pork ribs were rubbed with spices, and then smoked until the meat brimmed with juice and fat.  They were amazing.

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4. BLACK COD 
Swarnadwipa spices, plaintain chip.
(saison; San Francisco, California)

I’ve tasted this dish through a number of iterations this year. I’ve had it with sea bream, spot prawns, king crab, and black cod.  But the underlying sauce – a brothy curry (a mix of spices that Joshua Skenes calls “swarnadwipa,” inspired by spices and stories he learned from his friend Jing Tio, owner of Le Sanctuaire) enriched with coconut oil, and fragrant with kaffir lime – remained consistently magical, a warm, comforting expression of every flavor sensation my mind can comprehend, and yet, taken together, I cannot adequately articulate – salty, sweet, spicy, umami, floral.  Hidden beneath the seafood were slivers of rangpur lime, which brightened the dish with acidity.  Although any one of the versions of this dish that I had would have ranked on this list, I preferred the sea bream and black cod versions for the plantain chips that topped the fish; this dish needed some texture and structure.  It really is splitting hairs, but I preferred the black cod, for its particularly buttery texture, over the sea bream.

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3. GULLAH FISH HEAD STEW
Catfish, Carolina gold rice.
(Sean Brock presenting at Music To Your Mouth;
Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina)

I ate this dish standing, while cooks and servers swirled around me, hustling to plate and run dozens of dishes to a room full of guests at a Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at this year’s Music To Your Mouth Festival.  I was hired to photograph this event, so I didn’t have time to sit and eat.  But, in an unsurprising stroke of Southern hospitality, every one of the guest chefs made sure there was an extra plate for me.  And for that, I’m very grateful, especially because I got to taste Sean Brock’s grouper head stew, a hearty, tomato-based postcard from the Carolina Lowcountry. This saucy stew – piping-hot, as Brock insisted – was poured over a bed of fragrant Carolina gold rice. On top, there was a filet of catfish – super-clean-tasting, farm-raised catfish from Rob Mayo at Carolina Classics – and a tender stalk of okra coated in benne seeds.  For that brief moment that I tucked in, the bustle of service around me faded away as I disappeared into Brock’s retelling of Gullah cuisine.

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2. SMOKED OYSTER
(Willow’s Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)

It was just an oyster.  But it was an unforgettable one.  It had been smoked in the shell, gently, for hours, until the surface of the oyster darkened, concentrating the flavor of smoke and the ocean in a caramelized layer that was not thick enough to be called a crust, and yet firm enough to seal in the warm, creamy interior.  To say that I went through the trouble of flying back to Seattle and driving two hours to Lummi Island, with a ferry ride across the sound in between, just to have this oyster a second time this year is probably a stretch. But it was definitely a motivating factor.

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1. KOSHI HIKARI RISOTTO
Parmesan custard, white truffles.
(saison; San Francisco, California)

I’ve had this dish about a half a dozen times this year, both with black and white truffles shaved over it.  And every time, I was amazed by how perfectly the rice was cooked. The pearly kernels were consistently tender, yet firm; firm, yet tender, and enrobed in a starchy glaze the viscosity of velvet and the flavor of the sea (the rice is cooked with a bouillon of aged seaweed).  Chef Joshua Skenes nestled a quivering spoonful of Parmesan “chawanmushi” in the middle of the porridge and finished the dish, table side, with a shower of shaved truffles.  Altogether, it was a masterful marriage of Western and Eastern umami, a brilliant transposition of Italian and Japanese cookery.  And, it was the best dish I had in 2013.

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CLICK HERE to see ten more dishes from 2013 that I found exceptional and worth mentioning.

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A note on bread: I don’t count bread as a “dish” for the purpose of this list, even though, on the rare occasion that I find great bread, I eat as if it were an entire meal. But, I can’t let this post pass without mentioning four restaurants that I visited this year with exceptional bread. It seems almost silly to mention it, but Bar Tartine in San Francisco serves great bread. Of course, everyone knows that. But if you don’t, you should. Also, the bread at kadeau in Copenhagen is extraordinary.  It’s my ideal bread.  It has an incredibly thick, meteor-like crust, and a sturdy, textured middle. At the restaurant, it’s served with slightly soured, cultured butter.  An acquaintance of mine, Simon Hansen, who is now a sous chef at the restaurant, was kind enough to send me the recipe.  In addition to water, yeast, and organic wheat flour, the dough contains beer, yogurt, oats, and a dash of salt. The dough is proofed in the icebox overnight, and baked without any extra kneading.  The hearth rye bread at Willow’s Inn on Lummi Island also deserves a mention. On my second trip to the restaurant this year, I ate half a loaf by myself.  Like the bread at kadeau, the bread at Willow’s Inn has a crunchy rind, and a hearty, whole-grain interior.  Chef Blaine Wetzel serves his bread with both butter and schmaltz (chicken drippings) fortified with chicken jus. And, even though it’s not my kind of bread (if you haven’t been able to figure it out, I’m strictly a crust kind of guy), I must acknowledge Shawn Gawle’s Parker House rolls at saison. They’re fluffy, and buttery, and beautiful, and served with house-churned and cultured butter made from Straus Family Creamery milk. For those of you who like this cottony kind of carbohydrate, I’ve had none better.

Photos: Caviar, and all of its accompaniments at alinea in Chicago, Illinois; the curry-roasted cauliflower at Next: Vegan in Chicago, Illinois; cauliflower and pine, with horseradish cream at noma in Copenhagen, Denmark; the “piena luna” at Del Posto in New York, New York; and the koshi hikari risotto with Parmesan custard and white truffles at saison in San Francisco, California.

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Three years ago, I created a separate year-end list for desserts because I wanted to recognize and record the exciting strides that I noticed pastry chefs taking. In the short time since, the borders of dessert-making and dessert-eating have continued to expand.

Speaking specifically as an American, our understanding of desserts has taken on a more global perspective.  Most notably, we seem to have become less-dependent on sweetness for satisfaction (sadly, I think America is having the opposite effect on the rest of the world).

As a result, we’ve also begun to embrace a wider range of ingredients and flavors at the end of our meal.  You’ll find among my twenty-five favorite desserts this year, for example, ingredients that, just a few years ago, would never have appeared in a dessert. Now, pine, fennel, sunchokes, celery, and beets aren’t so foreign to the pastry kitchen.  And, in other parts of the world to which I’ve traveled this year, neither are ingredients like espino, a pod-bearing member of the acacia family native to South America that produces coffee-like seeds, or cabbage, or celeriac.

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While I applaud this current period of creative energy in the pastry kitchen, I note: there are moments of freneticism.  In its search for new ground, the creative pastry spirit, I’ve noticed, has been, at times, a little too unbridled.  That’s to say: I’ve had some pretty strange desserts this year.

Some of them were provocative, like a mind-bending cube of aged Wagyu “pâté de fruit” that I had at elements in Princeton, New Jersey.  The texture of the meat (which had been aged in kasu for a month) was nearly indistinguishable from the traditional, French jelly-like confection (actually, to be more precise, the texture was nearly indistinguishable from the texture of the pâté de fruit’s delightful, Turkish counterpart).  But, even though the flavor was not unfamiliar to me – Chinese sweet jerky can be awfully sweet too – and, even though my mouth said “yes,” my mind said, “wait a minute.” Beef isn’t supposed to have this texture.  Months later, I’m still thinking about it.

Others – like an austere rye porridge with preserved fruit – seemed to have departed the pastry genre altogether. These desserts were so cerebral, or so challenging, or so healthful, that they betrayed their species’ most handsome genetic trait: the ability to appear indulgent, whether or not it’s actually true. That porridge ran dangerously close to a rather stiff, overpriced multi-grain “oatmeal” I once had for breakfast at a dated café catering to the fiber-needy clientele of the Upper East Side.

And a few of them, like the odd diorama, composed of donuts, a chocolate tree, and sweet rice “sushi” (draped with a gelatinous blanket of unidentifiable flavor), that I had at Michelin-starred Sergi Arola’s eponymous restaurant at the Ritz Carlton in Santiago, Chile were just plain bad.

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Thankfully, most of what I saw coming out of the pastry kitchen this year was pretty great.  Modern or classical, fancy or not, overall, desserts seemed to be created with more thought and crafted with more care.  That’s a good thing.

Since I’ve done such a poor job of writing about the desserts, pastries, and related confections that I’ve had throughout 2013, I’ll use this post to give you a thorough review of where and what I’ve eaten.

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When pastry chefs – and here, I’m pointing in the direction of American pastry chefs – aren’t going into the woods for tree limbs and herbs, or reaching into outer space for liquid nitrogen and freeze-dried fruit, I’ve noticed them joining a growing revivalist movement that’s resurrecting old-timey favorites to fanfare anew.  As a red-blooded Midwesterner who has a particularly soft spot for Americana, this pleases me immensely.

I’m talking sky-high milkshakes, like this one made with chocolate malt at Stephanie Izard’s Little Goat diner in Chicago’s West Loop.

I’m talking good-old sundaes, like these pretty little ones (note the dentelles) that my friend and I demolished at Epicerie Boulud on the Upper West Side after a photo shoot I did for the shop [disclosure], or this upmarket one at Andrea Reusing’s Lantern in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that put bruléed muscadines together with spiced wine caramel and pistachios.

I’m talking summertime popsicles, like the ones they make at Steel City Pops in Birmingham, Alabama.  I particularly liked the tangy and surprisingly creamy buttermilk one that I had there.

I’m talking banana boat splits, like this colorful one at Eleven City Diner in the South Loop, or this one eaten by candlelight at two a.m. at Blue Ribbon in SoHo.

And I’m talking wonderful, glorious, American pie.

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Pie is enjoying a renaissance right now.  It’s popping up everywhere.

I’m not talking about places like Niki’s West, an old, Southern meat-and-three in Birmingham, Alabama, where the woman behind the hotline looked at me sideways when I ordered “coconut pie.”  ”Honey, you want coconut cream pie, or coconut custard pie?” The attitude was a little unnecessary, but she was right. There is a very important distinction.   

And I’m not talking about the fact that Southern Living Magazine featured pie in their November issue either. That’s to be expected. (Dear editors and test kitchen gods, helping you taste-test for this issue was one of the highlights of my year.  Your ”15 Ways with Pecan Pie” feature was epic. And the “Utterly Deadly Southern Pecan Pie“ in a cast-iron skillet is high on my to-bake list. Thank you.)

I’m talking about pie in the less-homey, and more trendy corners of our culinary world.  Pie is appearing on restaurant menus, and in glossy bake shops across the country, many of which are now dedicated to pie-making, like À La Mode Pies in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood of Seattle.  There, I had something called the “Blue Hawaiian,” an unexpectedly delicious, quasi-tropical mix of crushed pineapple and blueberries coated with toasted coconut.

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Last year, the pecan pie at Winslow’s Home in St. Louis made my list of best desserts.  This year, I went back and found both rhubarb and blueberry crumble on the menu.

In Chicago, my friends and I went on a pie expedition one hot, July day. First, we had lunch at Pleasant House Bakery, which specializes in making “Royal Pies” filled with various meats and vegetables (the cold country pork pâté pie was especially good).  They serve sweet pies too. Sadly, the day we went, they didn’t have any.  So, our quest for pie took us to the wonderfully named Hoosier Mama Pie Co. where I found a sturdy, tan crust on a lattice-top cherry pie.  (Dear fellow alumni, they just opened a shop on the corner of Chicago and Kedzie in Evanston.)

In Durham, North Carolina, I raided the case at Scratch (how great is their domain name – piefantasty.com?).  I particularly liked the buttermilk chess pie.

Diane’s Bakery in Roslyn on Long Island had a nicely glazed plum pie this summer.

At the Fremont Diner on Highway 12 (also known as Highway 121, not to be confusing) in Sonoma, California, I had, among a couple of slices, a rosemary-peanut pie.  It was like pecan pie, except the crusty top layer was riddled with peanuts instead of pecans, and the soft, gooey filling was infused with rosemary.  It was as oddly delicious as it sounds.

At Ashley Christensen’s Poole’s Diner in Raleigh, North Carolina, I had dark chocolate chess pie, with strawberry ice cream.   At Qui in Austin, Texas, I had “Avocado Qui Lime Pie,” a quirky and cheeky twist on the classic version that you’ll find in its more traditional form (and as an order for two) at the Michelin-starred Gotham Bar & Grill in New York City.

That’s right, even high-end restaurants have started serving “pie.”  For the Twelve Days of Christmas this year, The Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, California, presented a slightly deconstructed version of a pecan pie one night. (Incidentally, for Thanksgiving – which I consider to be the Super Bowl of Pie – the cooks at The Restaurant at Meadowood had a pie-baking bonanza. There were so many pies that they overflowed onto Christopher Kostow’s living room tee vee console and counter).   And at Next in Chicago, Dave Beran sent apple pie colliding with an ice cream bombe at the end of the Bocuse d’Or-themed menu.

Yes, I LOVE PIE.

But, my enthusiasm for it is tempered by the fact that not all pie is created equal.

There is a lot of good pie out there. Even I can make a good pie at home. [Actually, with Alex Talbot's and Aki Kamozawa's pie crust recipe in their new book "Maximum Flavor," we can all make really great pie at home. I previewed this ultra-flakey, unusually dark pie crust in my list of best desserts from last year.]

But, outside of making it yourself, really great pie is hard to find.

And you know who makes really great pie?  Megan Garrelts makes really great pie.

In full disclosure, Megan, her husband Colby, and I have been good friends now for nearly a decade. The three of us wrote a cookbook together, which I also photographed (I’ve photographed for their restaurants (for pay) too).  And, I helped Megan when she was developing recipes for her pie crust. (Sadly, I really can’t take any credit for the greatness of her pie crust. I was more of a taste-tester than an actual recipe tester.)

But none of that should distract you from the fact that Megan’s pies at Rye in Leawood, Kansas are really great.  Her crust is what sets her pies apart and above most of the pie I’ve had in the United States.  Made from both butter and lard, it’s flakey and crisp without being dense or hard.  It’s structured, but gives easily without resistance.  Although her fruit pies are very good, she excels at cream pies, in part because I think they best showcase her type of crust (Personally, I prefer a blonder, softer crust with dense, sweet fillings – like the common pecan, or coconut custard fillings – and tart, fruit fillings, whereas I prefer a drier, flakier crust for creamy, lighter fillings – like coconut cream, banana cream, and even Boston cream fillings.).  You’ll find one of Megan’s pies on my list of twenty-five favorite desserts from 2013 below.

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No, I did not manage to eat a cronut in 2013.  But, I did have a lot of pastries in New York City, including a wonderful, salted caramel eclair at Dominique Ansel’s self-named patisserie of cronut fame. (And I didn’t have to wait on line like a crazy person to get it.)

The mille-crêpe cake at Lady M Confections on the Upper East Side was as good as everyone said it would be.  I preferred the vanilla cream-filled version over the matcha cream-filled one though. The crêpe layers in the vanilla cream-filled one were softer, more integrated with the filling in between.  The woman who sold us the slices told us that the texture of the cakes doesn’t depend on the filling, but rather, the amount of time they’ve been allowed to “set.”  The longer the cakes “set,” the softer the crêpes become, moistened by the filling in between them.  That makes sense.

On the Lower East Side, I swung by Big Gay Ice Cream’s tiny storefront after lunch one rainy afternoon.  There wasn’t enough room inside to stand and eat, so my friend and I, and a dozen other customers, huddled under the eves outside. I had a Southern-inspired praline and pecan cookie sandwich named after Golden Girl “Rue McClanahan.”  It was filled with bourbon ice cream.  I’d go back for it.

And, on the Upper West Side, I had a terrific wedge of gâteau Basque at Epicerie Boulud.  The cakey crust was buttery and beautifully bronzed.  The pastry cream filling was smooth and fragrant with vanilla. I highly recommend it.

Who makes cheese danishes any more?  Bien Cuit, in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, makes a very good one with Muenster cheese.  In nearby Gowanus, I had really good bread at Runner & Stone.  And in Greenpoint, yet another neighborhood of Brooklyn, my friend Adam and I found some decent donuts at Peter Pan Bakery (According to a regular, the whole wheat ones, which were sold out when we arrived that afternoon, are the sleeper hit.  I’ll have to go back.).  I wrote about all of these Brooklyn finds, and more, earlier this year.

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What else?

I really liked the “Tiger Claw” at Easy Tiger in Austin, Texas.  It’s a bear claw (for the unfamiliar, a bear claw is a breakfast pastry usually filled with almond paste) that’s filled with a sweet mixture of spiced pecans, slightly musky with cumin.  Next time, I want to try their bread.  The selection looked great.

Friends urged me to get the “pomme d’amore” at Knead in the Mission District of San Francisco.  It was basically a pastry cream-filled vol-au-vent with a bruléed top.  The filling was smooth and silky, and the bruléed crust was crisp and thin.  It was good. But what really caught my attention there were the thick, housemade graham crackers that came with the jarred “s’mores.”  They were great.

And soft serve: is it just a restaurant’s easy (or lazy) answer to dessert?  I suppose, like everything else: if it’s good, it’s good.

You can build your own (Straus Dairy) soft serve sundae at zero zero in the SoMa district of San Francisco.  I ordered the chocolate soft serve with Fior di Olio olive oil, sea salt, and vanilla-poached cherries.  Up Market Street at Daniel Patterson’s newly opened Alta, the dessert menu consisted of chocolate or pistachio soft serve, with various toppings.  And across the bay in Berkeley at ippuku, a Japanese izakaya, my friends and I ordered tall twirls of vanilla soft serve drizzled with Japanese-inspired condiments like soy sauce caramel (which was little too salty for me) and plum juice (this was a little too watery, and little too weak on flavor).  Surprisingly, the blancmange there - dices of sweet persimmons suspended in almond gelatin above a fluffy layer of whipped cream – was best in show.

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I’ve already written about Jacques Genin’s galette de rois.  And I’ve already told you about Ale Hurtado’s French-inspired patisserie, Canela, in Santiago, Chile.

So, I’ll end my pastry travelogue with a note on Latin America:

I’ve traveled quite frequently to Latin America in the last few years.  This year, I went to both Chile and Mexico twice.  Pastry chefs in the higher-end restaurants in those countries are producing polished desserts that show off unique, local ingredients and flavors (you’ll find one on my list of twenty-five favorites below).  But the one thing I’ve noticed about traditional Latin American desserts is that they tend to be very, very sweet; usually too sweet for me.

That said, I tasted some pretty interesting desserts there.  I’d like to tell you about a few of them.

At Peruvian chef Gaston Acurio’s festive La Mar in the tony Viticura district of Santiago, Chile, I had the pleasure of eating with the restaurant’s manager, Bogdan Piotraszewski (Polish by name, Peruvian by birth).  Piotraszewski gave me an incredibly insightful explanation of every dish we tried, including the famous Peruvian dessert, “suspiro de limeña,” so named, as the common tale goes, because the Spanish envoy for whom it was allegedly created said that it was as soft (and sweet) as the ”sigh of the woman from Lima” who had stolen his heart.  This now-common Peruvian dessert consists mostly of a caramelized custard made from equal parts evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk. After the mixtures is stirred over low heat for hours, the dairy caramelizes (up to this point, it’s like making dulce de leche).  When the caramel cools slightly, egg yolks are beaten in until the custard takes on a glossy coat (which, according to Piotraszewski, dulls after half a day, which is why this dessert must be made twice a day at La Mar).  It’s always topped with fluffy meringue that has been stained lavender with Port wine.

At La Mar, I also had an incredibly sweet, non-alcoholic drink called chicha morado (but it wasn’t as sweet as the neon-yellow “Inca Kola” Piotraszewski poured for me, a popular Peruvian soda that tasted like liquid bubblegum). The inky, purple color of chicha morado comes from the corn from which the drink is made.  In Peru, you’ll find chicha morado thickened into a jelly-like condiment called mazamorra morado, which is often served with arroz con leche (rice pudding). Piotraszewski told me that the colors of the arroz con leche (a brownish, creamy color) and mazamorra morado (dark purple) happen to be the colors of the two biggest rival soccer teams (respectively) in Peru. At the soccer stadiums in Peru, vendors will sell this dessert in plastic cups with plastic spoons and call it the “Classico,” because it represents the classic rivalry between these two teams.

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I visited Francisco Pacheco at her family’s restaurant, Aquí Esta Coco in Santiago, again in October (you can read about my first visit to her restaurant in April in this earlier post).  Francisca is actually the one who introduced me to suspiro de limeña.  Since the dessert is Peruvian and not Chilean, at Aquí Esta Coco, the pastry chef adapted the dessert to the local culture.  The first time I went to Aquí Esta Coco, we had a version made with lucuma, a fleshy South American fruit that looks like an orange-colored avocado on the inside (pit included). The orange flesh, which has the flavors of maple, caramel, and pumpkin, is dried and ground into a powder that is often used in Chilean confectionary (for example, lucuma powder is incorporated into cakes, which are layered with meringue).  The second time, Pacheco presented me with a suspiro made with cherimoya, one of her favorite fruits.

Cherimoya looks prehistoric. It has a thick skin that, when pared away, reveals a white, creamy flesh that tastes like a tropical mix of banana, coconut, and mango. When fully ripe, the fruit can be scooped with a spoon – the texture is like an over-ripe pear (hence its other names, “custard apple,” or “ice cream fruit”).  Francisca likes cherimoya served simply with some mandarin orange juice and fresh mint.  So that’s how she served it to me at Aquí Esta Coco.

I saw that same coupling of cherimoya and citrus at Rodolfo Guzman’s Borago, also in Santiago, Chile.  Guzman served cherimoya ice cream with a rainbow of different citrus purées and carrot chips.*  Lighter, less-sweet, and fruit-based desserts like this one (and the amazing candied grape skins, or the bowl of wheat and dried peaches rehydrated in cinnamon water that I had at the Viñedos de Alcohuaz in the Elqui Valley of Chile) were the ones I liked most in Latin America.  The variety of fruits in that region of the world is so vastly different from the variety I’m used to seeing and eating in the United States. And I relished smelling and tasting them.

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There are a wide range of desserts on the following list.

Some of them showcased a particularly great ingredient, like the simple, but spectacular dessert listed at no. 2 by Stephanie Prida.

Some of them struck balance with contrasting flavors, like Blaine Wetzel did at no. 13.  Others worked magic in restraint and subtlety, like Marc Aumont did with licorice at no. 15.  And still others, like Nick Wesemann, surprised me with unexpected couplings, like banana and bubblegum.  His dessert appears at no. 22.

Many of them seduced me with wonderful fragrances (I especially love fragrant desserts), like Rasmus Kofoed‘s walk through the forest at no. 5, or Melissa Chou‘s beautiful walk through the garden at no. 9.

And, a few of them dazzled me with impeccable technique (but not too much technique, which seems to be a common temptation and pitfall in this very technique-driven field of cooking), like the dessert from Au Cheval in Chicago that you’ll find below at no. 19.  Simplicity almost always wins the day.

But, like the entries that appeared on my list of best dishes from 2013, all of the following desserts landed near the top because they were the product of craft and care.

From among hundreds of desserts that I had in 2013 at restaurants high and low, the following twenty-five were the very best.

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25. MILK AND CRACKERS
Strawberry preserves.
(Matthew Lightner presenting at a guest chef dinner at saison;
San Francisco, California)

Necessity is the mother of invention. During the Great Depression, Matt Lightner‘s grandfather, a farmer in northern Missouri, would eat crushed saltine crackers mixed with milk to get by, a gruel that Matt ate as a dessert as a kid, sometimes with fruit. Now the chef of the Michelin-starred atera restaurant in New York City (and, from what I’ve observed, a very talented pastry chef), Lightner modified his grandfather’s Depression-era gruel into an elegant dessert.  He infused ice cream with saltine crackers and served it with strawberry preserves, fresh strawberries, and “saltine crackers” made of meringue.

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24. ESPINO COULANT
(Boragó; Santiago, Chile)

This was a flawlessly shaped sphere of frozen dark chocolate, teed up on a hillock of chocolate cake crumbs.  Within it, a warm run of dark chocolate ganache infused with espino.  How many “molten” chocolate desserts aspire to be so perfect in form and flavor, to draw the contrast between cold and hot with as much flare?

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23. YOAURT
Amande, réglisse.
(akrame; Paris, France)

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22. “BANANALICIOUS“
Vanilla bisquit, banana parfait, white chocolate powder, bubblegum gelato.
(The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)

I have to admit, I thought this dessert would be horrible.  And yet, there is a bizarre and brilliant overlap in the flavor of bananas and pink bubblegum that made this dessert a surprising success.  But it takes a certain kind of genius to think of it, try it out, and make it work. His name is Nick Wesemann, and he is one of the most talented pastry chefs the national press has never cared to notice.

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21. PRUNEAUX AU VIN
Glace á la vanille.
(Le Bouchon des Filles; Lyon, France)

I love stewed prunes. But I rarely see them on menus.  So, when I found them at Le Bouchon des Filles, a cozy, family-run bouchon in Lyon, I ordered them.  Beware of the pits, our server warned, as she set down a bowl of whole prunes bathing in the sweet, inky red wine reduction in which they had been stewed.  I asked for a side of vanilla ice cream, and she happily obliged.

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20. DONAS DE REQUESÓN
Ricotta doughnuts, cinnamon-sugar, maple-mezcal tres leches.
(Port Fonda; Kansas City, Missouri)

Chef Patrick Ryan told me that these ricotta doughnuts are a modified version of a recipe he found in one of Gale Gand’s cookbooks. They’re incredibly fluffy and moist – in part owing to the boozy moat of maple-mezccal tres leches they’re lapping up from around them – and dusted with cinnamon sugar.

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19. MILLE-FEUILLE
Hot chocolate.
(Au Cheval; Chicago, Illinois)

Mille-feuille is usually too blond, too soft, under-baked.  At Au Cheval, it’s toasted, it’s flakey, it’s perfect.  To show off how perfect it is, our server plunged a butter knife down the center effortlessly, leaving us to marvel at the shatterific stack before us, piped generously with pastry cream.  On the side, chocolate sauce.

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18. MILK AND QUINCE
(noma; Copenhagen, Denmark)

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17. EMBER ICE CREAM
Roasted beet, elderflower.
(John Shields presenting at a guest chef dinner at saison;
San Francisco, California)

Chef John Shields scalded cream with hot embers and let the two steep together.  With the ember-infused cream, he made ice cream.  I had seen this before at TownHouse, where he and his wife Karen cooked from 2008 through 2011.  In fact, that dessert, which included chocolate and yogurt, made it to my list of best desserts of 2011.  This time, he paired the smoky ice cream with roasted beets and elderflower jelly and scattered shards of ember meringue over it all.  

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16. COURGE
Fromage blanc, epices douces.
(septime; Paris, France)

Butternut squash purée, fromage blanc sherbet, and crispy pieces of spiced cookies (think speculoos). Flavor, texture, temperature: done.

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15. LICORICE CUSTARD
Amaretto gelée.
(The Modern; New York, New York)

Licorice is a controversial flavor among Americans.  I think it’s because Americans tend to use and treat it like a bull in a china closet.  Those who have had good licorice (usually in Europe), or – more importantly – have had licorice administered in the right quantities, usually love it.  Marc Aumont used licorice to lightly perfume a delicate custard served as a pre-dessert at The Modern.  You’d hardly know it was there if its more-showy, more-bitter co-star, amaretto, didn’t lean on it for sweetness and warmth.

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14. DRIED LEAVES & FLAVOURS OF WINTER
Hazelnut cream, prune purée, fresh pear and hazelnut vinaigrette.
“Leaves” of beet root, pumpkin and prune.
(Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)

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13. QUINCE
Quince, yogurt, rosemary sugar glass.
(Willow’s Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)

The quince granita, by itself, was way too tart. But chef Blaine Wetzel shattered over it a tissue-thin pane of rosemary sugar glass that brought it all into balance.  Mediating the sweet-tart conversation was a creamy dollop of tangy yogurt.  Together, it was exactly the kind of refreshing reset I needed at the end of a meal rich with the flavors of earth and sea.

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12. COMICE PEAR SORBET
Licorice, yuzu, huckleberry.
(saison; San Francisco, California)

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11. JERUSALEM ARTICHOKE
Wild carrots, buttermilk, and brown butter.
(kadeau; Copenhagen, Denmark)

This dessert was crunchy and creamy.  In part, it was warm.  In part, it was cold.  Overall, it was more tangy than sweet.  Drizzled with brown butter, it was more comforting than not.  I loved this dessert.

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10. COCONUT CREAM PIE
(Rye; Leawood, Kansas)

As I wrote above, I’ve had a lot of great pie at Rye.  But Megan Garrelts‘s coconut cream pie is, by far, my favorite. The coconut cream in the middle is light and airy, piped generously with whipped cream, and sprinkled with toffee crumbs.  The crust, as I’ve mentioned, is ideal: sturdy, yet super-flakey.  Unfortunately, one of Megan’s pastry assistants developed a horrible allergic reaction to coconut.  She couldn’t even be in a room with coconut. So, instead of dismissing her assistant, Megan took this pie off her menu.  While I applaud her loyalty to her employee, I do miss this pie.

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9. CHAMOMILE CREAM
Elderflower fritter, St-Germain veil, rose.
(aziza; San Francisco; California)

Desserts tend to be pretty in a way that non-dessert dishes aren’t. This dessert was, perhaps, the prettiest one I saw all year: a quenelle of chamomile ice cream wearing a stunning “veil” flavored with St-Germain and laced with elderflowers. The best part is that it tasted as pretty as it looked, a bouquet of fragrance enriched with milkfat.

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8. JUNIPER BRANCH
White chocolate cream, celery, sorrel.
(John Shields presenting at the Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine dinner;
Aubergine; Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)

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7. PORT CONSOMMÉ
Buttermilk marshmallow.
(Laurent Gras presenting at a guest dinner at saison;
San Francisco, California)

At the base, there was a colorful fruit salad. Atop that, was a tangy buttermilk ice cream that had the texture of marshmallows. And over and around it all was poured a jammy, velvety, chewy “consommé” made from reducing Concord grapes, huckleberries, and Port.  Who needs to drink wine when you can eat it?

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6. SOURDOUGH ICE CREAM
(saison; San Francisco, California)

When Shawn Gawle was pastry chef at Corton, he made an ice cream out of mîche, which is a large, French sourdough round.  That ice cream, which he served with cherry and maple, made my list of best desserts last year.  Now at saison in San Francisco, he modified the ice cream, using local sourdough bread from Tartine Bakery (he says he hopes to be making his own soon).  If you haven’t had this ice cream at saison, I can tell you: it doesn’t taste like what you’d imagine it to taste like.  It tastes more like coffee and chicory, and even soy sauce, than it does toasted sourdough. And it’s amazing.

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5. ”IMPRESSIONS OF THE FOREST“
Woodruff, pine, chervil.
(Rasmus Kofoed presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas
The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

Rasmus Kofoed, chef of the Michelin-starred Geranium in Copenhagen, only brought one ingredient with him to Napa Valley for his dinner at the Twelve Days of Christmas – woodruff powder.  This, he infused into a white chocolate cremeaux over which he poured a thin layer of gelatinized chervil juice and topped, table-side, with a spoonful of pine tea granité.  To complete the smells and sights of the forests of Napa Valley and his childhood, Kofoed served this dessert with a garland of things we found on our hike through the woods with Rahtz – pine cones, wispy tufts of Spanish moss, bits of lichen, round-lobed leaves of oak, and spiny chestnuts.  It was a beautiful and incredibly fragrant dessert, with wonderfully evolving flavor profile: almond extract gave way to flavors of matcha and coconut.  It was beautiful. It was evocative. I loved it.

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4. HAZELNUT GRANITA
Mirabelle plums.
(Bar Sajor; Seattle, Washington)

I ordered this dessert out of curiosity.  And I was rewarded with a snowy bank of sweet ice so intensely flavored with hazelnut that it was almost creamy in texture. Beautiful, ripe mirabelle plums nesting in the snow brought a welcomed splash of acidity and summertime joy.  [As a side note, Matt Dillon has a wonderful talent for creating magical spaces. In 2013, I visited three of his restaurants in Seattle. In design, Bar Sajor was, by far, my favorite. During the day, the interior is lit naturally with big, picture windows.  The eclectic mix of fixtures leave you lost in time and culture.  You're not quite sure if you've stepped into Paris in a previous decade, or present-day Istanbul.]

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3. APPLE LEES
Fennel, roasted white chocolate.
(Christopher Kostow presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas;
The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

Apple lees from house-made cider had been turned into a fragrant, but lean sorbet that helped thin the caramel richness of roasted white chocolate.  Sprouting from it all were feathery fronds of fennel, frosted with sugar.  It was a beautiful and delicious wintry vignette; morning in Napa Valley.

~

2. LOVE APPLE PERSIMMON
Armagnac chantilly.
(Manresa; Los Gatos, California)

In three, quick courses at the end of a recent meal at Manresa, pastry chef Stephanie Prida proved herself to be a talented and worthy counterpart to chef David Kinch.  The super-ripe, halved persimmon she presented, floating on a cloud of Armagnac chantilly, was exquisite. It demonstrated an understanding of quality and a confidence to let it shine. It was just a persimmon and some whipped cream.  But it was, by far, one of the best desserts I had in 2013.

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1. BROWN BUTTER PANNA COTTA
End of the season plums, and pasta frolla.
(Del Posto; New York, New York)

Brooks Headley has quickly become one of my favorite culinarians.  I love his rocker-to-chef story, and the non-traditional perspective that story brings to the pastry kitchen at Del Posto.  In September, he knocked my socks off with a brown butter panna cotta, the deep toastiness of which was magnified in large crumbs of pasta frolla, and the richness of which was cut with the cheery acidity of late-harvest plums.

~

* Disclosure: Piotraszewski, Pacheco, and Guzman invited me to their restaurants as their guest. Therefore, I did not pay for my meals there.

Photos: Shawn Gawle’s comice pear sorbet with licorice, yuzu, and huckleberries at saison in San Francisco, California; a rainbow of chocolates with flavors ranging from dill to mint at Pujol in Mexico City, Mexico; the aftermath of a summer sundae ad shoot at Epicerie Boulud in New York, New York; slices of pie at À La Mode Pie in Seattle, Washington; the rhubarb and blueberry crumble pies at Winslow’s Home in St. Louis, Missouri; bread, coffee, and some Muenster cheese danish from Bien Cuit in the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York; the chocolate Straus Dairy soft serve with olive oil, sea salt, and vanilla-poached cherries at zero zero in San Francisco, California; “Inca Kola” and suspiro de limeña at La Mar in Santiago, Chile; Francisca Pacheco paring a cherimoya at Aquí Esta Coco in Santiago, Chile; cones of sugared nut paste, mote con huesillo (wheat with dried peaches rehydrated in cinnamon water), a bowl of Chilean papayas in syrup, and candied grape skins at the Viñedos de Alcohuaz in Elqui Valley, Chile; “Milk and Crackers,” a dessert by Matt Lightner presented at a guest chef dinner at saison in San Francisco; the mille-feuille at Au Cheval in Chicago, Illinois; “Dried Leaves & Flavours of Winter,” a dessert at Geranium in Copenhagen, Denmark; Port consommé poured over a fruit salad with buttermilk marshmallow ice cream, a dessert by Laurent Gras at a guest chef dinner at saison in San Francisco, California; and hazelnut granita with mirabelle plums at Bar Sajor in Seattle, Washington.

~

The late, great Diana Vreeland once said: “A little bad taste is like a nice splash of paprika. We all need a splash of bad taste––it’s hearty, it’s healthy, it’s physical. I think we could use more of it. No taste is what I’m against.”

I couldn’t agree more.

There is a growing class of restaurants with no taste, and an army of identity-less chefs serving identity-less food to accompany it.  You could swap the menus from one of their restaurants to another, and you might not know the difference.

Sure, we’ve come a long way.  We, as a society, have become more educated about food.  We’ve created access to higher-quality ingredients.  And, in our ever-shrinking world of technology and travel, we’ve constructed a communal “cloud” of knowledge from which all may download.  As a result, we are able to demand more and get more out of our foodways.

But, what is infrastructure if there is not an intelligent, opinionated, and thoughtful user base?  Despite the progress we’ve made, there remains a mindlessness to cooking, to eating, and to food writing these days that scares me.  Often, the gap between what it is that I see, hear, and read and what it is that I eat is hard to bridge. At the high end, there is a lot of preaching and marketing and grandstanding in auditoriums from Copenhagen to Mexico City, and on glossy print covers from New York to Paris.  The ideas sound great, and the philosophies are grand.  Yet, so often at the table, very little of that glory appears.  Or, sometimes that glory appears reflected, borrowed or copied from another.

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Where are the voices?  Where are the visionaries?  Where can I get a taste of the verisimilar these days?

Who is cooking food that comes from the heart and not from the internet?  Where is the paprika?

This is the sixth year that I have the pleasure of sharing with you the ten meals that impressed me the most in the calendar year preceding.  And this is the sixth year that I struggle with identifying and articulating what it is about these meals that put them at the top of my list.  I think I expressed this best in 2011:

Complete objectivity is a myth. I know you know this, and yet I feel compelled to repeat it.  So, I’ll simply disclaim: this year’s list of my best restaurant meals – like every one of them in the past -  is nothing more than a filtered figment.  I wish I could account for the ticks and tacks that add up to the number before us. But I can’t.

Are these the most delicious meals I had this year?  Not necessarily. Are they the most flawless?  Not particularly.  The most memorable?  Perhaps, but not entirely.

For a variety of reasons – food being primary – the following ten meals set themselves apart from the rest.

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But, I’ve noticed a pattern.

Looking back at the now-sixty meals that impressed me the most over the past six years – that’s including the ten that appear here – the vast majority have one thing in common: they captured a unique spirit and perspective.  In these meals, I heard their master’s voices, saw their visions, tasted the verisimilar, and encountered their hearts, and some paprika too.  And that is why, amidst a sea of identity-less meals, it brings me great pleasure every year to recognize the ones that have had something special to say, the ones that I will not forget.

Many of these meals are better categorized as experiences, defying both description and definition.  I can tell you what I ate at Quique Dacosta on the shores of the Levante of Spain, or at The Sportsman on the windswept coast of Kent in the U.K., or at Asador Extebarri, located in a quiet corner of the Basque mountains (meals at these three restaurant topped my list of best restaurant meals for the years 2011, 2008, and 2012, respectively).  But, I can’t tell you, with any accuracy or specificity, what the experience of eating that food was like, because I had never encountered anything else like it before, and often, since.  Many of the meals that I’ve named among my “best” are wholly and uniquely the products of culinary auteurs, who wade against the common tide into the uncharted territories of their soul, conveying, and, at their best, creating time and space that does not exist elsewhere.

Sounds romantic?  Impractical?  Ideal?

The best meals that I’ve had are all of those things and more.

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While I spent quite a bit of time abroad in 2013 (collectively, I spent over a month in Chile, half a month in Europe, and I went to Mexico twice), the bulk of my restaurant eating was done in the United States.  (I gave a thorough and full account of every restaurant meal I had in 2013 in a prior post.)

As in past years, out of the hundreds of meals I had, an elite pack of five sprinted to the top this year, separating themselves effortlessly from the rest.  And, as in the past, this year, I spent the majority of the time that I devoted to creating this list weighing out the entries in the second half.

I wanted to include a truly special dinner that Dan Barber cooked for my friend Adam and me at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, and an equally memorable dinner that I shared with him at Enrique Olvera‘s restaurant Pujol in Mexico City.  I hoped to express how wonderful I thought my meal at Jorge Vallejo‘s restaurant Quintonil (also in Mexico City) was, or how much I appreciated the artisan craftsmanship and dedication that Anthony Mangieri puts into the pies that I had at una pizza napoletana in San Francisco (the quality is there, I’m just not a neapolitan pizza kind of guy).

In New York City, I had outstanding meals at Del Posto and casa mono, both of which I considered for this list.  And I had more fun at Carbone than at any other meal I had in 2013 (The soundtrack! The waiters in maroon tuxes! The table-side Caesar! The smug and savvy commentary on Italian-America!); that’s definitely worth noting.

Chile should be proud to call Rodolfo Guzman a native son.  I had three eye-opening and unforgettable meals at his restaurant Boragó in Santiago, where I toured many regions and indigenous subcultures of his country from the comfort of my table.

Based on my dinner at Quince in late November, I thought Michael Tusk and his team were worthy recipients of a second Michelin star this past year.  That was definitely among the most memorable meals I had in 2013.

If Michelin were to travel down the coast to Carmel-By-The-Sea, I’m confident they’d find at least one star owing to Aubergine at l’Auberge Carmel. I loved discovering Justin Cogley‘s food over the course of three dinners there this year. He has a unique voice and an impeccable palate.  I know I will continue to see good things coming from his corner.

And, I must also tell you about [One] in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. As I said of chefs Daniel Ryan and Kim Floresca in Eater’s year-end round-up of “Food Writers and Experts on Chefs and Restaurants to Watch in 2014, “Their pedigree is unmatched: between them, the two have worked at elBulli, Per Se, The French Laundry, Alinea, TRU, among other kitchens, including The Restaurant at Meadowood, where Floresca was executive sous chef and Daniel Ryan was the sous chef (in charge of pastries). Assisting Ryan in pastry at [ONE] is Jonathan Fisher, who just spent more than a year in the pastry kitchen at El Celler de Can Roca under Jordi Roca. I ate at [ONE] [in November of 2013], and I see that they are striving to bring a new perspective to the dining scene in “The Triangle.” They’ve got talent, energy, and enthusiasm to spare. More importantly, they understand and care about quality. I hope they succeed.”

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As you can see, I ate very well and had many memorable meals in 2013, including dinner at Christian Puglisi‘s restaurant relae in Copenhagen, and The Hunt menu at Next in Chicago.  Unfortunately, only ten of them can make the list.

So, I leave all of those meals behind, recorded and mentioned for posterity, and give you the ten best meals I had in 2013.  [NOTE: two of the restaurants that appear on this year's list, and at both of which I ate more than once in 2013, deserved to appear multiple times.  However, the meals that I had at these two restaurants would have so dominated the list as to make it uninteresting.  So, instead of making you scroll through a list consisting mostly of meals from two restaurants, I decided to rank those restaurants according to their strongest showing.  They both did quite well. One of them ranked at no. 1, the other at no. 2.]

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10. ELEMENTS
(Princeton, New Jersey)

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He is a pioneer, Scott Anderson is.  His food is challenging, engaging, and honest.  Rarely do I leave a meal feeling as exercised as I do when I leave elements. At a meal that I had at the restaurant’s “kitchen table” in September of 2013, Anderson and his chef de cuisine Mike Ryan showcased the bounty of the woods around them.  Both avid foragers and outdoorsmen, they created a tasting menu comprised of nearly a dozen different mushrooms:  gyroporus castaneous, tylopilus alboater, aborted entoloma, xanthaconium sepperens…  The meal was not only a lesson in Latin and biological classification, it was an exploration of texture and flavor.  And it was magnificent.  You’ll find Scott Anderson and his frontier in Princeton, New Jersey.

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9. NOMA
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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I’ll admit, I was skeptical: how can any restaurant live up to the dubious title of “best in the world” (see no. 10 in 2011)?  But, setting aside the storm of hype that has swirled around Rene Redzepi‘s restaurant noma in Copenhagen, I really did have a terrific meal there last year.  It was full of color, texture, and flavor.  There was excitement in the slightly unfinished feel of some of the dishes we saw (after our meal, we were told that some of our courses had not been put on the menu yet).  And, taken altogether, it conveyed a sense of time and place in such a way that makes noma, udoubtedly, one of the most important restaurants in the world right now.

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8. GERANIUM
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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Everyone knows Rasmus Kofoed as the only man to have won all three statues at the Bocuse d’Or.  But I also know him to be a tremendously thoughtful cook and artist.  It’s easy to be distracted by the precision of his craft, because it is so shockingly sharp. On a superficial level, it is what makes him a great chef.  But looking past the form, his food functions as a delicious allegory of his place and culture.  Every dish I had at Geranium last February appeared as an icon, outlines and silhouettes of the smells, the sights, and the flavors of Kofoed’s Denmark.

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7. DI FARA PIZZA
(New York, New York)

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If the merit of a meal were expressed soley by the intensity of pleasure experienced divided by the variety of food consumed, or by the amount of money spent (but not by the amount of time spent waiting for it), then the two-slice pizza lunch that I had at Di Fara Pizza would boast a quotient that would put it fields ahead of most of the meals on this list.  Two slices: one from a round pie, and one from a square one.  That’s all I had.  And that’s all I needed to have to finally understand and believe all of those who went before me calling Domenico DeMarco an artisan and national treasure.  He and his little pizzeria have been on the corner of 15th Street and Avenue J in the Midwood neighborhood of Brooklyn since 1964.  I’m sorry it took me so long to get there.

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6. THE RESTAURANT AT MEADOWOOD
(Christopher Kostow presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas;
St. Helena, California)

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“The day I lose a sense of wonder about all of this is the day I’m in trouble.”  In the practiced perfection of Michelin-starred cookery, I prefer to see what a chef will cook, and how well he performs in the less scripted moments of his career.  The dinners at the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood aren’t entirely unscripted.  But in the twenty-four days and dinners that I’ve spent with Christopher Kostow at the Restaurant at Meadowood over the course of two of these dinner series, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him leap afield and explore.  It is in these adventures that I’ve found my most memorable and delicious moments at his table.  They’re self-assured journeys, technically sound at every turn. And yet, there is a spontaneity that sparks the imagination, inspires thought, and – above all else, instills a sense of wonder.  In 2013, I found all of this on the twelfth night, the night that Christopher Kostow cooked at the Twelve Days of Christmas.

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5. MANRESA
(Los Gatos, California)

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This was my fourth meal at Manresa since David Kinch first captured my imagination and impressed me with his evocative cooking in 2006.  In the years since, I’ve watched his food evolve.  He has developed an important partnership with Love Apple Farm, a biodynamic garden.  And his focus has moved slowly from West to East. But his demand for quality ingredients and dedication to cooking remains uncompromised.  In early December of 2013, I had what was perhaps my best meal there yet.  And I eagerly include it among the five best meals I had last year.

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4. KADEAU
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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I had already secured reservations at Geranium, relae, and noma. But I had one lunch spot left on my forty-eight-hour tear-through Copenhagen, a very last-minute add-on to my trip to France.  So, I cast out my lines in an open bid for some direction.  The first two bites came from chef David Toutain and my friend Laurent Vanparys (who now owns a biodynamic wine bar in Paris called épure).  They both told me to go to kadeau.  I didn’t know much about Rasmus Kofoed (not to be confused with the chef of Geranium by the same name who appears at no. 7 above) or Nicolai Nørregaard, or their home island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea (where the restaurant kadeau originated) when I arrived on that frigid afternoon in January. But over the course of a delicious, two-hour lunch, they shared their “beloved island” with me through a series of deeply soulful and satisfying dishes that showcased the savory (here, I am speaking specifically of meaty, umami, salty flavors) side of both their land and sea.  The food at kadeau was bold and flavorful, confident and comforting.  It was the type of food I like to eat.  And it was done extremely well.

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3. RANCHO DOÑA MARIA
(Santiago, Chile)

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There was a plate of tomatoes, roughly chopped, and slivers of white onions, raw. There was a giant empanada, fresh from the mud ovens, with a blistered crust and a filling of ground beef and onions, sweet and melted.  There was an incredibly juicy pork rib, rubbed and smoked. And, at the end, there was a generous block of leche asada, glazed with a cinnamon-infused syrup.  In four incredibly simple, yet spectacular plates of food, Doña Maria, who owns a little road-side shack off the Autopista los Libertadores about forty minutes outside of Santiago, Chile, gave me one of the very best meals I had in 2013.

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2. WILLOWS INN
(Lummi Island, Washington)

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Chef Blaine Wetzel may be one of the greatest minimalists of our time.  He understands that the integrity of an ingredient is its only, true asset.  And, because he understands and can identify the integrity of ingredients, he’s unafraid to let that stand alone.  A smoked oyster, a strip of smoked salmon, some venison tartare on rye toast, a caramelized nugget of sunchoke, a grilled shiitake mushroom cap: these are just a few of the simple, but unforgettable courses he served to me at the second of two meals that I had at Willows Inn last year.  For many reasons – including the fact that a violent storm had left the entire inn without electricity, and so we ate by candlelight alone – that meal was particularly memorable. But, because of the food, it was magical.

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1. SAISON
(San Francisco, California)

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There are two types of restaurants to which I return repeatedly: restaurants that I love despite their flaws; and restaurants that I love because they’re flawless.  Joshua Skenes‘s saison is one of the few that falls in the latter camp.  I ate at saison nine times in 2013 [disclosures about these meals were made in a prior post], and nine times I left convinced that saison is one of the most exciting restaurants in the United States right now.  Skenes not only understands and appreciates quality, more importantly, he is able to communicate it through his cooking, which focuses on maximizing the potential of every ingredient.  Although my meals at saison had been steadily showing more and more promise over the past three years (read what I had to say about my first meal there in 2011), my third full meal at saison this year – in August – achieved a critical mass of maturity and sophistication that I had not seen before. And it was the best restaurant meal I had 2013.

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At the end of this post ever year, I update an ongoing bucket list of restaurants I’d like to visit.  In some years, travel and fortune take to me more than in other years.  Here is where I stand, and where I’d like to go in 2014:

BUCKET LIST

JAPAN, JAPAN, JAPAN, JAPAN!  Japan remains at the top of my bucket list.  I hope this is the year I finally cross it off.

Otherwise, in Asia, I most want to visit Singapore.

In France, I’d most like to visit Sa.Qua.Na in Honfleur and le Grenouillière, which is located in Madelaine sous Montreuil.

I have outstanding dates with Kobe Desramault at in de Wulf in Dranouter, and Sang Hoon Degeimbre at l’Air du Temps in Noville-sur-Mehaigne.  Both are in Belgium.

In Copenhagen, I hope to eat at Matthew Orlando’s Amass.

In neighboring Sweden, I bring forward Matthias Dahlgren and Frantzén, and add Gastrologik; all three in Stockholm.  And, there’s Fäviken in Järpen.

In London, I’m a couple of years late to Hedone.  In that city, I’d also like to visit Kitchen Table and Heston Blumenthal’s Dinner.

In Australia, the only one left on my bucket list of continents (well, unless you count Antarctica): Tetsuya’s, attica, and Brae, where Dan Hunter has recently landed.

Now that I’ve been to Argentina and Chile, Peru becomes a priority, with Bolivia and Brazil not too far behind.

I finally made it to Austin.  But I missed Franklin’s and Snow’s.  So I need to go back.

In 2013, I finally made it to Birmingham, Alabama and the “Triangle” of North Carolina (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) in the American South.  In 2014, I hope to turn my attention to Atlanta (a city that I flew through over three dozen times last year, but where I only left the airport once): Linton Hopkins’s Restaurant Eugene, Steven Satterfield’s Miller Union, and Anne Quatrano’s fabled Quinones at Bacchanalia.

In Charleston: FIG and macintosh.

In Houston: oxheart.

I go to New York at least once or twice every year.  This year, I’ll be headed to Luksus, Betony, estela, contra, and Cosme (Mexican chef Enrique Olvera‘s recently announced intentions for the Flatiron).  My friends Gerald San Jose and Jin Ahn, together with chef Chung Chow (all three are alumni of per se), hope to open noreetuh, a casual Korean concept, sometime this year. If and when they do, I’ll be calling for a reservation.

In Chicago, Chris Nugent’s Goosefoot tops my list, followed by Sixteen at the Trump.

In Boston: Menton, Craigie on Main, Oleana, o-ya, and the classic Clio, among others. I haven’t been to Beantown since I did time at Lowell House nearly two decades ago (eeks!).  And in nearby Providence, Rhode Island, Ben Suckle’s Birch.

On the west coast, I would love to eat to animal, Providence, urasawa, and Jeremy Fox‘s Rustic Canyon, all of which are in Los Angeles.  In the Bay Area, where I did a considerable amount of eating in 2013, I still haven’t been to nopa, or Hawker Fare.  And Pim, when are you opening Kin Khao?

According to what John and Karen Shields recently told me, they’ll be opening their unnamed restaurant in Georgetown by late summer.  I’ll be there.  And Jeremiah Langhorne (most-recently the chef de cuisine of McCrady’s in Charleston, South Carolina), when and where are you opening in D.C. this year?  (Oh, and Little Serow too, if the line isn’t too long.)

Both Portlands – Oregon and Maine – need to be visited.

Last year, I said that I wanted to explore my own (Midwest) region more.  That was an utter failure.  In my defense, I did check off a couple of restaurants on my St. Louis list.  And, I did manage to canvass my hometown (Kansas City) rather thoroughly, especially for having barely been home.  But I still need to make my way up I-35 in Minneapolis to eat at The Bachelor Farmer and piccolo.  Up I-29 in Omaha, I’d like to eat at The Boiler Room and The Grey Plume.  Hopefully, I’ll find time to be more neighborly in 2014.

Here are the restaurant’s I’d most like to revisit in 2014:  In the U.S., Frasca Food + Wine in Boulder tops my list (my last and only meal there was in December of 2008).  Otherwise, there are five restaurants – in my opinion, five of the most exciting restaurants in the U.S. right now – to which I’d like most to return:  Willows Inn on Lummi Island, Washington; saison in San Francisco, California; Aubergine at l’Auberge Carmel in Carmel-By-The-Sea; elements in Princeton, New Jersey; and Manresa in Los Gatos, California.  A year with meals at those five restaurants, alone, would be a fantastic year.

Abroad, I’d most like to revisit The Sportsman in Seasalter, U.K.; Quique Dacosta in Denia, Spain; Asador Extebarri in Axpe in the Basque mountains; kadeau in Copenhagen; and Pujol in Mexico City.  And, I’ll keep hoping for another date with the Louis XV on that magnificent terrace at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo.

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Photos: Rasmus Kofoed’s Bocuse d’Argent, Bocuse d’Or, and Bocuse de Bronze statues in his kitchen at Geranium in Copenhagen, Denmark; staff meal in progress at noma in Copenhagen, Denmark; squab on the stovetop at saison in San Francisco, California; a mink coat, a door, and a Christmas tree at The Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, California; place setting and leather-bound wine list at Willow’s Inn in Lummi Island, Washington; a shelf of fermentation jars at elements in Princeton, New Jersey; mussels at noma in Copenhagen, Denmark; white chocolate and pine-coated “green eggs,” petits fours at Geranium in Copenhagen, Denmark; Domenico DeMarco slicing pizza at Di Fara Pizza in Brooklyn, New York; trays of herbs in hoop house at The Restaurant at Meadowood’s garden at the Montessori of St. Helena in St. Helena, California; Manresa at night, Los Gatos, California; kadeau in Copenhagen, Denmark; blistered empanadas coming out of the dung ovens at Rancho Doña Maria off of the Autopista los Libertadores forty minutes outside of Santiago, Chile; aged venison tartare and rye toast at Willows Inn on Lummi Island, Washington; the hearth at saison in San Francisco, California.

A group of us were huddling together in the frigid night when our taxi – one of those odd European  hybrids with a cramped third row of seats in the back  - pulled up.  Daniel Boulud was the first to jump in, crawling into the far, back corner.  Someone else jumped in after him, but was quickly pushed back out.  No, Boulud objected.  He wanted the “kid” back there with him.  We surveyed each other, and we knew he could only mean me.  I was the smallest, and the youngest.

Wedged into the back with Boulud, I jokingly objected to being called a kid.  I was definitely older than he thought I was.  When he asked, I told him I was 32.  I was still very young, he insisted.

Not young enough. In one of those moments when my memory for detail came in handy, I reminded Boulud of his own words.  ”Remember, chef,” I chided, “in chapter eight of your book ‘Letters to a Young Chef,’ you specifically pointed out to the reader that ‘these are Letters to a Young Chef’ – emphasis on the ‘young.’”  I continued to recite, “‘In other words, if you were thirty years old, I would not be writing this to you, because the demands of the job and competition out there require that you start young…’”

“Ça va, ça va,” he conceded with a laugh.  He, too, was young, and perhaps a bit foolish, when he wrote that book, he said, almost reminding himself wistfully.  It was not too late for me to become a chef, he reassured me.

If you are an aspiring chef, young or old, or just curious about the career of a chef, as I was, I highly recommend Boulud’s book.

Now, a few years later, I wouldn’t consider myself old yet.  But I am older.  And I look at young cooks, many of whom are not only a decade younger than I, but also seem to already be far along in their careers, and marvel.  At twenty-five, I was just starting law school, the trailhead to a long, expensive, and confusing detour away from the direction I probably should have been headed at that age.   Unlike young cooks these days, I didn’t have the conviction or courage to follow my dreams.  I also had options, which I know that many young cooks don’t have.  And those options paralyzed me.  Instead of throwing myself headlong into learning a craft that interested me, I opted for a career that, I thought, would stabilize me.

Before I proceed too far down this storyline, I’ll stop here.  This post is not about what I would have done if I hadn’t gone to law school (even now, I’m not sure I could answer that).  And it’s not about regret either, because I don’t regret a thing.  I know that every inch of my life has been essential to putting me where I am now.  In my last decade, I have learned more about myself, my values, and what it is I want out of life than I probably would have otherwise.

Instead, I’d like to tell you about my recent encounters with a couple of young cooks that made me think more deeply about an aspect of our country’s, and, more specifically, my hometown’s restaurant industry.

These two cooks, both around twenty-five years old, asked to meet me, and talk with me about their future. Both cooks are in a transition period, having just left their jobs in Kansas City, and are about to move to a different city to find a new home and kitchen.  To my great joy, both told me that they intend to return to Kansas City one day.  And, both, wanted to know what Kansas City’s restaurant scene lacked, what void could they help fill when they return.

First, I want to make it very clear, as I did to these young cooks, that I do not consider myself qualified to be coaching young cooks, or even giving them meaningful advice.  Although I had worked in the front of the house in my youth (and even that is a laughable claim), I have never worked in a professional kitchen.  As such, I encouraged them to ask other cooks and chefs whom they trusted and admired for advice (and, it was in these conversations that I was reminded of my endearing exchange with Boulud a few years ago).  I could only given them advice based on my observations as a third-party participant in the restaurant subculture.

Second, although I use my hometown of Kansas City as an example here, it is only an example.  What I have to say may apply to many other places in the United States.

I applauded these young cooks for wanting to come back home, eventually.  The primary thing that I think a city like mine lacks is a steady stream of talent.  Without it, chefs, especially at the higher end, have a hard time retaining staff, or developing any sort of meaningful kitchen culture, which I think is an essential part of building a great enterprise.  Without an eager pool of talent waiting for them to leave, cooks in smaller cities don’t have the same pressure to strive and grow, or remain loyal, as their counterparts do in bigger cities, where ambitious cooks constantly circle the kitchen, waiting to replace the weak.

Many cooks leave the smaller cities to go to the bigger cities to cut their teeth in the more demanding kitchens of our country.  I think this is important.  But, the problem is, few bring their big city experiences and dreams back to the smaller cities.  Those that do, are often faced with the realities of opening and running a small business in a less-sophisticated environment, with a less-appreciative audience.  Discouraged, or financially exhausted (or, sometimes, just plain lazy), they set aside their big city lessons and dreams and settle into status quo.  It’s understandable, but disheartening nonetheless.

But, both of these cooks insisted that they intended to gain experience elsewhere, and then return home to Kansas City.  And they wanted to help our city’s culinary scene grow.  What else was missing?

Experts.  We lack experts, I told them.  Experts create a dynamic dining culture.  And that’s what smaller cities, like mine, need.

I understand that a lot of chefs and restaurateurs aren’t interested in having a higher-level discussion about food.  They just want to run a good business, provide for their employees and families, and make their customers happy.  That’s a very admirable goal; the backbone of the American free market system.

And yet, I hear so many of these sorts of chefs and restaurateurs, ones that I would put in that category, wonder why the mainstream media doesn’t pay more attention to them.  Why doesn’t Kansas City get more national coverage?  Why aren’t our chefs and restaurateurs winning more awards?  Why do outsiders only come here for barbecue?

Because, that’s who our experts are: barbecue pit masters and champions.

We have arrived at an age when good restaurants abound.  You can find good food being served in good restaurants across our country.  So why come to Kansas City when you can find comparably good restaurants nearer to you?   What in Kansas City is better than that which is closer to you?  With all due respect to the chefs and restaurateurs in my hometown (many of whom are good friends), I ask: who or what in Kansas City is unique, outstanding, authoritative?  The food media looks for experts (well, ideally, they do).  When they want to write about wild fishing, butchery, cheese-making, spices, organic farming, pastry-making, or Italian, Indonesian, Greek, or Moroccan cuisines, they seek out those who have the most knowledge about those things and who cook the best versions of those cuisines.

I last wrote about Kansas City on this blog two years ago.  Since, many have emailed me asking me to update the post.  I recently went back to read what I had written.  And I have very little to add.  The people and restaurants I named are our city’s experts, those who have dedicated themselves to perfecting their craft, and, who provide our city with a quality product: Jay and Carol Maddick at Campo Lindo Farms, who raise tasty, free-range chickens on their organic farm in Lathrop, Missouri; Leroy and Barb Shatto, who produce some great dairy on their dairy farm north of the city; Sarah Hoffman and Jacqueline Smith at Green Dirt Farm, who raise sheep with organic practices, and who make excellent cheeses in Weston, Missouri [disclaimer: I photographed for their farm this year]; Jeff Stehny and his champion crew at Oklahoma Joe’s, who turn out consistently great barbecue; Christopher Elbow, a chocolatier and ice cream maker with an eye for detail and business; Fred Spompinato, who makes the best bread in our city at his little bakery on Summit Street on the city’s near-West side; and a few others.  To that list I would add Linda Hezel, who grows amazing and wonderful herbs, fruits, and vegetables at her Prairie Birthday Farm just thirty minutes outside of Kansas City.  When I was writing “the bluestem cookbook” with chefs Colby and Megan Garrelts, we used Concord grapes from her farm.  She had grafted those grape vines from her uncle’s vineyard near St. Louis.  (Hezel was recently featured in the New York Times.)

If they want to have a meaningful impact on our city when they return, I told these two young cooks to spend their time abroad discovering an area of the restaurant industry that they particularly love, and then work to become an expert at it.  It could be something as specific as making charcuterie, or ramen noodles, or wine service, or as general becoming experts on developing flavor, or understanding texture.   Experts drill down to the heart of a matter.  In doing so, they come to know and value quality in their area of expertise, and only care to produce it.  We need more experts.

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The last time I visited Seattle I was a rising senior in college.  That summer, I spent a few days with my friend Miller, who was from the inland suburb of Issaquah.  Thereafter, I went down to Portland to visit another college friend, Newland.  That was the last time I was in Portland too.

In the decade and a half since, both cities have become exciting and alluring hubs of restaurant activity.  But unlike Portland, Seattle has also become home to nearly a dozen friends from high school, college, and law school.  So, last year, when I found a window in my travel schedule, I finally made it back to the Pacific Northwest to revisit, to reunite, and to eat.

What I found in and around the city was so beautiful, and much of it so delicious, that I went back a second time before the year was over.

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There’s very little that doesn’t appeal to me about Seattle.  The traffic situation can be a little scary at times, and there’s always the looming threat that the Pacific Rim will do a tectonic jig.  But otherwise, the city is ideal.

Seattle is home to a large port, and lots of tech-driven enterprises, which attracts a well-educated and intelligent population (the two, I have learned, don’t necessarily go hand-in-hand).  Probably for the same reasons, the city falls on the more progressive, more liberal side of the political spectrum (admittedly, certain aspects of the local liberalism seemed a bit too far to the left for my Midwestern conservatism), and has become home to a rather international demographic, with a high number of Asian and European immigrants and second or third-generation residents, whose culture is reflected in the city’s open personality.

Spread across a jigsaw of evergreen islands and peninsulas stitched together with bridges, Seattle boasts a unique, and particularly beautiful urban setting.  Some complain that the weather in the area is too wet and gloomy, and perpetually too cool.  I, on the other hand, celebrate it.  Its brisk air and oft-overcast skies suit me well.

Due to the abundance of nature surrounding them, Seattleites are incredibly outdoorsy.  And, perhaps it’s because of this proximity to nature, and their appreciation for it, that people in Seattle are refreshingly practical too.  I love that.  It also means that they have easy access to incredibly ingredients, especially seafood.

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Seattle pragmatism is apparent in the way the city likes to eat.

Other than the storied Canlis, which has been a fixture atop Seattle’s dining scene for the past six decades, most of what locals consider “fine dining” in Seattle is rather casual by American standards.  Here, the fineness of dining focuses more on the products than on the trappings.

Take, for example, chef Matt Dillon‘s restaurants.  I visited three of them (his family of restaurants is extensive), none of which I would consider to be “fancy” or “fine” (in the traditional sense of those words) for its looks.  But, I fell in love with all of them nonetheless.   

I had lunch at Sitka & Spruce twice.  Located in an L-shaped, back-corner space of an indoor food hall (where you’ll find a butcher, a baker, and a barrista), the restaurant is a mix of kitchen space and communal, counter, and small-group seating.   On both visits, the service was a hair smug, a streak too hipsterish, and a bit too casual even for me.  But Seattleites don’t seem to mind helping themselves – when one of the diners sitting at the counter, facing a wall of windows, needed a bit of fresh air, he used a small log to prop open the window.

But the food was terrific.

The style and simplicity of Dillon’s food very much reminded me of Amaryll Schwertner’s approach to cooking at Boulette’s Larder in San Francisco.  The plates at Sitka & Spruce were clean and neat, and everything on them pristine and perfect.  I had a beautifully cooked grain salad on a creamy bed of yogurt; slices of beautiful, local salmon cured with fir; dark, fleshy green salads; wonderful, local cheeses with house-made crackers; and hearty spoonfuls of chicken liver pâté topped with a perfectly cooked soft egg.

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I don’t mean to suggest that Dillon’s restaurants aren’t comfortable, or aren’t otherwise charming.  To the contrary, they’re  immensely so, each full of personality and expressive of place.

Whereas Sitka & Spruce is very much the Seattle urbanite, smart and smug, The Corson Building brings a touch of Old World romanticism to the bohemian neighborhood of Georgetown.  This old, stone structure, surrounded by a lovely garden, is only open to the public three nights a week, and the menu format varies from night to night (à la carte or prix fixe, depending on the night).  Small and cozy, the dining room, which feels a touch medieval in its spartan simplicity, offers a communal dining experience [although, the night I went (with a seven others), the room seemed dominated by large parties that were easily separated by sectioning the long tables].

The food was served family-style, on large plates.  Sometimes, the portioning was inexact, which prompted our server to encourage us to ask for more food if we needed it.  Service here was warm, and like the food, familial.  The dish I liked most had thick slices of quince-glazed ham served with lentils and black trumpet mushrooms.  It was the sort of hearty, comforting fare that made sense in its setting.  Go with a large group, you’ll have more fun.

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For its interior, Bar Sajor was, perhaps, my favorite of the three Dillon restaurants I visited.  As I wrote in an earlier post, which featured one of Bar Sajor’s desserts as one of my favorites from 2013: “As a side note, Matt Dillon has a wonderful talent for creating magical spaces… In design, Bar Sajor was, by far, my favorite. During the day, the interior is lit naturally with big, picture windows.  The eclectic mix of fixtures leaves you lost in time and culture.  You’re not quite sure if you’ve stepped into Paris in a previous decade, or present-day Istanbul.”

I only had a short lunch at Bar Sajor, just enough to revel in the magic of the space and enjoy a few light salads of fresh seafood and vegetables with a couple of friends.  I’ll have to return for a fuller experience.  When I do, I’ll focus on the food that comes out of the wood-fired oven that I saw Dillon tending.

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On the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, I indulged in a buttery tangle of tajarin at Jason Stratton‘s Cascina Spinasse.  All the pastas I had there – a restaurant based on the cooking of the Piedmonte region of Italy – were good.  But the tajarin was especially so.

In the city’s Madison neighborhood, I went to Jason Wilson‘s Crush.  Some of the food there was truly delicious, like a 48-hour braised zabuton (Japanese for “cushion,” it accurately describes how soft this cut of wagyu short rib was), or a scattered-looking, but ultimately satisfying plate of sweetbreads, with mustard and suet-cooked potatoes.  But some of it left me scratching my head, like a strange “risotto” made of finely milled octopus that was mealy in texture and hidden under a frothy green dome along with green tomato jam. Or a squid ink macaron piped with goat cheese that arrived under a cloche of smoke so strong in flavor that it obscured what otherwise might have been a tasty bite.

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I really liked what little I saw of Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood.  I visited two restaurants there, one in front of the other.

Standing on Ballard Avenue, you’ll see Ethan Stowell‘s Staple & Fancy Mercantile in a beautifully restored turn-of-the-last century brick building (once a marine supply store, the Kolstrand Building was also a staple and fancy mercantile, hence the restaurant’s name).  Very much like the neighborhood that surrounds it, the interior applies a stylish layer of revivalism on top of its rougher, industrial past.

The food here can be best described as Italian.  We had a beautiful board of house-cured meats, tissue-thin carpaccio of beef topped with ribbons of Parmesan, and linguine dressed lightly in a cream sauce studded with salmon roe. It being the height of summer, we also enjoyed a stunning plate of fat, ripe figs, grilled and served with Pecorino.  [Disclosure: Jason Franey, chef of Canlis, hosted our party of six.  I did not pay for this meal.]

If you peer through the “looking glass” windows at the back of Staple & Fancy Mercantile, you’ll get an eyeful of its neighbor, The Walrus & The Carpenter, which occupies the adjacent space (the restaurant’s front door is next to Staple & Fancy Mercantile on Ballard Avenue – it takes you down a long hallway that brings you behind Staple & Fancy Mercantile).  The Walrus and the Carpenter (named after the two characters in Lewis Carroll’s poem in his famous book Through The Looking Glass , who ate their oyster companions) is billed as an oyster bar.  Although I would argue that it’s much more than just an oyster bar, I did have a very fine plate of fried ones (cornmeal-breaded) there.

Because it is so small, because the food there is so fresh, so clean, and so thoughtfully-made, because it has enjoyed a significant amount of local and national acclaim, and mostly because they do not take reservations, you will almost always have to wait – sometimes at great length – to eat at The Walrus and Carpenter.  The night I went, I got lucky and saddled up to a lone counter seat outside on the patio.  Besides those fried oysters, I had a terrific shaved salad of fennel and apricots dressed in buttermilk, all of it crowned with spicy ribbons of shaved chorizo.  I also had a delicate fillet of smoked trout sitting atop a creamy bed of lentils and chopped walnuts bound in crème fraîche, its richness halved by pickled red onions.

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I already wrote about À La Mode Pies in Seattle’s Phinney neighborhood in a previous post.  But I don’t think I mentioned Bakery Nouveau in West Seattle, where I found some very good vienoisserie – like a creatively constructed strawberry-pistachio “croissant,” and a beautiful pear danish framed in puff pastry.  I also sampled quite a few of Bakery Nouveau’s cakes.  My favorite, by far, was the “classic chocolate cake.  And, despite being a bit dense, and bit too choked with frosting, the carrot cake was pretty good too.

Eric Rivera, who now works behind the scenes for Grant Achatz’s family of restaurants in Chicago but who used to work in Seattle, urged me to swing by Fuji Bakery in Seattle’s Chinatown neighborhood.  There, I found a case full of creative Euro-Asian mash-ups, like a “croissant” swirled with matcha tea, and brioche buns filled with red bean paste.  There were also brioche cubes filled with salmon (which I’ll have to go back and try), beautiful brioche-like buns filled with custard, and loaves of panettone.  The production levels seemed so high that I’m not sure I would call this an artisanal enterprise, and the quality of craftsmanship isn’t as high as it could be, but, if you’re in the area, it’s worth a visit (there are two other locations: one in Queen Anne, the other in Bellevue).

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Perched above Queen Anne (a neighborhood), with a gorgeous view of both land and water, Canlis is elegant, and in many ways, timeless.  The structure, built in the 1950′s, is a beautiful statement of mid-century modern simplicity, with a long, linear look and a panoramic wall of windows that draws your attention outward.

I found Canlis near the end of a revolution when I arrived last summer.  With sixty years of history and customers behind it, the restaurant, now run by the two Canlis brothers, who have taken over the restaurant from their forebears, looks forward to a new era.  They brought in Jason Franey, a young chef who had worked under Daniel Humm at Campton Place in San Francisco and at Eleven Madison Park in New York City (although I had eaten at Eleven Madison Park many times when Franey was the executive sous chef there, I first met him at the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood at the end of 2012).

But the revolution is incomplete.  There are still remnants of Canlis’s past on the menu: you can still order the patriarch Peter Canlis’s salad, and his famous prawns; both are favorites among the restaurant’s long-tending regulars.  Sautéed in a buttery mix of vermouth and garlic, with a splash of lime, the flavors of the prawn dish are classic, familiar, and unimpeachable. Franey has revised the dish, slightly, with a more modern plating style.  But regardless of its form, it’s a dish that needs no apologies from either the past or the present.  I had an absolutely lovely night in the restaurant’s lounge with those prawns, a soufflé, and a pianist (who took my oddball requests with flare).  It could have been 1960, or 2013; I didn’t care.  There are some revolutions not worth completing, some traditions better left intact.  Call me sentimental, but I think this is one of them.

But if you will let Franey tell his story, you’ll find a new chapter unfolding at Canlis.  His tasting menu is a colorful procession of smaller portions showcasing a more contemporary study of flavors (and, if you ate at Eleven Madison Park in the first few years Humm was there, you’ll recognize a similar style of plating at Canlis).  The one I remember most was a small glass of yogurt with various pickled vegetables and fruits – a verrine of the fermented.

[While I paid for both of my meals at Canlis, I disclosed above a meal that I had with Franey at another restaurant where he paid for me.]

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I had two spectacular meals at Willows Inn on Lummi Island.  But there’s too much to say about them to include them here.  So I will devote a separate post to telling those stories.

For now, I leave you with a list of restaurants in the Seattle area that I visited in 2013.  Each is linked to an album of the photos that I took at those meals.

July 

À La Mode Pie (Seattle)
Bakery Nouveau (Seattle)
Bar Sajor (Seattle)
Canlis (Seattle) (once, twice)
canon (Seattle)
Cascina Spinasse (Seattle)
Fuji Bakery (Seattle)
Sitka & Spruce (Seattle)
Staple & Fancy (Seattle)
Walrus and the Carpenter, The (Seattle)
Willows Inn (Lummi Island)

November 

Corson Building (Seattle)
Crush (Seattle)
Sitka & Spruce (Seattle)
Willows Inn (Lummi Island)

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Photos: Sunset from Lummi Island, Washington; bridge at night, Seattle; chicken liver pâté and a soft boiled egg at Sitka & Spruce; the fireplace at The Corson Building; the “grand aioli” seafood platter at Bar Sajor; the tajarin at Cascina Spinasse; the interior of Staple & Fancy Mercantile; cakes from Bakery Nouveau; the view from Canlis at night; and the bar at Canon.

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Is there a happier summer soundtrack than the splash of cannonballs accompanied by the reckless hoot of youth?

My friend and I arrived at the ferry slip on a warm summer afternoon to the sight of children hurling themselves off the headworks into the cool waters of the sound.  We got out of the car and cheered them on as we waited for the ferry to arrive from Lummi Island.

It’s hard not to romanticize my first visit to Willows Inn last year, which unfolded like a summer flick on the big screen, easy and neat.

After settling into the Aerie, a two-bedroom apartment leased by the inn a quarter-mile down the road, my friend and I took a long walk on the beach.  With the sun warm on our backs, we picked sweet thimble berries as we went – the brambles lining the island’s circumnavigating Shore Drive were quickly closing out their season on these raspberry-like gems.  We played bocce while cooks shuttled back and forth between the kitchen and the small smokehouse nestled in the treeline just beyond our court, which had been smoldering since we arrived.

And we napped until it was time to eat.

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My second visit to Willows Inn in November of last year, was no less memorable than my first, but for very different reasons.  A violent storm had swept through the Pacific Northwest that day.  When my friend and I arrived at the inn, it was completely dark. The storm had knocked out the power on the island.  But, we were reassured that chef Blaine Wetzel, with the help of a generator, would still be serving dinner.

On both of my visits to Willows Inn, all of the guests gathered at the inn’s reception for cocktails at 18.00.  A half-hour later, we were seated, table by table, for dinner in the restaurant’s dining room, aglow the first time with the sunset radiating through its West-facing wall of windows, and the second time with with flickering candlelight.  There is only one service each night at Willows Inn – everyone eats at 18.30. (See my Travel Note at the end of this post for details about the ferry schedule.)

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My dinners at Willows Inn consisted of around fourteen to sixteen courses, with eight to ten “snacks” at the beginning, three “main courses” in the middle, and two desserts plus petits fours at the end.  This set menu cost $150 (plus tax and tip).

Both times, my friend and I ordered the non-alcoholic pairing – seven or eight different juices spread throughout the meal. Unlike most other non-alcoholic pairings I’ve had in restaurants, the vast majority of the juices I tasted at Willows Inn was highly quaffable.  At Next in Chicago – which has what I consider to be the most sophisticated, well-crafted, and most thoughtfully paired non-alcoholic beverages I’ve ever tasted (I’ve had a wide sampling of Next’s non-alcoholic pairings over the course of six different menus) – the drinks have tended to be cerebral and the flavors were often intentionally off-kilter, calibrated to pair specifically with the food.  Next’s non-alcoholic drinks have included tea infusions, fermented liquids, and bitters, making them much more like cocktails than juices, more suited for sipping than slamming.  The pairings at Willows Inn, on the other hand, were highly drinkable, often focused on showcasing a “single varietal” vegetable, fruit, or herb: velvety carrot; tangy, bright sorrel; and fragrant elderflower, for example. They didn’t necessarily pair as well with the food as the drinks at Next did.  But they were more approachable and delicious, and very capable of standing on their own.  The non-alcoholic pairing at Willows Inn cost $40. I highly recommend it.

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From my brief exchanges with chef Blaine Wetzel – a few sentences between courses and a couple of emails – I’ve gathered that he’s an outdoorsman.  From his food, I can taste it.

His ingredients, many of which he personally gathers from his environs, are pristine.  And, having carefully considered each one, he understands how to maximize the potential in every one of them.  Often, this involved little more than applying a bit of heat.

Everything we were served, including the house-made hearth rye bread (I wrote about this bread in an earlier post; scroll to the bottom footnote on bread), was incredibly well-made.  The flavors, the textures, the sentiments; they were all earnestly and thoughtfully presented.  And all of it celebrated the bounty of the Pacific Northwest.

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My favorite dishes at Willows Inn were the simplest ones.

There was a fat, juicy oyster, which ranked high on my list of best dishes from 2013: “It was just an oyster.  But it was an unforgettable one.  It had been smoked in the shell, gently, for hours, until the surface of the oyster darkened, concentrating the flavor of smoke and the ocean in a caramelized layer that was not thick enough to be called a crust, and yet firm enough to seal in the warm, creamy interior.  To say that I went through the trouble of flying back to Seattle and driving two hours to Lummi Island, with a ferry ride across the sound in between, just to have this oyster a second time this year is probably a stretch. But it was definitely a motivating factor.”

Upon my return, the oyster was gone, and in its place was a mussel, smoked in the same way.

There were beautiful shiitake mushroom caps from Cascadia Farm in Bellingham (the town on the mainland side of the ferry ride), simply grilled.  The flavor was intensely umami, the texture sublime – the cap was predictably tender, but the stem was equally so, not woody or fibrous in the least.  That was impressive.

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Some of Wetzel’s food was packed with flavor – like a sliver of neon-red sockeye salmon, smoked and glazed with a mixture of butter and brown sugar.  That also ranked high on my list of best dishes last year.

Some of it was incredibly delicate, like florets of cauliflower steamed in buttermilk whey and garnished with lovage oil.

A plate of charred kohlrabi with oyster cream was all about texture.  The kohlrabi had been shaved thinly, and then dry-cooked until it softened enough to be pliable, yet retaining some of its crispness.  The humble kohlrabi was an austere proposition in this dish, both in flavor and texture, that Wetzel contrasted brilliantly with a luscious dollop of milky oyster cream.

Likewise, Dungeness crabmeat, for all of its cachet, has a texture that quickly becomes monotonous when served alone.  Wetzel blanketed the crabmeat with a silky, slippery mantle of wild seaweeds and anointed all of it with a slick of brown butter.  It was a seductive combination of textures and flavors.  It was one of my favorite courses at both meals.

And some of his dishes showcased a specific flavor.  Braised radicchio, garnished with thyme and “apple capers” (cured and preserved apple buds, about the size of an olive), presented a colorful rainbow of bitterness.  Quince granita with tangy yogurt was a journey into the heart of tartness; it was one of the best desserts I had last year.

In all of his dishes, Wetzel proved himself confident in the quality of his ingredients (this is partly ensured by his collaboration with Loganita Farm, an organic garden a half-mile down Shore Drive that is dedicated to growing produce for Willows Inn) and confident in his ability to unlock their deeper potential.  Like his non-alcoholic pairings, Wetzel’s dishes were incredibly simple and clean, focused on one or two outstanding ingredients that, together, formed a mosaic of the Pacific Northwest.  His is an elegant rendering, sophisticated in its subtle contrasts and purposeful in its couplings – a hint of aromatic rosemary softened the acidity of that granita; a touch of brown sugar smoothed over the coarse, smokiness of that salmon, and a bit of fat to helped lubricate the otherwise dry corners of that charred kohrabi.

Ultimately, Blaine Wetzel’s food was incredibly delicious.  And because of that, I count the two meals that I had at Willows Inn last year among my very best.

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Guests at the inn used to have breakfast in the same dining room in which they had dinner the night before.  That has changed.  Now, guests must drive about a mile to Beach Store Café, close to the ferry slip, for breakfast (breakfast is included in a night’s stay at the inn).

Coffee at Beach Store Café comes in large, wide-mouthed mugs, and the food is served in American-sized portions.  I had a buckwheat pancake the size of a hubcap topped with blueberry compote; my friend had a generous bowl of creamy polenta, topped with a poached egg and crispy pancetta.  All of it was quite good.

Before leaving the island, I toured Loganita Farm (you can set up a morning tour ahead of time).  The garden, which consists of raised beds and hoop houses, is tidy and well-kempt. Its produce –  fruits, vegetables, and edible flowers, much of which is tailored to the restaurant’s needs – is beautiful.  You can read more about the farm’s bio-intensive gardening practices on its website.

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There are very few restaurants in the United States to which I would attach the word “must.”  Willows Inn, here and now, earns that distinction.

If you can afford the time and money to stay overnight, I encourage it.  It will pad your dinner with the unhurried leisure that it deserves.  Take a quiet stroll along the beach. Go berry picking.  Play bocce in the afternoon shade.  Take a nap. Go running in the misty morning around the island before having breakfast at Beach Store Café.  And don’t forget to tell them you want to see Loganita Farm.  All of that will provide context to your meal at Willows Inn: the place, its smells, its flavors, its colors.

But, if you can’t, dinner at Willows Inn, alone, is worth the journey and effort.

Here are links to the photos that I took on Lummi Island:

Willows Inn (July, 2013)
Loganita Farm (July, 2013)
Beach Store Café (July, 2013) 
Willows Inn (November, 2013)

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Travel Note: While Lummi Island is remote, it is not unreachable.  Altogether, it is about a two-hour journey north of Seattle (about an hour and a half drive – that’s with little traffic – and a ten-minute ferry ride).  Depending on when you arrive at the ferry slip, and how many cars are ahead of you, you may find yourself in line for a while.  Payment for the round-trip is taken on your way to the island (last year, it was $7 for each adult; as of January 1, 2014, the ferry is accepting credit cards).  So, when you return to the mainland, you do not pay.  Depending on the day, the ferry runs either on the hour or every twenty minutes.  The ferry back to the mainland runs at least until midnight (it runs even later depending on the day), so, if you decide not to stay on the island overnight, you should have plenty of time after finishing dinner to make it off the island (on my second visit, my friend and I finished our meal, lingered for a couple of cups of coffee, and made the 23.00 ferry with plenty of time to spare).  Consult the Lummi Island Ferry website for updated schedules and fares. 

Photos: Brambles of thimble berries on Lummi Island, Washington; the smokehouse at Willows Inn; the lazy summer sun descends on the horizon above the Pacific Ocean, seen from the porch at Willows Inn; cauliflower steamed in buttermilk whey, with lovage oil; grilled shiitake mushrooms from Cascadia Farm; charred kohlrabi with oyster cream; a vignette from Loganita Farm; Dungeness crab with wild seaweeds and brown butter.

In his article “Dropped,” which appeared on the online magazine Grantland in March of 2014, Jason Fagone pens a biopic about the renowned juggler known as Anthony Gatto. (The subject is fascinating, and the writing is terrific.  I highly recommend it.)  Towards the end of the piece, after discovering that Gatto had left the Cirque du Soleil company, with which Gatto had traveled and performed, Fagone reached out to Gatto for an interview.  Gatto declined, which sent Fagone speculating as to why Gatto seemed content to leave his record-setting career as a juggler behind in favor of running a small concrete business.  (I’m leaving out a lot of information.)

Fagone surmises that Gatto had decided to rest in his skills and talent, confident and content in having secured his place at the top of his field.  He no longer felt the need to please the crowd, a crowd that probably didn’t fully appreciate his abilities.

Fagone writes: “Pure technical jugglers peak in their twenties…  As they get older, they survive by developing personality… Jugglers don’t have to perform difficult tricks to entertain people, because audiences generally don’t know what’s difficult. Juggling five objects is 10 times harder than juggling four, and six objects is 10 times harder than five, but to most people, five objects in the air looks like six, and six looks like five. A truly difficult juggling trick doesn’t necessarily register intuitively as difficult. It just looks like a bunch of weird shit crossing in the air.”

Gatto performed on stages in front of live audiences, without the luxury of do-overs.  He was a true artist, who didn’t need to rely on illusions or the convenience of retakes to impress unknowing viewers on YouTube.  According to Fagone’s article, many jugglers will attempt a difficult maneuver dozens of times in front of a video camera until they get one clean take to post to YouTube, passing themselves off as being able to perform at that level on a consistent basis. Fagone writes, “Then [Gatto] got older and watched a new wave of jugglers abandon the stage for the flicker of computer screens, sneering at the bright-light mastery he’d worked so hard to gain.”

As I was reading Fagone’s article, I was struck by how much of what Fagone describes about the juggling world applies to the current state of the restaurant industry and its food writing and eating audience.  As I read the following paragraph, I replaced the words “juggling” and “jugglers” with the words “restaurant” and “chefs” almost naturally.

“The fact that [restaurant] audiences can’t tell the difference between hard tricks and easy tricks means they also can’t make any meaningful judgments about [chefs]. It would be as if basketball fans couldn’t recognize the difference between LeBron James and, say, Trevor Ariza. Imagine living in a world in which Angel Cabrera’s golf swing is exactly as elegant as Adam Scott’s, and Ryan Harrison’s tennis forehand is as devastating as Juan Martin del Potro’s, and LeSean McCoy is just another guy running in staggered patterns on a grass field. The whole multibillion-dollar machinery of sports enjoyment depends on the audience’s ability to make fine distinctions between similar-seeming athletes. That’s where the fun and the money are. A sport minus an educated audience is just a story. Maybe a bullshit story. It’s competitive eating. It’s the mortgage-backed securities market circa 2008 — people trying to convince you that they’ve spent a lot of time mastering a certain set of arcane rules and are therefore worthy of your cash and your trust. And [chefs are taking] advantage of audiences’ ignorance. Instead of performing hard tricks, they perform easy tricks that look hard. They lie to delight.”

I just returned from a two-week trip to Japan.  There, the vast majority of the chefs I met, like Gatto, had devoted their entire lives to perfecting a craft.  The glory of lights and comfort of money means nothing to them if they don’t have the quiet contentment of having mastered their craft and cuisine.  And so, day in and day out, they are in their kitchens honing their skills, improving their technique, and in many cases, preserving and building upon centuries of knowledge and wisdom.

I’ve said this countless times, and I’ll say it here again: I know that a restaurant is a business.  And a business needs to make money.  So, I don’t begrudge any chef or restaurateur for doing what they believe they need to do to fill their tables and chairs.  I’m a capitalist (believe me, I’m a capitalist).  And I expect no martyrs from the restaurant industry.

But what does offend me is the rise of a food culture in which we ooh and ahh like kids at the circus when chefs caravan from continent to continent in a delusional state of grandeur, petting logs under a big tent inflated by uneducated groupies who have been duped into seeing imaginary pins in the air.

They lie to delight because we let them.

I receive an unbelievably high number of requests for restaurant recommendations.  While I would like to give every one a thoughtful response, it is simply not possible.

For years now, I have tried to think of a solution to this problem.  Having failed to do so thus far, I have, in the meantime, set up an auto-response on my email account that, in part, apologizes for my limitations and advises all who seek restaurant recommendations to consult my restaurant log (although the frequency of my posts has slowed down woefully over the past two years, I keep my restaurant log current).

But, my restaurant log is grossly inadequate as a dining guide.  I have only written about a fraction of the meals that are recorded, so my opinion about the vast majority of dining experiences over my nine years of blogging is incomplete.  Other than my year-end “best of” lists, which simply highlight my favorite dishes and meals of that year, I issue no “ratings” or “rankings” for restaurants.  And that will not change — I find ratings and rankings problematic for a number of reasons, many of which will be revealed over the course of this post.

My restaurant log, therefore, tells little of where I like to eat (The frequency of my visits to each restaurant, which are recorded in the log, gives some indication as to where I tend to eat.  But it doesn’t necessarily give you an accurate representation of where I like eating.), and even less of where I would recommend others eat based on my experience(s).

As its name suggests, my restaurant log is simply that – a record of restaurants where I have eaten.

So, what is the solution?

As I see it, there are two main problems that need to be addressed.*

The first problem is transparency.  How do I issue recommendations that also account for all of the pertinent factors that affect my opinion?  No opinion is “fair,” because every opinion is the product of perspective, bias, personal experiences, and often, circumstance.  I have written about these matters many times before, including issues like anonymity; meals for which I did not pay (due to any number of reasons); and my working relationships or friendships with those in the restaurant industry.  How then to best to equip my audience with the information they deserve and need to more accurately value my opinion?  It’s nearly impossible.  Eating is a highly personal experience.  Context is everything.  How much disclosure is enough disclosure?

The second problem is with the consumer.  I know, because, like you, I am a consumer.  I’d like to think that I’m a particularly thoughtful and fair consumer, but I am a consumer nonetheless.  We are all consumers within the restaurant industry.  We are also consumers of the media that drive that industry, be it media en masse, or tiny cult blogs like mine.  In an age of soundbites and quick clicks, we, the consumer, look for the shortest cut to the most amount of information.  It’s understandable – I do it; we all do it.  The digital age has whittled down our span of attention, and seemingly, the number of hours in the day.  That is why lists and rankings have become so popular – they give us a large amount of information in a short amount of time; they’re easy references that we can carry in our pockets and minds.  While this may be a practical and convenient way to exchange information, I think it’s dangerous.  It’s dangerous because it makes us, the consumer, lazy and more dependent on others for information.  As a result, it empowers others instead of us, the consumer.  That is why I have been so critical of the current food culture, which has increasingly become a sad tale of mindlessness, a story of how an entire generation of consumers stopped thinking for themselves in favor of a quick feed from those whose legitimacy is rarely vetted.

Lists and rankings aim for the lowest common denominator.  That is partly why I have avoided instituting any sort of rating or ranking of restaurants on my blog (the other reason is because I simply don’t think my opinion is weighty enough to justify doing so).  This blog is not and has never been a quick, one-stop shop kind of situation.  When I started writing this blog in January of 2005, I intended it for an audience of one: me.  I never expected anyone else to read it.  My blog was simply a way to combine my interests in eating, writing, and photography in one medium, a multi-media journal format made possible by the rise of the internet.  To my surprise, in the years since, I have gained an audience (I know that sounds like an obligatory humble-brag, but it’s the truth).  Although I am now very mindful of that fact (I wouldn’t be writing this post if I weren’t), I still write primarily for my own enjoyment and record (otherwise, I’d be writing much more frequently, opt for a flashier user interface, and give in to the many advertisers who send me requests every day).

So, is there a solution?

I thought so.  For a few days, the remainder of this blog post set forth a new system in which I highlighted (in Tyrian tint - thus, the title of this blog post) some of the restaurants on my restaurant log that I felt confident recommending based on my experience.  I made, what I thought, were ample disclosures and warnings about the flaws of this system of restaurant recommendations, reminded readers that I made no absolute claims about the restaurants that I recommended, and urged readers (repeatedly) to do their own due diligence with regard to the restaurants.

However, despite all the disclaimers that I included, I felt increasingly uneasy about my decision.   After much thought, and after taking in some very insightful feedback from good friends, I have decided to recall my recommendations.  Here is why:

The purpose of this blog, as I stated above, was to record my dining experiences.  And that, I have done and will continue to do.

However, since this blog is now read by a surprisingly large number of visitors from around the world, it has become more than just a record.  It has become a resource.  As a result, one of the greatest joys that I now derive from writing this blog is the opportunity to share my journey and experiences with those who care to read about them.

But, this is my little corner of the internet, and if you have come here seeking my opinion, I want you to slow down and consider what I have to say.  Get to know me through my writing.  Learn my preferences, my perspective, and my biases.  You may not always agree with what I have to say.  I’m okay with that.  In fact, I encourage (polite) discussion, discourse, and disagreement.  But knowing how your opinion differs from mine will help you navigate my blog, my writing, and even help you decide where you might or might not want to eat based on what I have written about a restaurant.  That’s context.  And, as I wrote above, context is everything.** 

Issuing a list of recommended restaurants, however carefully done, eliminates much of that context.  I issued those recommendations because it was a convenient way for me to give my readers what they wanted.  It was a shortcut for me.  And I shouldn’t have taken it.  I realized that I was walking a dangerous ledge off of which I feel so many others (lists, rankings, guides, etc.) have fallen.  So, I decided to yank myself back.

It may be hard for you to believe, but I’ve never regretted a meal, no matter how disappointing or bad it might have been.  I consider every meal a lesson, every plate another point of reference that I can add to my library of experiences.  One of the best things of life is the adventure of discovering things on your own.  Trial and error increases knowledge and produces better results.  I encourage you to think about food and get to know about food from that perspective.  I realize that not everyone has the resources to do what I have seemingly done so liberally – fly around the world and eat wherever I want (I assure you, that is an over-simplified version of the truth).  You want a sure bet.  But time was, I was a poor graduate school student traveling the world and taking chances on a shoestring budget.  Here’s the proof.  But, if you consider every meal as an opportunity to learn, come what may, then your risk diminishes considerably.

I am sorry that I can’t write about every meal that I have at every restaurant that I visit.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or the resources to do that.  But, if you will trust me, I will do my best to give you as much information as I can.  And, if you read my writing carefully, you will find my recommendations therein.  If you have any questions, I invite you to comment or send me an email (a link to my email address is in the top right corner).  But please, do your homework first.  The internet is an amazing resource.  Read what others have to say.  If you don’t know where to start, start with some of my fellow bloggers listed on my blogroll (located on the right margin of this blog).  They are an excellent resource.  Otherwise, go out and eat.  And please, report back!

You will find my restaurant log returned to its prior state.  That same “restaurants” link is permanently affixed to the top right corner of this blog under “stuff.”

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* I don’t face these problems alone.  My friends and fellow bloggers, Chuck of chuckeats and Adam of A Life Worth Eating, struggle with the same issues.  We’ve huddled over this matter, the three of us.  Together, we’ve brainstormed for ways to give our readers a helpful guide while avoiding all the pitfalls and dangers of lists and rankings.  We even devised a number of formulas in an attempt to compute and composite our dining experiences.  But, ultimately, we did not feel like our methods were sound enough.  While the results generally represented our collective opinions about where we like to eat, there were outliers and gaps.  We proposed handicaps (for example, this was a recurring issue: one of us would give very high marks to a restaurant that the other two had never visited) and adjustments to compensate for the skew.  We debated how often we should update our scores (we three eat out a lot).  And we went back and forth on how the results should be presented (I was strongly against ranking the results, rather listing the highest-scoring restaurants alphabetically).  In the end, we abandoned the project because we felt that we couldn’t justify the results to our own satisfaction.***

** The best food writers aren’t those with whom I agree.  They’re the ones who are knowledgeable and consistent.  Because when a writer is knowledgeable, I trust them, and when they’re consistent, then I know how to orient myself in relation to them.

*** I believe that an autocracy is a more efficient and superior form of governance than a democracy.  But an autocracy is really only superior if the autocrat is benevolent (or, as Voltaire would have described the great Russian Empress Catherine II, “enlightened”).  In the same way, most popular restaurant guides, rankings, and lists fall victim to the inefficiencies of the democratic process.  Too many opinions (which usually includes a hearty helping of the lowest common denominator) muddy the waters too much to produce results that are useful or even helpful.  The popular vote is rarely the informed vote.

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My friend Tomo knows I have a hard time finding clothes that fit.  So, she took me to Isetan.

Isetan is a high-end department store in Tokyo’s hyper-commercialized Shinjuku ward (the department store is located next to Shinjuku Station, the busiest train station in the world).  The leather and laces lining the walls of its shoe section, alone, overwhelm, not to mention the collection of couture on the rest of the seven floors, which occupy an entire city block.  And that’s just the men’s department.  The women’s department is in a separate building.  Boasting an amazing roster of labels, Isetan is a sartorial wonderland that offers a glimpse into the Japanese obsession over quality, exclusivity, and variety.

While the upper floors at Isetan are devoted to treads and threads, the basement caters to your bec fin.

The food halls beneath Japanese department stores are legendary.  And not surprisingly, the one at Isetan is particularly impressive.  Not unlike the fine collection of stitches assembled on the floors above, on the lowest level are gathered the highest quality food products from around the world: jamon from Spain, seafood from Hokkaido, caviar from Russia, and, because the Japanese have a love affair with the French, a cellar of premier and grand cru wines from Bordeaux and Burgundy (on tap, up to ¥5,000 for a taste), confections from the top names in Paris (you’ll find both Hediard and Pierre Hermé, for example), and more.

You will find counters specializing in rice (you can buy rice with varying degrees of polish), cheese, miso, pickles, kasuzuke (fish marinated in sake lees), bread, sake, shrimp crackers – the inventory is both incredible and endless.  And of course, because the Japanese also love anything that’s cute and pretty, there’s an indulgent sprawl of square footage devoted to sweets, both Asian and European (besides macarons and French pastries, buttery baumkuchen, for example, is wildly popular among the Japanese).

The place is immaculate.  Everything is packaged beautifully and arranged with mechanical order.  Aided by the fact that much of the food on display is represented by odorless plastic models, there are no errant smells.  And the clerks are efficient and incredibly polite.

Every aspect of the Isetan experience is thoughtfully designed with the customer in mind.  The only thing missing is a place for customers to sit and enjoy the food they buy.  But then, I suppose, no one would ever leave.

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There’s a scene from the documentary “Scatter My Ashes at Bergdorf’s” in which Ally Hilfiger – the daughter of designer Tommy Hilfiger - presents her clothing line (branded as NAHM) to Linda Fargo, the gatekeeper at the celebrated department store Bergdorf Goodman on Fifth Avenue in New York City (I believe Fargo’s actual title at Bergdorf Goodman is Director of Fashion).  As countless designers – from Blahnik to Louboutin, from Wang to von Furstenberg - attest in the documentary, getting your clothes onto the racks at Bergdorf Goodman can make or break your career.  Isaac Mizrahi says in an interview about the store, “If your clothes are not at that place, then they have no future. There’s no future for those clothes. Sorry.” (In the documentary, Fargo declined the NAHM label. Hilfiger and her design partner subsequently closed their clothing line.)

When Ally Hilfiger pulls out one of her pieces for Fargo, the first thing Fargo does is reach out to touch the fabric, to inspect the seams.  She’s looking for quality.  But this is couture, I thought to myself.  Couture is out of fashion as soon as it hits the racks.  Why would anyone care about the quality?  You don’t need these clothes to last more than one season.  In some cases, you don’t need them to last more than one outing.

Because, I reminded myself, couture transcends practicality and utility.  Couture is luxury.  And with luxury, quality is all that matters.  Quality is timeless.

The reason Fargo has become such an influential gatekeeper, and the reason why having your clothes on the racks at Bergdorf Goodman has become a standard by which the fashion industry measures success is because Fargo and Bergdorf Goodman have established themselves as trusted arbiters of quality and style.

That scene of Fargo inspecting Hilfiger’s dress replayed in my mind repeatedly during my recent, two-week trip to Japan, where so much of what I encountered – food, service, drink – everything – was the product of an incredible amount of thought and care.  Japan is a society devoted to luxury.  The low bar here is set incredibly high.  High-quality, of both craftsmanship and service, is such a normal and expected part of life in Japan that all the Japanese have left to pursue is presentation.*  That is why everything there is so beautiful.  And that is also why I, and I suspect why so many, have fallen in love with Japan.

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2014 is already a third over and I’ve barely written about it.

This year, I’ve already been to San Francisco thrice: once to present at this year’s Wine Writers Symposium, once to photograph the second annual Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine dinner at l’Auberge Carmel, and once for a wedding.

In early March, I stopped in Paris for a couple of days to nosh and nibble with friends before heading up to the Belgian countryside for a whirlwind tour of three terrific restaurants.  And then it was off to Norway for a week – first to sleepy Bergen on the west coast, and then to bustling Oslo on the east coast, with a breathtaking train ride through the Norwegian mountains in between.

And two days ago, I returned from Austin, Texas, where I stopped for a short, three-day trip to photograph the first Music To Your Mouth event outside of the Inn at Palmetto Bluff.  The dinner was held at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff’s sister property  - Rough Hollow – with chefs Brandon Carter and Ashley Cope (of the Inn at Palmetto Bluff), Jeffrey Hundelt (of Rough Hollow), and John Currence (of City Grocery and Big Bad Breakfast in Oxford, Mississippi) cooking.

I intend to write about all of those trips soon.

But first, Japan.

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I have my friend Tomo to thank for this, my first trip to Japan.  Tomo writes the highly informative blog TomoStyle.  (For an amazing feed of Japanese cuisine, follow her on Twitter at @DrTomoStyle.)

Tomo was my reservationist, my guide, my translator, and all around host.  She added context, depth, and direction to what would otherwise have been a messy attempt to navigate and understand the Japanese culture on my own.  I can’t thank her enough.

Months before my trip, she asked me what I wanted to see and eat.  I gave her a short list and asked her to fill in the rest.  Unsurprisingly, she prepared an itinerary that exceeded my wildest expectations.   In two weeks, we ate at over two-dozen restaurants in three cities – Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka – that, collectively, represented nearly as many Michelin stars.  We hopped from pastry shop to coffee shop to pastry shop to cocktail bar, and grazed through many markets and food halls.

The Japanese love to specialize and specify.  So, you will find restaurants dedicated to cooking anything and everything.  On the way to dinner one night, Tomo took me down an alleyway of eateries, each one specializing in the animal named on the lantern hung outside: horse, cow, pig, chicken, and blowfish just to name a few.

While my eating tour of Japan was hardly comprehensive, I covered a fair amount of ground.  We had yakitori, ramen, sushi, shabu shabu, and multiple kaiseki dinners.  We went to restaurants specializing in soba, kasuzuke, Japanese curry, tofu, tonkatsu, tempura, and yuba.  Tomo even introduced me to the Japanese “breakfast set,” a shockingly inexpensive way to start the day.  At Kohikan, a diner of sorts, with the purchase of coffee or tea (which costs around $3.00), for an additional $1.50, you can add a breakfast plate that includes a thick slab of buttery toast, your choice of breakfast meat, eggs your way, and a tiny salad.  And all of it was very, very good.  The coffee (estate, of course) was dark and strong, and the eggs, both of the scrambled and sunny-side variety, were textbook.

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We did much more than just eat.  In between meals and snacks, Tomo introduced me to multiple facets of Japanese culture.

One day, Tomo called upon a family friend, a tour guide in Kyoto, who drove us to some of the major temples in that ancient capital city.  Another day, she took me to Akihabara, also known as “Electric Town,” a district of Tokyo spread over six or seven city blocks devoted to everything electronics, digital, and anime (for someone who is outside of that subculture, it’s an eye-opener).

One afternoon, we walked through a bamboo forest and enjoyed the sun on the banks of a lazy river.  Later that day, we partook in a Japanese tea ceremony, and learned about that religious rite.

And almost daily, we shopped.   The shopping opportunities in Japan are incredible.

I peeled off on my own for a few hours one day to see the “15 Minutes of Fame” Andy Warhol exhibit on the 53rd floor of the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills (yes, this modern art museum is on the top two floors of a tower).  Unfortunately, the exhibit closes this week (May 6), but if you’re in Tokyo, I highly recommend it.  It’s the largest collection of Warhol’s art ever to be assembled in Japan.  It’ll take you a good hour to get through the exhibit at a clip, twice or thrice as long if you want to be more thorough.

For the first time in history, certain parts of the Imperial grounds, heretofore private, were opened to the public for cherry blossom viewing.  So, early one morning, I braved the masses – mostly comprised of Mainland Chinese tourists – for a visit to the Imperial Palace.  The crowds were unbearable, so I headed to Échiré, Maison du Beurre, a pastry shop featuring baked goods made from that famous French butter.  I stood on line for the better part of an hour for their golden-brown croissants and the free smells.  You’ve never smelled butter like this.

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One of the first things that I learned about the Japanese is that they are obsessive.  They obsess over quality, they obsess over variety, they obsess over whatever foreign trend is ascending at the moment**, and they obsess over whatever is in season.  Tomo told me that I had better be prepared to eat a lot of clams, because it was clam season.  And boy was she right.  I was up to my eyeballs in clams: surf clams, giant clams, geoduck clams, this clam, that clam.   There were itty bitty clams that were served in a brown broth, supposedly good for your liver.  There were meaty, peachy-pink clams that secreted a blood-like liquid.   I had raw clams, cooked clams, clams in soup, clams with rice, tempura-fried clams.  Clams here.  Clams there.  Clams, clams, clams,  and more clams.  I had lots of clams.

Bamboo shoot was also in season, so I had a lot of that as well.  I had it in soup, in rice, and tempura-fried.

Once a year, the bioluminescent firefly squid surface from the deep in Toyama Bay to mate.  Fishermen await their arrival, as do the Japanese who love to eat them.  I had the tiny, quarter-sized squid prepared in quite a few ways at number of the restaurants I visited.  At Sushisho Masa, they grilled the squid and served them with a spoonful of the creamy noggin that had oozed out of the cap, slightly caramelized.

I was also in Japan during the first of two annual runs for the bonito fish.  So, I saw a considerable amount of bonito too.

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It was cherry blossom season. So cherry blossoms (“sakura” in Japanese) were everywhere and in everything.  I had sakura tea, sakura bread, sakura in my rice, sakura-glazed waffles, sakura éclairs, sakura chiffon cake, sakura macarons. McDonald’s was offering a special “sakura burger” (with a daikon bun).  Even Häagen-Dazs was selling sakura ice cream during the short-lived but intensely celebrated cherry blossom season.

The streets of Tokyo and Kyoto were lined with cherry blossoms.  And everywhere the cherry blossoms were, there the people gathered in large numbers to see, to marvel, and to obsess.  Companies would send their junior members to camp out for hours (overnight even, according to Tomo) to secure prime real estate in parks for their executives to picnic under a canopy of blossoms.

One day, Tomo and I mounted our own picnic in Chidorigafuchi Park (in which resides the famous Budokan arena), indisputably one of the best places in Tokyo to see cherry blossoms.   We ate karaage (fried chicken that we bought from a walk-up) and onigiri (that we got from 7-11) on a lawn with families, big and small, and a congress of tailored suits on a tarp.  Afterwards, we shuffled our way around the park among a slow-moving river of people, showered by a confetti of petals, to obsess along with them.

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But this obsession of the Japanese, intense, and at times infectious, worries me.

While I admire the Japanese drive to achieve and attain the best, I also fear their insatiable appetite for it.  What is enough?  When is enough?

I have to hope that the Japanese are wise enough to leave sufficient numbers of firefly squid in Toyama Bay for them to continue their kind.  I have to trust that the mounds of bluefin tuna caracasses I saw at Tsukiji Market aren’t wantonly got.  And the rows of gleaming, crisp packages of whatnot that stretch as far as the eye can see at the food markets and food halls in department stores high and low – who’s buying all of that beautiful product?   Hopefully, it’s more than just a boastful display of quantity, quality, and presentation.*

The Japanese are consumers.  And I’m hoping they’re consuming responsibly – I simply don’t have the data to say that they are or they aren’t.  Otherwise, they steer a dangerous course towards excess, waste, and ruin.

Admirable in so many ways, the Japanese culture, in my opinion, has become over-romanticized by Westerners, especially chefs.  Some of the same chefs who beat the sustainability gong loudly in their home countries seem not to question the Japanese, whom they idolize and praise, on the same issue.  I, on the other hand, found myself compartmentalizing my love and fear of the Japanese pursuit of perfection.

There is so much that I want to tell you about my trip to Japan that I am forced to break my tale into parts.  I’ll devote an entire post to Tokyo, if not two.  And I’ll also be writing a separate post for each Kyoto and Osaka.

In the meantime, I give a list of the restaurants I visited in Japan:

KYOTO

Ifuki (いふき)
Kichisen (吉泉)
Souhonke Yudofu Okutan Kiyomizu (総本家ゆどうふ奥丹清水)

OSAKA

Mille Caresses
Taian (太庵)

TOKYO

Butagumi (豚組) (Nishi-Azabu)
Den (表参道) (Jimbocho)
Fukamachi (深町) (Ginza)
Hiroo No Curry (広尾のカレー) (Hiroo)
Ishibashi (石ばし) (Bunkyo-ku)
Ishikawa (わか石) (Kagurazaka)
Kohikan (Kagurazaka)
Kyoraku-tei (蕎楽亭) (Kagurazaka)
l’Atelier de Joël Robuchon (Roppongi)
Matsukawa (松川) (Tokyo)
Mojo (Kagurazaka) (once, twice, thrice)
Nihonryori Ryugin (龍吟) (Roppongi)
Shabu Gen (Nishi-Abazu)
Sushi Mizutani (水谷) (Ginza)
Sushisho Masa (Nishi-Abazu)
Toritama (酉玉) (Kagurazaka)
Uokyu (魚久) (Ginza)
Yubasen (Kyoto)

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* I have heard it said that the poor focus on quantity, the middle-class focuses on quality, and the rich, who have access to both quantity and quality, have the luxury of focusing on presentation.  How true that is.

** While I was there, pancakes were all the rage. I witnessed quite a few pancake houses with lines promising a two to three-hour wait.  The lines of excited diners stretched for blocks. The American entrepreneurial spirit stirred in me: it’s time to introduce the Japanese to Aunt Jamima!

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PHOTOS: Salted cherry blossom tea at Matsukawa in Tokyo; a gentlemen surveys the dress shoes at the Men’s Isetan in Shinjuku, Tokyo; couples row the lake at Chidorigafuchi park, aglow with cherry blossoms, Tokyo; Tomo in silhouette, Souhonke Yudofu Okutan Kiyomizu in Kyoto; a thousand vermillion torii at the Fushimi Inari Shrine in Kyoto; street eateries in Tokyo; a bicyclist rides down a sakura-lined boulevard in Kyoto; a cart stacked with bluefin tuna heads at Tsukiji Market in Tokyo.

There are a couple of upcoming charity events in Kansas City that I’m helping to organize, and I’d like to tell you about them.

One of them – the Harvesters Chefs Classic – I have helped organize for a few years now.  The other one, the Child Protection Center’s Cook for Courage event, is a new one that I helped create this year.

CPC COOK FOR COURAGE

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My sister is a television news reporter in Kansas City. She encounters sad stories every day. Even sadder, many of them involve children. So, my sister joined the board of the Child Protection Center (CPC), Kansas City’s nationally accredited child advocacy center that provides forensic interviews for children from Jackson, Cass, and Lafayette counties who are victims of sexual or severe physical abuse, neglect, or who have witnessed homicide or extreme violence. She and her fellow committee members asked me to join the planning committee for their first annual keystone fundraising event – Cook for Courage. I was happy help.

On Sunday, May 18, 2014, six Kansas City chefs will fire up their smokers for a barbecue rib competition.  Each chef will also prepare a side dish.  I, along with former Chiefs quarterback Trent Green; Robb Heineman, CEO of Sporting Club; and Danny O’Neil, owner The Roasterie, will serve as local “celebrity” judges, along with the highest bidder for a fifth guest judge’s seat.  Please come and support this great cause that truly doesn’t get enough attention.  For more information and to purchase tickets, please visit the CPC website.

RYAN BRAZEAL
(novel)

MICHAEL CORVINO
(The American Restaurant)

COLBY GARRELTS
(bluestem and rye)

HOWARD HANNA
(The Rieger Grill & Exchange and ça va)

PATRICK RYAN
(Port Fonda)

CELINA TIO
(Julian, Collection, and The Belfry)

Here is a promotional video for the event.

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HARVESTERS CHEFS CLASSIC

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The Chefs Classic, held in late June, raises money for Harvester’s, a food bank in the greater Kansas City area. I have served on the event’s planning committee for the past three years.

Every year, the chef of The American Restaurant (now Michael Corvino) and I invite three guest chefs from Kansas City, and three from abroad. In the years that I’ve sat on the committee, I’ve helped invite chefs like Sean Brock (Husk and McCrady’s), Curtis Duffy (then at Avenues, now at Grace), Shawn Gawle (then pastry chef at corton, now at saison), William Bradley (Addison at the Grand Del Mar), Michael Laiskonis (then pastry chef at le Bernardin), Matthias Merges (yusho), Kelly English (Iris), Nancy Olson (then pastry chef of Gramercy Tavern), and Vinny Dotolo (Animal) to Kansas City.

You’ll find photos of last year’s dinner here.

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This year, we are pleased to welcome the following chefs to Kansas City for the 2014 Chefs Classic, which will be held on Sunday, June 29 at The American Restaurant (for reservations, please visit the Harvester’s website):

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JONATHAN JUSTUS
(Passed Hors d’Oeuvres)
(Justus Drugstore; Smithville, Missouri)

RYAN BRAZEAL
(Novel; Kansas City, Missouri)

MICHAEL CORVINO 
(The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)

COLBY GARRELTS
(bluestem and rye; Kansas City, Missouri and Leawood, Kansas)

DEBBIE GOLD
(Formely of The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)

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GERARD CRAFT
(niche and Pasteria; St. Louis, Missouri)

GAVIN KAYSEN
(Soon to be at Merchant; Minneapolis, Minnesota)

STEPHANIE PRIDA
(Manresa; Los Gatos, California)

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Past honorary chairs of the Harvesters Chefs Classic have included Clark Hunt, Chairman of the Kansas City Chiefs; Joe and Carol Suhor; and Carla and Danny O’Neill, owners of The Roasterie.  This year, Kent Sunderland of Ash Grove Cement Company will serve as the honorary chair of the event.

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Realizing that I’ve traveled far more this year than time has allowed me to record and report, I’ve decided to set aside chronology and just write.  After a poor posting record in the first half of this year, I’m picking my blog back up with my latest trip: Washington, D.C.

Two weeks ago, I was at the International Biscuit Festival in Knoxville, Tennessee (an event about which I hope to write soon) talking with Joe Yonan, the food editor of the Washington Post (and author of “Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook“).  I told him I was heading to D.C. and shared with him my frustration that most of the restaurants I wanted to visit don’t take reservations.  To that point, Yonan noted, Tom Sietsema, the restaurant critic for the Washington Post, was publishing an article the very next day addressing that trend.  (It appeared in the Washington Post online edition on May 15, 2014 entitled “No reservations? This restaurant trend has become harder to swallow.”)

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I agree with Sietsema that the no-reservation policy is fairly one-sided, heavily pro-restaurant.  Not having to commit your tables is a huge win for restaurateurs.  It ensures that fewer seats sit empty due to no-call, no-shows. It also enables a restaurant to accommodate more diners, since tables can turn as soon as they become available, a point that restaurants claim is a win-win for both restaurant and customer.

Restaurants are also quick to claim that the no-reservation policy is customer-friendly because it levels the playing field for diners – first-come, first-serve regardless of rank or class.  But I find the argument for egalitarianism to be misleading and convenient.  Sietsema notes that no-reservation policies deter certain segments of society from dining out: the elderly, for example.

Proponents of the no-reservation policy also fetishize the fact that it favors neighborhood diners, who are less-burdened by potential wait-times, and are generally more flexible due to proximity.  As a resident of Capitol Hill, where his restaurant is located, this point is particularly important to Aaron Silverman, chef of Rose’s Luxury, one of the restaurants that Sietsma mentions in his article.  As Silverman explained to me, not taking reservations prevents out-of-towers, or even people from other neighborhoods, from reserving tables that would otherwise go to the people in the restaurant’s immediate community.  I applaud the neighborly spirit.  But, what about bringing dollars from outside of your community into your community?  And what about out-of-towners?  That’s another slice of potential business that goes in the bin.

To a member of the dining public like me, who happens to do most of my eating as an out-of-towner, the no-reservation policy is an unfriendly policy.  I already make considerable concessions to accommodate my eating habits, which are admittedly abnormal and extreme.  And I do so willingly, because I value the experience of eating out more than other pleasures.  But even I have my limits.  I want to be able to plan my day.  I want a sure bet, especially when I’m traveling.

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Upon discovering that I was in D.C., Silverman reached out to me, asking if I was going to make it to Rose’s Luxury on this visit.  If I was interested, he also offered to provide “advice” on how to get in (which I found both flattering and mildly insulting).  I thanked him for his offer and told him that I would try my luck as a walk-in.  This is, after all, an egalitarian policy, no?

Despite Silverman’s suggestion that I arrive by 17.00 to be assured relatively quick seating, I didn’t get to Rose’s Luxury until closer to 18.00.  I was on vacation with my brother, who rarely gets to travel.  We wanted to see the sites, and squeeze every moment out of our day.  (If you haven’t been to the Newseum, I highly recommend it, especially for the Pulitzer Prize-winning photography section and the 9/11 exhibit, both of which had my heart in my throat.  It was so engrossing, the amount of information there so overwhelming, that we stayed right up until the museum closed.)  And quite frankly, we weren’t hungry at 17.00.

But I really did want to eat at Rose’s Luxury, which came highly recommended by many.  So, we made the effort and got to the restaurant closer to 18.00 on that Saturday night.  By then,  the reservationist was estimating a two-and-half-hour wait. That was far longer than I wanted to bar hop in the neighborhood (which, by the way, has gentrified considerably since I lived there in the late nineties, just four blocks away on 4th Street, N.W. between D and E Streets.).  And the thought of going all the way back to our hotel to have a moment of rest before having to head back to the restaurant seemed even less appealing.  Besides, we had an early morning flight.

Having anticipated this scenario, I had a plenty of contingency plans.

We left Rose’s Luxury and headed in the general direction of our hotel and landed at Etto, a restaurant near Logan Circle that Nate Appleman had recommended to me a few weeks earlier.  Etto doesn’t take reservations either.  But luckily, at 19.00 on that Saturday night, there were a few empty tables and we were seated immediately.  Soon thereafter, the restaurant filled up and a short line began to form.

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The salads we had at Etto were great. One focused on the crisp and crunch of celery and super-fresh walnuts.  Another brought shaved porcini and Pecorino together with cress; an unexpectedly delicious meeting of beefy, nutty, bitter. Both salads were coated in velvety olive oil and stung by the high, bright acidity of lemon.

The pizzas were pretty good too.  Morels starred in the pizza special of the day.  On the “Alla Romana,” milky mozzarella buffered the saltiness of anchovies and olives.  The fillings on both pizzas were evenly spread across a field of tangy tomato sauce and ringed by knobby, blistered crust.  The dough was nice and elastic, perhaps a bit more wet in the center than I like, but certainly not as soupy as traditional, neapolitan-style pizza.

I think the peach crostata had spent a little too much time in the oven - the crust was a little dark, and the filling had become more jammy than juicy.

The far more interesting dessert was the scoop of San Daniele prosciutto ice cream with candied pistachios that I ordered out of curiosity.  It was undeniably hammy, and surprisingly good.  Perhaps a drizzle of fruity olive oil might have made it even better.

The servers were all very friendly and upbeat, although the young lady who was assigned to our table was rather forgetful. I had to ask twice for the condiments she offered. And my coffee never arrived.

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Shingled in skateboards and lined with graffiti, the inside of Toki Underground, a “Taiwanese ramen and dumpling house,” reads more like a page out of the grunge culture of Austin, Texas than Washington, D.C.  Then again, I’m not quite sure what a restaurant on this “resurgent” stretch of H Street, N.E. – a narrow corridor dubbed the “Atlas District” – might look like anyway since I never visited this part of town in the three years I lived in the city.

You might miss the restaurant entirely from the outside if you’re not paying attention to street numbers.  Nothing that I saw indicated that the second floor of this narrow row house was a restaurant.

Although neither of my parents – both of whom are “Mainlanders” by heritage but raised in Taiwan – would likely consider the food at Toki Underground to be authentically Taiwanese, they would surely appreciate it as a colorful expression of the unique commingling of the Chinese and Japanese cultures that resulted from fifty years of Japanese imperial occupation of the island in the first half of the 20th Century.

The menu is simple: gyoza (which we were told couldn’t be pan-fried at lunch, only steamed – that was a slight buzzkill), steamed buns (with nuggets of saucy, spicy fried chicken and really great pickles), a salad or two (the chilled tofu salad – a hiyayakko of sorts – was pretty good), and a half-dozen or so different ramen bowls.  The food was fresh, flavorful, and well-made.

Toki Underground is exclusively counter seating, and the space is quite small.  The restaurant, which serves both lunch and dinner, doesn’t take reservations, and I’ve heard the wait can be quite long.  We arrived around 13.00 on a weekday and found the place half-empty.

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I worked for a U.S. Senator on Capitol Hill both pre-9/11, when the general public could walk off the streets of D.C., through a metal detector, and straight into the rotunda; and post-9/11, when a rapidly increasing number of restrictions were placed on both the public and staff members.  I worked through the anthrax scare, when all of the mail came pre-radiated and pre-snipped.  And I lived through the D.C. sniper stint, when every other car suddenly seemed to be a creepy, unmarked white van.

I remember driving past the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue.  And I remember when they closed that entire block to street traffic.

I saw a lot of changes to D.C. when I lived there. But in the decade-plus since I left, I’m amazed by how much more the city has changed.

Ten years ago, the restaurant scene in D.C., especially at the high end, was just starting to move.  Over the course of two trips to the city since – I took a short trip there in 2010, and made an even shorter, one-day pop-in in 2012 for lunch – I watched it expand at an exponential rate, mostly from afar.

I couldn’t afford to eat at Maestro when I lived in D.C.  That was Fabio Trabocchi’s fancy Italian restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner, where he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef Mid-Atlantic in 2006.  Then he moved to New York to take over Fiamma, where he earned a Michelin star.  But before I could get there, he headed uptown to take over the kitchen at the storied Four Seasons restaurant.  I dallied, he sprinted.  Within three months of starting at Four Seasons, he was gone.  I had missed him once again.

So, after a decade of chasing Trabocchi, on a beautiful, breezy day, I finally landed at a table on the patio of Fiola, the restaurant he opened in Penn Quarter after returning to D.C. in 2012.

We ordered three pastas, all made in house.  They were great, especially the bowl of smoked potato and nettle gnocchi, peas, and favas bound together by a creamy sauce that seemed to be equal parts butter and Caciocavallo cheese.  Thick slices of lamb leg roulade were tender and juicy, served on a bed of grilled radicchio.  We finished our meal with an immensely fragrant scoop of opal basil gelato over which were spooned a syrupy stew of roasted strawberries, still warm.  I’d go back just for that, and the swagger of our European servers, whose deadpan confidence was both refreshing and entertaining.

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The pastas at Bryan Voltaggio’s Aggio were also the highlight of that meal.  His ragu pomodoro was sweeter and more tart than I expected.  But with the meatballs – a finely ground mix of veal and mortadella – it seemed strangely right.  A twirl of inky spaghetti came with a squid bolognese that was every bit as lusty and hearty as its meatier origins.  More straightforward was the cacio e pepe, which was simple, but terrific: the right amount of cheese, the right amount of butter, and the right amount of pepper.

What began as a three-course dinner (we each ordered an antipasti, pasta, and secondi) Voltaggio turned into a six-course tasting (disclaimer: we only paid for what we ordered).

I was told that Aggio’s chef de cuisine, Johnny Miele, doubles as pastry chef.  His level of craftsmanship in this department was unexpectedly good, although the chocolate shell on the “Chocolate-Hazelnut” dessert was too thick, making the dessert more of an architectural curiosity than an edible dessert.  Like the plates that preceded them, the desserts were elegantly plated, well-made, flavorful, and help nudge American-Italian cuisine toward a fresher, lighter, and more modern sensibility.

Aggio is located inside Range, Voltaggio’s steakhouse concept inside the Chevy Chase Pavilion, just across the street from the Friendship Heights metro station.  The restaurant takes reservations.

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A morning in Georgetown nearly ended at my usual, go-to spot: Booeymonger on the corner of Prospect and Potomac.  It’s a casual breakfast and lunch sandwich shop that has, since I started eating there in the late nineties, replicated itself in other parts of the district.  I always get the “Gatsby Arrow,” which puts roast beef and Brie cheese together in a French baguette.  You can order the sandwich cold, or have it warmed so the cheese goes melty.

But, I noticed that a Luke’s Lobster “shack” (the same ownership as the ones in New York City) had popped up on Prospect Street a couple of blocks away.  It was sunny, and summery, and I was feeling for a lobster roll.  So I got one.  We also ordered lobster grilled cheese – two slices of white bread and chunks of lobster meat laminated together with Gruyere – and blueberry soda. It was a quick, convenient, and delicious lunch.

Georgetown was unusually quiet that weekend.  So I assumed that the university had already let out for summer vacation, although I did witness a Georgetown coed drop her Amex black at a till in town.  These are times in which we live.

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The restaurant in D.C. I most wanted to visit was Little Serow, Johnny Monis’s Thai eatery just downstairs of his acclaimed Komi near Dupont Circle, where I had dinner in 2010.

Little Serow doesn’t take reservations. And by all accounts, the wait for a table can stretch into hours.  My friend, Balz, who is a regular there, urged me to get there early – like 16.30 early, an hour before the restaurant opens.  Thankfully, there wasn’t a wait when we arrived closer to 18.00 on a weekday night.  There were a few seats open at the counter, to which we were taken immediately.

Monis doesn’t allow photography inside komi.  Thankfully, he allows (no-flash) photography inside Little Serow, which is a surprisingly spartan, but lovely space.  Off the hot streets of D.C., the dimly lit interior, with light-turquoise painted-brick walls trimmed with white, enamel-coated fixtures is soothing, an effect that also seems to help temper the spiciness of the food there.

The set menu of seven courses ($45) changes weekly, and is served family-style.  My favorite dishes included a cold salad of shaved pork cheek with herbs and fresh noodles in a sweet and spicy dressing.  There was also a terrific cold salad of crispy tofu tossed with cilantro, cilantro root and peanuts that our server warned would start of mild, but by the third bite, would set our “faces on fire, just a little bit.”  She was right.

The shredded duck meat, mixed with Chinese long beans and basil and topped with a duck egg that spilled its velvety yolk upon entry, was surprisingly tender.  The pork ribs at the end, served with mekhong whiskey sauce beneath an avalanche of shaved red onions and dill, were fatty and flavorful, but mild, a mindfully tapering heat for the homestretch.  Everything was great, including the service, which was both efficient and friendly.  Our server Jill even tipped me off to a wonderful exhibit at my favorite museum in town, the National Portrait Gallery.  “American Cool” explores the concept of being “cool,” a specifically American term that, as the curators of this exhibit describe, “carries a social charge of rebellious self-expression, charisma, edge and mystery.”  The exhibit displays photograph portraits of the “coolest” Americans in the last century.  If you can’t make it to D.C. by the time the exhibit wraps in early September, you’ll find it bound in this book by the same name.

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What was a town dominated a decade ago by mediocre, overpriced restaurants fueled by fat cats with expense accounts and no taste, D.C., from what little of it that I’ve experienced in the past few years, is doing much better now.  At least a half-dozen restaurants there remain on my bucket list, including Restaurant Eve in Alexandria, José Andrés’s Zaytinya and Oyamel, Izakaya Seki, Rasika, Red Hen, and, of course, Rose’s Luxury.

Here are the restaurants that I visited on this trip to Washington, D.C.  Each entry is hyperlinked to the photos of my meal there.

Aggio (Friendship Heights)
Birch & Barley (Logan Circle)
Etto (Logan Circle)
Fiola (Penn Quarter)
Little Serow (Dupont Circle)
Luke’s Lobster (Georgetown)
Toki Underground (Atlas District)

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PHOTOS: Colorful row houses in Georgetown; the White House; the wavy skylight-enclosed courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery; pizzas at Etto near Logan Circle; the graffitied interior of Toki Underground; opal basil ice cream with roasted strawberries at Fiola; spaghetti and meatballs at Aggio; the chalkboard menu at Luke’s Lobster in Georgetown; the soothing interior of Little Serow; and the “American Cool” exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery.

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When a volley of pink blossoms overtakes Gramercy Tavern and the big, picture-windows on Fifth Avenue begin blushing with brighter, bolder colors; when chefs get grabby for ramps and peas at the Union Square greenmarket, and the walls at casa mono finally swing open to seduce those turning the corner of 17th and Irving with the smell of pork and clams; when asparagus and morels make their vernal debut at Jean-Georges, and the Seussical flock on a field of seersucker and roses at Madison Square Park to lap at a pool of bourbon and mint; when the crowds at Balthazar and Barbuto begin spilling onto the sidewalk, and Central Park fills with rowboats and tourists, I get excited.

New York in May: for eight years, it’s been the only trip that has been permanently affixed to my travel calendar.  What began as a weekend jaunt to attend the James Beard Awards nearly a decade ago has, for me, and for the many who find themselves in the city that first weekend of the month, become an annual excuse to visit New York, to see friends who have gathered there from near and far, and to table-hop high and low.  Although Monday night at Lincoln Center may be the reason for the season, it’s rarely the highlight, eclipsed by the weekend’s lingering lunches that bleed into a succession of cocktail hours, dinners, and assorted asshattery and hot messery, to which I have learned to give a wide berth.

No other weekend brings the restaurant industry together – the bigwigs and we, the insignificant satellites who trace the periphery, alike – for a city-wide eat-and-drink on this scale.  At its best, it’s the greatest culinary social of the year.  At the same time, no other weekend does more to commercialize, commoditize, congratulate, and, often, over-congratulate those in the culinary arts.  After eight years, cynicism has crept in.

Yet, I go. And for as long as I am able, I will continue going, because no other weekend fills me with as much anticipation and excitement, or comforts with as much familiarity as that weekend.

New York in May: for me, there is and will never be anything like it.

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But sadly, New York in May will be no more.  At least not next year.

Shortly after this year’s James Beard Awards, a ceremony that has been held in New York City since its inaugural run in 1990, the James Beard Foundation (JBF) announced that it will be moving its annual tradition and awards to Chicago next year.

Although there were whispers of this before the foundation’s official announcement, final confirmation of the change was welcomed news to many.  For nearly twenty-five years, the JBF Awards have made New York City the undisputed capital of America’s restaurant industry.  And many have complained that it’s unfair.  That weekend’s proceedings attract the nation’s industry tastemakers, kingmakers, and rainmakers, and monopolize the nation’s culinary spotlight, training it, year after year, on New York’s restaurants and chefs and bringing with it a windfall of press, recognition, and votes.

But, the JBF awards weekend (which also includes the JBF Journalism Awards, a separate ceremony that takes place a couple of nights before the chef awards ceremony and gala) also puts a huge burden on the city’s chefs and their restaurants.  The pressure to perform and impress is great.  And so is the financial commitment, as hometown hosts flood the city with a sea of bubbles and comps to welcome and fête, one-up and outdo.

As much attention as that weekend brings to their city, I’m sure there are quite a few New York chefs and restaurateurs who are a little relieved that the party is moving on.

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Me?  Although it is my opinion that no city in the U.S. (right now) can come close to offering as many options – both culinary and otherwise – or bear the weight of that weekend as effortlessly, or with the same sense of tradition and ownership as New York City has, I welcome the change of scenery.  Other cities and other chefs deserve the spotlight and the chance to perform, to impress, to one-up and outdo.

But I will miss New York in May, which has carved an irreplaceable mark in my heart’s calendar.

So allow me to indulge in it one last time and tell you about the week and a half I spent in New York earlier this month, filled with traditions, old and new, and perhaps ones long to be repeated again.

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Roast chicken and potato gnocchi at Barbuto, with the garage doors up and the sun out; a simple but beautiful lettuce salad shocked with steely vinaigrette to clear the way for short ribs and porchetta at il buco alimentari; olive oil gelato and a stiff espresso with Puccini on the speakers at Otto; and a quiet, mid-day break to meditate, alone, at Del Posto on the superb cooking of Mark Ladner and Brooks Headley, who always offer to cook for me, and who always leave me a little breathless: these are among the New York City pleasures and treasures, dependable and good, to which I gladly return, and return again.

Jean-Georges is an annual joy too, a tradition I hope to keep for years to come.  This year, I went with friends who had cause to celebrate.  And Jean-Georges did not disappoint.  (Disclaimer: they offered to cook for us, which turned into an entire tasting menu at lunch. The bill was discounted.)

And Casa Mono, where I ate three times on this trip, has become a familiar and favored perch in New York City as well.  The fideos are a must.  And this time, the Spanish anchovies, served on toast with ramps a touch of tomato – “Ibizan lifeguard-style” (a clever reference to Mario Batali’s calamari “Sicilian lifeguard-style,” as confirmed by Diego Moya, a line cook at Casa Mono) – were an easy repeat.

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For the sixth year in a row, I met the Wizard of Roz and her husband Mr. RBI for our annual, standing date at Eleven Madison Park to commemorate our first meeting there.  It was my eleventh visit to the restaurant and their one-hundred and fifth.  They’re regulars.

After seeing photos of my recent dinner there, someone asked whether Eleven Madison Park lives up to its “hype.”  Well, I answered, with all due respect to the team at that restaurant, which has achieved much and aspires for more, no restaurant can possibly live up to the amount of hype that has kidnapped all sense and reason formerly attached to restaurants at the high end, like this one.

But, that shouldn’t diminish the fact that Eleven Madison Park is always a classy act.  This latest menu turned a new chapter in the restaurant’s telling of the New York story, one that I haven’t always found entirely sincere or convincing.  Gone are the strange table-side carrot tartare (I found its connection to New York steakhouses tenuous) and the petits fours card trick (which was entertaining, but ultimately just a trick), replaced now with more organically grown, more recognizable slices of New York culinaria, like the Waldorf Salad.  This was presented table-side along with a reading of the recipe out of a first edition copy of “Oscar of the Waldorf Cookbook” (I was surprised to learn that the original recipe only calls for three ingredients: celery, apples, and mayonnaise).

Gone, too, is the Jewish appetizing set of smoked fish and pickles.  In its place now stands a fantastic pastrami “sandwich,” a page-turn on Houston Street, leafing over Russ & Daughter’s to its neighbor Katz’s Delicatessen.  And gone are the egg cream and the kitchen counter cocktail.  Instead, sno cones.  The ice is freshly flaked from an old-timey ice shaver that requires a bit of muscle and patience.  But the result is fantastic: crisp chips of ice that drink in the wonderful coconut-jasmine flavoring nicely without turning into slush.

Defending Eleven Madison Park against accusations that it’s too much dinner theater, that the program is too talky and scripted (I tend to agree with these charges, by the way), are truly delicious dishes that showcase the kitchen’s chops (now headed by Chris Flint).  To the skeptics and naysayers, the Elysian Fields lamb dish I had at this meal stands as a disarming rebuttal.  The rosy rounds were full of all of that wonderful terroir that food people talk about when they want a shortcut to describing great, natural flavor, here magnified in a generous rind of melty fat.  The lamb was accompanied by little more than a few, neat stacks of roasted lettuce and a little jus. It was the sort of simple but spectacular, and very adult-minded cooking that reminded me of Humm’s first few years at Eleven Madison Park, about which I am now wistful, and for which I now long.

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I missed Ignacio Mattos when he was chef at Isa (now closed).  And the word on the street about his cooking then and there makes me regret it.  Now he’s at Estela, cooking quirky, inventive, and flavorful food that was, the night I went, perhaps best represented in a flotilla of super-crisp Belgian endive leaves that sailed on a chopped mix of anchovies, walnuts and Ubriaco Rosso that, together, wasn’t quite granola or ground meat, and yet,  with the endive, prompted a strange and wonderful association to the lettuce cup.  There was a cloud of milky burrata on a raft of charred bread in a shallow pool of salsa verde that was more juicy than chunky, and incredibly herbaceous.  Into the beef tartare were mixed shards of crispy sunchoke chips that, together with the acid in the dressing, had a lovely salt and vinegar thing going on.  And an avalanche of potato chips over pork in a creamy ramp borani was like a meaty chip and dip all tossed together.

Despite warnings from quite a few people that the service at Estela can be wretched (not just bad, but actually wretched), we found nothing out of place.  Maybe it was because my (non-industry) friend, who was celebrating his birthday, was acquainted with the chef (who wasn’t in the kitchen by the time we arrived late, around 22.00), or the fact that quite a few industry kingpins – ones who would make any restaurant staff prim and perk – dotted the dining room.  Or maybe people just don’t know what they’re talking about.  We had a great time.

Contra has perfected the spartan look, both with its interior (it took me a few moments to figure out what to do with the bathroom door, it appearing at first to be nothing more than an outline on a wall) and its simple plating style, which showcases talented cooking and good ingredients.  The food wasn’t necessarily exciting, but, weeks later, I still think fondly of the slice of roast chicken I had there, served with little more than some softened scallion stalks.  Linda Milagros Violago, the nomadic sommelier, who I met years ago in London when she was working at Viajante, and who has also worked at Charlie Trotters and helped shaped the wine lists at Mugaritz, in de wulf, and, more recently, Geranium, created the opening wine list at Contra (she was also the first person to tell me about Contra, long before it opened).  And it has her fingerprints all over it.  Having since left the restaurant, Violago leaves a trail of small producers making natural wines that, like the five-course prix-fixe menu at Contra, are relatively affordable.  We ordered a couple of bottles of Radikon, a funky, rough-hewn, copper-colored juice that went well with our monkfish and meat alike.

Desserts at Contra were particularly great, especially a softened smear of lavender ice cream paved with jammy, Tri-Star strawberries.

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I never ate at Café Pushkin, from which Betony has inherited its winsome interior.  Café Pushkin occupied the current, Betony space for a hot, Midtown moment before chef Bryce Shuman and Betony’s general manager Eamon Rockey – both alumni of Eleven Madison Park – took over last year to critical acclaim.  The two-story space combines the urban look of exposed brick with Restoration-era curlicue to great affect (I can’t say I was as enthusiastic about the chocolate-brown tablecloth).

Because this dinner was a reunion among industry friends, one of whom – James Kent – was Shuman’s senior at Eleven Madison Park, and the other – Gavin Kaysen – a fellow New York City chef – it was certainly not representative of a “normal” experience, although I am fairly certain that all of the dishes we got were on the menu.  However, because Shuman cooked for us, we covered a larger portion of the menu in smaller, tasting portions.

Shuman’s Eleven Madison Park pedigree is palpable.  His plating is neat and clean, and so are his flavors.  I liked Shuman’s poached black bass, served in a warm, milky bath infused with saffron and fennel, for its unbelievably delicate texture, and loved his grilled short ribs for their hearty char and saucy flavor.  Desserts were the weaker link, in my opinion.  The flavors were bold and good but became muddled with time, as the softer components puddled together.

I’ll have to go back.

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Having cooked in Denmark for some time, Daniel Burns‘s set menu at Luksus is noticeably Nordic.  Burns might not want to hear that (or, maybe he doesn’t mind), but it’s an inescapable reference.  And, by no means, is it a bad one.  His cooking is precise - as seen in an impossibly thin, gossamer crisp that he tented over flakes of buttery hake.  And his flavors are true and taut, thoughtfully aligned: kohlrabi and sunchokes, nutty and sweet, paired in a dish that starred a fist of skate; field mustard and spring garlic, spicy and bitter, coupled in another dish that was enriched with shavings of cured egg yolk.

Tender and juicy were the slices of seared beef tongue that Burns served to us as a preview. The dish hadn’t gone on the menu yet, and Burns said that he was still tweaking it.  But I thought it was perfect the way it was, served with artichoke purée and a verdant sauce that reminded me of chimichurri.  It was, by far, my favorite dish of the night.  There was also a daringly spicy ginger sorbet, tangy with lime, that scrubbed out my mouth between meat and dessert.  It served its purpose well.  I loved it.

If there was one, great culinary coup that Burns pulled off, it was his bread, which was reminiscent of the bread that I know and loved of Denmark.  It had a wonderfully high crust-to-mie ratio, and was served with whipped, cultured butter.

Luksus is located at the back of Tørst, a Danish-inspired beer bar (of the same ownership) in Williamsburg from which Luksus gets its terrific beer pairings (they tend acidic and a tinge bitter).  Separated from the bar by a sliding door, the shoebox space accommodates six at the open kitchen counter, and perhaps a dozen or so more on the short row of two-tops that line the opposite wall.

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When I heard that Georgette Farkas, the doyenne of Dinex (Daniel Boulud’s restaurant group), was breaking off to open her own restaurant, I was confused.  She’s doing what?

But now it all makes sense.

Dinner at Rôtisserie Georgette with my friends Hungry Carly (former colleague of Farkas’s at Dinex) and Mango In The Sun was really great.  We ordered some roasted leeks and the duck à l’orange for two, which was presented whole, burnished and beautiful.  The leeks were thick and melted, smothered in chipped duck prosciutto and red wine vinaigrette.  The bird returned to our table, carved, on a silver platter: the meat was rosy and juicy, the skin glazed and glistening.

Executive chef Chad Brauze (who has cooked in both Boulud’s and Keller’s kitchens) filled our table with assorted pâtés (both en croute and mousseline, en gelée), crackling (from both duck and pork), meats, and a variety vegetables infused with the fat thereof (disclaimer: we only paid for what we ordered, which is a fraction of what arrived at our table; also, Ms. Farkas and I had worked with each other, only tangentially, when I was the photographer for the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation).  Everything was well-made, well-cooked, and well-presented (much of it on vintage pewter and porcelain).  Despite the restaurant’s meaty theme, some of my favorite dishes focused on vegetables, like a bundle of crispy pencil asparagus with blown-out tips that arrived bathing in velvety Hollandaise, or a generous hillock of tender fava beans that rose from a frothy surf of whipped crème fraîche, or a simple bowl of buttered peas.  A little dairy fat never hurts.

If, like us, you can only find room for one dessert at the end, make it the chocolate soufflé.  It’s fantastic.

From the look and feel of Rôtisserie Georgette, you’d think you were deep in Upper East Side country.  The night we were in, the restaurant churned with stock Upper East Side types – the kind of caricatures you’d find in The New Yorker cartoons, worldly and eccentric, some clawing at their fading youth with their wealth - who had descended from on high, skirting their southern frontier to support one of their own and to taste her roasted meats. Ms. Farkas is a consummate hostess and caters to her neighbors well. If they got what I got, their commute was worth it.

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Speaking of Daniel Boulud, Hungry Carly wooed me to the lounge at Daniel for a round of Ghaya Oliveira’s desserts.  Her menu is bifurcated: fruit-based desserts on the left, chocolate ones on the right.

Oliveira plates in geometric terms, and she tastes in color.  There was a Cubist, pastel-green vacherin of avocado, lime, and green apple.  It was cool to eat and cool to see.  On another plate, rows and circles of peachy-pink outlined a marriage of rhubarb and grapefruit. Together, it was more tangy than tart, and tasted as beautiful as it looked.

The Meyer lemon-Bayahibe chocolate mousse with milk chocolate cremeaux was a study in beige, ringed by a feathered halo of more milk chocolate.  Another, darker chocolate dessert, roasty with the aroma of coffee and fragrant with orange, mirrored the restaurant’s interior designer Adam Tihani’s circular motif.  My favorite dessert was the dark and sexy “Atome Rouge“: orbs of Tainori dark chocolate, capped with shiny glaçage and paired with red fruits; a revisionist’s Black forest.

And at the end, a basket of mini madeleines, powdered and perfect.

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One day, when the sky was particularly moody, my friends and I ducked into The Mercer Kitchen to escape the rain. They each ordered a glass of wine and I, to the great surprise and glee of our server, ordered a strawberry ice cream sundae (with brioche croutons) and another dessert involving salted caramel and bananas brulée.  We whiled away the afternoon, huddled around a small, zinc-topped table, watching tourists and shoppers scurry and hurry across the glint of wet cobblestones outside.

Another day, when it was dark and stormy, I met Dana Cowin for lunch at The Gander, chef Jesse Schenker‘s new restaurant in the Flatiron District.  Schenker also owns recette in the West Village.  The best thing I had there were the two, silky Santa Barbara spot prawns, anointed with some olive oil, that he sent out at the top of our meal.

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My college buddy Weissman was passing through town late one night.  He wanted to catch up. So I headed first to an early dinner with my friend Gerald San Jose (formerly with the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group) to get the latest on his upcoming restaurant Noreetuh, a partnership with Jin Ahn (formerly of per se and Jungsik, and, coincidentally, a former college teammate of mine).  It’s getting closer to showtime, he assured me.  In fact, if all goes as planned, the restaurant will be opening near Sushi Dojo in the East Village, where we had decided to meet for the $80 omakase sushi tasting that night. I really liked the rice at Sushi Dojo, which was slightly warmer than it is cool, and slightly tangier than not.  And the fish was pretty great too, especially for the price.  I say it’s a buy.

After dinner, I walked across the street to Empellon Cocina, where I met Weissman for a short round of tacos and the new, five-course dessert tasting that Alex Stupak recently started offering ($45).  I can’t say these desserts thrilled me the way his desserts at wd~50 did.  But they were all very good, especially one that put pistachios together with Chartreuse, pineapple, and candied angelica stem.  That one was awesome.

Before he left town, Weissman met me for a late breakfast at The Breslin, where, I’ve come to realize, I don’t eat often enough.  I had the three cheese breakfast sandwich, a steadying start to my day.  Not only were the two, generous slices of toast adhered together by a thick layer of cheese, with an egg in the basket*, but the entire sandwich was encrusted with a fine shell of melted cheese that had gone golden-brown and crisp.  It reminded me of the griddled sandwiches at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco.

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I met Wendy Weisman (not to be confused with my friend Weissman above) in Chile last year.  We were both invited to speak at FEGAM, a sustainable seafood conference in Valdivia, a city chosen for its proximity to a cluster of independent fishing communities along the rocky coast just north of Patagonia.  Ms. Weisman is a researcher who works with small-scale fisheries to find ways of shortening the supply chain and increasing transparency and sustainability in the seafood market.

She called me a few weeks before my recent trip to New York to tell me that she was co-organizing this year’s New York Sustainable Seafood Week.  Limited by a small budget, she was in need of a photographer who would be willing to donate time and talent to snap a few pictures at one of the events.  She asked if I could help.  By coincidence, the Sustainable Seafood Week overlapped my trip to the city, and I told her I’d be happy to pitch in.

The event Weisman asked me to attend and photograph was one of the week’s keystone events, the Sustainable Seafood Shindig, hosted this year by Tom Colicchio and Sisha Ortúzar, a native of Chile and chef of Colicchio’s Riverpark, where the dine-around took place.  With Colicchio’s support, the event brought some of New York’s culinary giants to cook in teams of two.  Each pair focused on a different, sustainably harvested seafood: David Chang and Kerry Heffernan (Atlantic sea scallops); Bill Telepan and Marco Canora (squid); Rick Moonen and Anita Lo (Atlantic salmon), and April Bloomfield and David Pasternack (scup).

I stopped briefly at Chang’s and Heffernan’s counter, where Chang was serving thick slabs of raw scallops in cold, bonji-infused broth with diced pineapples and chives.  The broth glimmered with umami, and the scallops were sweet and succulent.  But it was the pineapple, with its sunny smile of acidity, that clinched it for me.  It made me want to wave Chang over and confess that, hey, two of your restaurants are so crowded and loud that they make me shouty and stabby, and the other one doesn’t let me take photographs (a point of contention about which we’ve joked), but you are one thoughtful and talented mother. I’m being serious. His scallop dish was great.

Only in its second year, the New York Sustainable Seafood Week seems to have generated a good buzz and won some influential champions for its cause.  I encourage you to learn more about this organization and this event.

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Brunch in New York (or anywhere, actually) fills me with angst and agita, and sometimes anger.  But, if one is to eat out on the weekend, it is unavoidable.

Some restaurants head straight to Central Casting, opting for the plain and predictable: pancakes, waffles, and familiar company of egg dishes.  Given the popularity of brunch, and the wait times it often commands, it’s hard to justify making the effort for that.  At the other end, some restaurants stray into uncharted territory, reaching for creativity with mixed results.

You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

Maybe that’s why the Clinton St. Baking Co. is so popular.  The restaurant hits the breakfast and brunch sweetspot with a roster of basics that are just beyond the willing reach of most home cooks, enticing New Yorkers out of their cubbyholes with things like like fried chicken and waffle; soft-shell crab po’boys; Belgian waffles with roasted figs, strawberries, and toasted hazelnuts under a milky run of freshly whipped cream; and a creamy smoked salmon and cream cheese scramble with chives and a side of greens.  Or a tall, frosty coffee-Kahlua milkshake. All of this, and more, my friends and I had one Sunday morning.  And all of it was great.  But I definitely wouldn’t wait an hour or more for it, which I hear is often the case at this small eatery on the Lower East Side.  My friend Adam of A Life Worth Eating secured our place in line.  I’ll admit, if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have gone.

Brunch at Narcissa, John Fraser‘s new restaurant in The Standard Hotel in the East Village, was a whole other story.  It strayed a little.  The bagel chips (served with three spreads – smoked salmon cream cheese, hummus, and ) were nice and crisp, but way too greasy, and the “Box of Donuts” (a gift from the kitchen) was probably more cute than the contents were good – the donuts were a little dry.  But the oysters were fat and fresh, and my “Crab Benedict” was pretty good too, although, I hadn’t realized it would be so Atkins friendly.  The two poached eggs, smothered in Hollandaise, were served on golden-brown crab cakes (that were, blessedly, more meat than filling), but nothing more.  No English muffin, no toast, no biscuit.  It wasn’t a bad thing, it was just an unexpected thing.

But, the service was pretty good, and so was the people watching on the restaurant’s patio that fine day.  Next time, dinner.

At Osteria Morini, the brunch menu is largely their lunch menu.  I like that. I ordered something the restaurant offers regularly, and therefore, presented less of a gamble: a plump raviolo suspended in brown butter and stuffed with fluffy ricotta and a soft yolk.  I won the bet; it was terrific.

Hearth, too, stays largely within its wheelhouse at brunch with well-made, comforting Italian fare.  The veal meatballs were soft and light, coated in tomato sauce.  And the trio of “grilled bread” that I ordered (crostini by any other name…) showcased both the freshness of spring with peas, mint, lemon, and tangy mascarpone, and the heartiness of the hearth with trifolati and milky ricotta.  It’s unsurprising that Hearth was recommended to me for brunch by a number of New York City chefs.  I pass that recommendation on to you.

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I had dinner at marea.  The food was fantastic, but the timing was terrible.  The restaurant was particularly packed that night, and the staff seemed a bit stretched.  Four courses took nearly four hours, and not because we were dallying at the table.  Could it have been because our party of six was a half-hour late?  Did we throw the staff off their timing?  I don’t mean that sarcastically, rather, I’m confessing it sheepishly.  Or was the restaurant simply over-extended?

Regardless, the crudi were fresh and delicious, the pastas couldn’t have been better (especially a creamy pool of risotto mounted with sea urchin, gelatinous with halibut fin, and pocketed with nuggets of lobster), and – my gosh – for being a seafood-focused restaurant, they did not make me regret the steak I ordered.  The sirloin, roasted and served on the bone, bragged the fine funk of extended dry-aging (50 days).  I was not disappointed. I’ll be back for more.

On mismatched plates by candlelight came Dan Kluger’s delicious, spring flavors to our table at ABC Kitchen, at which I reunited and reminisced with an old college friend, Cub, who I haven’t seen in a decade and a half.  Kluger’s “toast” dishes are always great, as was the one that greeted Cub and me before we even picked up our menus, slathered with creamy ramp and tangy goat cheese.  Kluger also sent out a painterly plate of raw fluke dabbed with acid and splashed with the color and delicate crunch of baby vegetables, shaved and chopped.  That was terrific.

Although I love Kluger’s way with vegetables, I am even more impressed by how soulful his cooking can be.  His fried chicken, with its ethereal, tonkatsu-like crust, served on a lake of hot sauce butter, and the pork confit, which glistened like a row of knuckles wearing a coat of bacon marmalade, provided a comforting backdrop upon which once-familiar names and places from ye olde alma mater reappeared to delight Cub and me once more.

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When I wasn’t eating, I spent most of my time in New York at Bluestone Lane, a coffee shop opened by a couple of Australians.  My friend Adam of A Life Worth Eating first led me to it.  The original location is tucked inside the atrium on Third Avenue between 49th and 50th streets.  But I quickly became a regular at the newer location just off Wall Street at 30 Broad Street in the heart of the Financial District.  Twice a day I swung by to have a “piccolo” (a short drink that’s closer to the macchiato than the cappuccino), or a “flat white” if I was feeling for something frothier (steamed milk poured into a double espresso, more akin to the cortado than the cappuccino).  In addition to a variety of Australian coffee drinks (at that time, they were pulling Sightglass’s “Owl’s Howl” espresso), the menu offered a short list of casual Australian eats, which read like culinary cartoon characters: the “Brekkie Bowl” (fruit, yogurt, and granola); the “Jaffle” (a panini); and the Avocado Smash (mashed avocado on toast).

The fair-haired, Aussie barista, Ben, who pulled my shots daily told me that he was moving over to the West Village to open a third location of Bluestone Lane in a larger space that would include a more extensive food menu.  He told me to look for it come June.

In an effort to offset my caloric crimes, I worked some exercise into my schedule.  I went with Adam to my first yoga session.  I didn’t understand a word our incredibly flexible instructor said, except that, if I get tired, I should resume the “Resting Child Pose,” which I did not find restful at all.  But I tried, and I did sweat.  I look forward to more.

Early one morning, I met Nate Appleman at the foot of the Williamsburg Bridge.  His story of weight loss has been incredibly inspiring to me, so I was thrilled to run with him.  Despite my reservations about being out of shape, we set a rather fast pace that I miraculously managed to keep.  But man, he winded me with conversation – I needed all the air I could get just finish the run (he did drop a great Washington, D.C. dining tip that I put to good use last week).  Over to Williamsburg we went, and returned by way of the Brooklyn Bridge.  He’s in good shape.

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I first met Gavin Kaysen on this first weekend of May six years ago.  I was having lunch at Café Boulud with my friends when he came out to the dining room on a routine walk-through.  It was a particularly memorable meeting because, later that night, I watched him mount the stage at Avery Fisher Hall, when he was elected the Rising Star of 2008 by the James Beard Foundation.  A couple of years later, we were reunited over a plate of spaghetti nero.  And from that saucy, spicy plate of pasta, we became friends, and later, colleagues – I, the observer with a camera, and he, along with the Bocuse d’Or USA team that he coached, the subject.

Earlier this spring, Kaysen announced that he was turning in his toque at Café Boulud at the end of May and going home to Minneapolis to open his own restaurant, Merchant.

In one of those moments where life’s orbit crosses itself unexpectedly but purposefully, six years after we first met, Kaysen called me back to the place we first met on the weekend that we first met to help him capture and bid farewell to his team at Café Boulud.

So, on a balmy, breezy day in an early part of this May, I walked across 76th Street, between Fifth and Madison, to where a small crowd of tourists and curious passers-by had gathered to gawk at aprons waving in the wind, and set still a moment that marked an end for Gavin Kaysen, for Café Boulud, for New York, and for me.

I guess the scoreboard now stands at Midwest: 2; New York: 0.

New York in May: goodnight, goodnight.  Hello, Chicago.

Here is a list of all of the restaurants I visited on this trip.  Each is hyperlinked to the photos of my meal there.

ABC Kitchen
Barbuto
betony
Breslin, The 
casa mono (once, twice, thrice)
Clinton St. Baking Co.
Contra
Daniel
Del Posto
Eleven Madison Park
Empellon Cocina 
Estela
Gander, The
Hearth
il buco alimentari e vineria
Jean-Georges
luksus
maialino
marea
Mercer Kitchen, The
narcissa
Osteria Morini
Otto
Rôtisserie Georgette
Sushi Dojo
Sustainable Seafood Shindig (Riverpark)

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* For foreigners (and those who don’t know this culinary reference), an “egg in the basket” refers to an egg that is cooked on the griddle in a hole stamped out of a piece of toast, comme ça.

PHOTOS: A smattering of dishes at Rôtisserie Georgette; the wood-fired oven at Barbuto; ready-to-eat pizzas at the market at il buco alimentari e vineria; foie gras brulée at Jean-Georges; basting asparagus en vessie at Eleven Madison Park; endives on a bed of anchovies, walnuts, and Ubriaco Rosso cheese at Estela; “Lobster Rolls” at Betony; poached skate at Luksus; the duck à l’orange at Rôtisserie Georgette; the “Fleur de Café” dessert at Daniel; strawberry ice cream sundae at The Mercer Kitchen; the open kitchen at The Breslin at the ACE Hotel; April Bloomfield and David Chang enjoy a quiet moment a the Sustainable Seafood Shindig at Riverpark; the veal and ricotta meatballs at Hearth; shaved fluke at ABC Kitchen; the rugby-themed interior of Bluestone Lane in the Financial District; chef Gavin Kaysen and the entire staff of Café Boulud.

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This year marks the sixteenth annual Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant in Kansas City, the longest-running fundraising dinner for the foundation in the country.  Over the past decade and a half, this event has brought some of America’s most respected chefs to my hometown to raise money for the James Beard Foundation, including Jean-Louis Palladin, Tom Colicchio, and Takashi Yagihashi in its earlier years, and, more recently, Christopher Kostow, Paul Qui, Joshua Skenes, Michael Cimarusti, Justin Cogley, Bryan Voltaggio, and John Shields.  The list is long, the roster has been impressive.

For the fifth year, I have been asked by the hosting chef – now, Michael Corvino -  to help invite the guest chefs and participate in the event.  Having just finalized this year’s guest chefs list, I am pleased to share it with you now and to announce that this year’s Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant will take place on Sunday, September 28, 2014.  Please save the date.

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Each of the following chefs will present one course, paired with wine, at this year’s Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant.  I hope to see you there.  (Please call 816-545-8001 to make your reservation.)

 

Michael Corvino 
(The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)

Brooks Headley
(Del Posto; New York, New York)

Matthew McCallister
(FT33; Dallas, Texas)

Anthony Sasso
(casa mono; New York, New York)

Michael Tusk
(Quince and Cotogna; both in San Francisco, California)

Justin Woodward
(Castagna; Portland, Oregon)

You can read about a couple of past Friends of the James Beard Foundation dinners at The American Restaurant on this blog:

Friends of James Beard Foundation Dinner 2011
Friends of James Beard Foundation Dinner 2012

Photos: Justin Cogley and Bryan Voltaggio at the 2013 Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner; Antonio Bachour’s petits fours plated and ready to go at the 2013 Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner.