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What can I say this year that I didn’t say last year?

Before you read the rest of this post, I urge you to read what I wrote on the twelfth night of last year’s Twelve Days of Christmas.  Even if you’ve read it before, please read it again. Every word and every sentiment in that post I apply to this one.  So there’s no need to repeat or reword it here.

Instead, I will simply say that returning to the Twelve Days of Christmas for a fourth year has been an immense pleasure and privilege.  For four years now, I’ve rushed through the first eleven months with an eye towards the twelfth, when I get whisked away to a magical place called Meadowood Napa Valley to take part in an event that is truly without equal.

For twelve nights in December, the world’s culinary spotlight moves to sleepy St. Helena, California, as a parade of chefs streams in from faraway destinations to cook at The Restaurant at Meadowood. Over the past four years of photographing this dinner series, I’ve had the amazing opportunity to pull back the curtain a little, in hopes of sharing the magic of it all with those who can’t be there.  In my travels, I’m constantly surprised by the number of people, from all corners of the world, who join in the excitement and anticipation of this annual event, which, for so many of us, has become a highlight, an escape, an inspiration and aspiration, and, perhaps, most meaningfully, tradition.

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There came a moment during this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas when Christopher Kostow turned to me, gave me that look, and said that this year will be the last year.  I knew it was coming, because he gave me that same look and said the same thing to me last year, and the year before that too. And the year before that.

That’s because, behind all of the glitter and glamor of it, the Twelve Days of Christmas is a lot of work.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my front row seat at The Restaurant at Meadowood it’s that the men and women who work there are among the hardest working people in their industry, and especially so during these two weeks in December.  But they don’t shy away from a good challenge.  In fact, they run towards it.

Planning for the Twelve Days of Christmas starts as soon as the prior one ends.  It’s not only a logistical nightmare – scheduling eleven guest chefs (plus their assistants), their flights, transfers, accommodations, interviews, getting their prep lists, ordering their ingredients, choosing their flatware, coordinating menus and wine pairings (which the servers have to memorize daily), managing the reservations, seating assignments, flower arrangements (which included this year, an enormous bough of mistletoe that the resident forager, Cameron Cole-Rahtz, hauled in from the woods), dietary restrictions, charitable donations, etc. – but during its run, the event is physically demanding as well.  Everyone is up way too early, and no one ever gets home early enough.  Hospitality is not simply a day-job at Meadowood.  It’s a mindset.

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But, this year, on the last night, as I walked into my forty-eighth Twelve Days of Christmas dinner, Christopher Kostow was walking into his ninety-sixth.  That’s because, despite his annual, momentary meeting with reality during the dinner series, when I’m convinced this is his last run, reality isn’t what motivates Kostow or his staff at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  They’re interested in inspiration, aspiration, and tradition.  They’re interested in preserving a sense of wonder.

I know this not only because of the way they treat me (again, if you haven’t read last year’s post yet, you really should read it), but I see it in their excitement and enthusiasm for what they do.  Every day of the Twelve Days of Christmas is like Christmas morning to them, full of prospect and hope for the diners who walk through their door every night. For first-time guests and veterans alike, there’s magic to be made.

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I hear Nathaniel Dorn, the restaurant’s general manager, giggling sometimes, when he’s got some surprise brewing – like this year, when he overheard a couple of regulars, who have a newborn at home, lament that they hadn’t had time to put up a Christmas tree yet. So, Dorn and three of his servers snuck one of the Christmas trees out of the private dining room during dinner and somehow managed to fit it in the couple’s car.  Sure, the top of the tree was sticking out of the sunroof, but it fit, and it was lit. Dorn had rigged the lights to a battery.  The look on the couple’s faces when Dorn drove their car up to the front door is, I suspect, at the heart of what makes eight demanding years of putting on the Twelve Days of Christmas worthwhile.

Yes, there’s a lot of work involved.  And yes, standing just a few steps away from it all, I probably romanticize it a touch.  But The Restaurant at Meadowood makes it look effortless.  Even for this insider, who has spent four years backstage at the Twelve Days of Christmas (and the rest of his time traveling to other amazing places attending other amazing culinary events), they’ve managed to keep that sense of wonder alive in me.

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There’s kind of an unspoken house rule during the Twelve Days of Christmas that Christmas music isn’t allowed in the kitchen until the last day.  It makes a lot of sense.  Imagine where we’d be by the end if we started playing it from the beginning.  So when I walked in to Nat King Cole crooning about chestnuts and mistletoe against the whir of a Robotcoup, I knew that we had finally arrived at day twelve.

Despite the fact that it means that my time at Meadowood is coming to an end, the last day is, perennially, my favorite day of the dinner series.  With no more guest chefs in the kitchen, and no more dinners, except the one at hand, for which to prepare, all of the cooks are back at their stations, quietly working through their lists.

This year, Christopher Kostow was in one corner sheeting pasta, while two cooks were piping the dough with a sweetbread filling.

John Hong, one of the sous chefs, was in another corner working on one of the more curious projects I’ve seen in this kitchen.  He was filling what appeared to be hollowed-out candles with gooey, melty cheese, into which he had mixed an obscene amount of diced black truffles.

Katianna Hong, the executive sous chef, was at another station helping cook David Guilloty bury guinea hens in mounds of salt.

And Carl Shelton and Ignacio Colmenares were in the pastry corner pouring roasted white chocolate into into silicon molds of walnuts.

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In the front of the house, there were napkins to roll, glasses to polish, and rugs to vacuum.  Sommeliers Victoria Kulinich and Martin Winters were at the wine station decanting the night’s bottles, which included Harlan Estate 2006 and Promontory 2010, while a case of Krug champagne was being iced down.  We always drink well during the Twelve Days of Christmas, and especially so on the twelfth night.

Dorn had decided to put out walnuts and nutcrackers in the restaurant’s gorgeous rotunda lounge this year.  And boy did guests take to them.  So, as one of the servers was lighting the fireplace, another was refilling those giant, ceramic bowls of nuts.

And in the bar, the hostess Heaven-Leigh Carey was sifting through the night’s reservations, making last-minute notes, while Tyler McGinnis, one of the servers, was sorting through place settings.

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I love line-up on the twelfth night.  It’s the only time during the entire event when all of the “white coats” come out of the kitchen to join the front of the house staff in the pre-service meeting (their entrance this year was particularly spirited). Normally, only the managing sous chef assigned to the guest chef, and maybe their assistant cook for the day, attend line-up to help review and explain the Restaurant at Meadowood’s side of the menu for the night.

But on this last day, there’s usually a lot of pre-holiday housekeeping, an unusually high number of guest notes, and a few staff good-byes to get through.  So, all hands are called to deck for one, last pow-wow before the final show.

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This year’s twelfth night menu seemed much less improvised than in years past.

The romanesco “Christmas tree,” which made its nerve-wracking debut last year, returned this year at a canapé station, this time, securely screwed into a custom-made stand.  Sous chef Miles Pundsack-Poe carved florets off the charred head, which were served with an emulsion of ham fat and a grating of dried ham.  As delicious as it was, I spent more time hanging around the sweet potato latkes, which were topped with salmon roe and crème fraîche.  Those were awesome.

Kostow’s salt-baked birds are always great.  This year, his guinea hen were excavated from the baked crust and carved.  Both the white and dark meat were served together with pickled marigolds.  That was a pretty plate of food.

And that sweetbread-filled pasta that I saw Kostow sheeting earlier in the day was served with lobster, grilled in its shell, and garnished with shaved matsutake mushrooms.  That was a crowd favorite.

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My favorite course was the first course.  Kostow roasted whole cabbage heads over hot coals in the Josper.  These were spliced in half and presented table side, where the soft, fleshy layers inside were scooped out and plated.  Over the steaming-hot wedges of cabbage, the servers spooned a warm, creamy sauce of whey that had been fortified with finely minced oysters and tins of caviar.  On paper, it sounded like a bad idea to me.  But in practice, it was incredibly delicious – the cabbage, whey, and oysters all gave off a mellow sweetness that was punctuated by the saltiness of the caviar that had been mixed throughout.

Soufflés for seventy also sounded like a bad idea to me.  They had to be baked off in batches and plated with furious speed to get them out to diners before they deflated.  Kostow and his cooks stood by with bowls of ice water, plunging their hands into the icy baths between moving ramekins, hot out of the oven, to plates.  It was a tense moment in the kitchen, but they turned out alright.

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I had been served a prototype of the candle before.  But this was my first time having the final product. To those of you who might hope for a surprise yourself, I apologize.  I’ve probably ruined it already.

The candles that I saw John Hong filling earlier in the day were welded back together with a blowtorch.  Halfway through dinner, the candles were lit and taken out and placed on each table.  After the last meat course (veal in a vegetable-based “blanquette” with freshly shaved white truffles), servers unhinged the candles to reveal their creamy core of Cremeaux des Cîteaux cheese generously mottled with black truffles.  This was served with honey and bread.  I scraped that candle clean.

There was one last dessert – pumpkin, topped with those roasted white chocolate walnuts I saw them making earlier in the day – before a house full of applause and lots of drinks.  The twelfth night always ends in a prolonged celebration that lingers long past the last cook in the kitchen.

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I never leave The Restaurant at Meadowood on the last night presuming that there will be another Twelve Days of Christmas, for me or for anyone else.  For this sentimental reason alone, the twelfth day is always particularly special to me.  With no promise of another chef, another menu, another dinner waiting on the other side, I am, for one day out of the twelve, finally able to focus on the today instead of the tomorrows.

Looking back over the past four years, I’ve had forty-eight wonderful todays and tomorrows at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  And I have Christopher Kostow, Nathaniel Dorn, and the rest of my Meadowood family to thank for them, and for a sense of wonder that lasts me the rest of the year.  Thank you.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the twelfth and last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas with Christopher Kostow and his staff at The Restaurant at Meadowood.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Sweet Potato Latkes
Salmon roe, crème fraîche.

Romanesco

Prawn and Its Shell

First Course 
Coal-Roasted Cabbage
Whey, oysters, caviar.

Second Course
Sweetbreads
Lobster, matsutake.

Third Course 
Smoked Trout
Potato, pickled okra seeds, à la meunière.

Fourth Course 
Salt-Baked Guinea Hen
Pickled marigolds, celery.

Fifth Course 
Veal Rib
White truffle, “blanquette” of root vegetable juice,
winter rye.

Sixth Course 
“The Candle”

Seventh Course 
Warm Citrus Soufflé

Eighth Course 
Pumpkin
White chocolate, yogurt, “walnut.”

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The Napa Valley Reserve
2014

Albert Grivault
“Clos des Perrieres”
2013

Harlan Estate
2006

Promontory
2010

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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Photos: The staff of The Restaurant at Meadowood; The Restaurant at Meadowood; Tyle McGinnis and Heaven-Leigh Carey making last-minute reservations notes; rolling napkins in the dining room; Christopher Kostow sheeting pasta dough; John Hong filling candles with Cremeaux des Cîteaux cheese; walnuts in the rotunda; a Christmas wreath in the rotunda; white coats join the front of the house at line-up; Miles Pundsack-Poe carving a romanesco; salt-baked guinea hen in a pot for table-side presentation; caviar being scooped into pots to be warmed with whey and oysters; Miles Pundsack-Poe and Katianna Hong scooping warm cabbage for the first course; lighting The Candle; Nathaniel Dorn presenting The Candle, and its surprise inside; John Hong grilling lobsters on the bone; the wine pairings; a final round of applause in the kitchen.

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Five years ago today, I walked out of the law firm and into the unknown.

What began as a shapeless but exciting restart on life quickly formed into an unexpectedly self-guided and fulfilling journey flooded with amazing people, places, lessons, and adventures.  Year after year, life has exceeded my wildest expectations.

While I’ve enjoyed getting lost in the busyness of my new life as a photographer and writer, I’m incredibly saddened that it has left me less and less time to be a blogger.  If you’ve been a regular reader in the past, then you’ve been reading with less regularity lately. And I’m sorry for it.  So, before allowing myself to be swept away into the next calendar, I am putting on the brakes, as I have done for the past four years, to regroup, reflect, and record.

Of course, this post is far from being a thorough review of 2015 (although, if you manage to finish reading this post, you might think I gave you one).  The advantages of immediacy have long expired, and so a detailed accounting is not possible at this late hour.  Rather, it is my chance to recite, even if with broad strokes, the moments, places, and faces that have touched me recently.  I want to remember them, and share them, because they have been an important part of my life.

But, of course, more than just a journal entry, this, here, also inaugurates a series of year-end posts that, together, offer a comprehensive look at the very best of what and where I’ve been eating in the preceding twelve months.  In what has become an anticipated tradition on this blog, which I started 11 years ago, and which attracts more eyeballs than all of the other posts in the preceding year combined, the three posts that follow this one will enumerate my favorite dishes, desserts, and restaurant meals of 2015.

But before I do that, let me first tell you about my year, and, as I have done in the past, list for you all the restaurants I visited.

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In 2011, I marveled at how an exciting year of unexpected opportunities all fit into a suitcase.  In 2012, I continued exploring and pushing the boundaries of my personal frontiers, both foreign and domestic.

Finding myself in uncharted territory, I spent 2013 trying to give definition to my rapidly blurring roles as a writer, photographer, and blogger.  And, after having found some resolve therein, I embraced them by leapfrogging through 2014, traversing the globe with unprecedented enthusiasm.

2015 was a fairytale, full of story and wonder.

I slept in castles and medieval abbeys.  I searched for the ghosts of queens and villains.  I hunted on a Danish island and ate the freshly killed meat by candlelight among its forests, which echoed with the fables of their native son Hans Christian Anderson.  I saw the sun rise near the noon hour, breaking faintly over the Swedish snowscape, and watched it drop into the Pacific Ocean from high atop a cliffside trail in Big Sur.  I heard Hamlet whisper in a Renaissance fortress, and marveled at the eery twinkle of the northern lights.

And here at home, where rarely anything exciting happens, a Cinderella story unfolded as the Royals reclaimed their crown after thirty years.  Nearly a million people lined the streets of downtown Kansas City to welcome them back. And it was awesome.

All of these adventures helped me set a new mileage record in 2015.  Work and pleasure took me through a dozen U.S. states and nine countries on three continents.  I spent far more time away than I did at home, especially the second half of the year, which was particularly busy.  Between September and Christmas, I was only home for 23 days, most of which were spent unpacking, opening mail, doing laundry, and packing again.

But, unlike previous years, most of my travel in 2015 was concentrated in a few places to which I returned repeatedly.  Although I always enjoy discovering new and exciting parts of our world (and I did a little of that too), 2015 allowed me to stitch myself tighter to a few of the places I’ve come to love most, making them feel a little more like home instead of destinations.  I expressed this desire in an earlier blog post about Copenhagen, to which I traveled thrice.

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Continuing my collaboration with chef Christopher Haatuft on the Friends of Lysverket series (which we started in 2014), I shuttled back and forth to Bergen, Norway five times.  In January, we brought Brooks Headley, then pastry chef of Del Posto, to learn traditional methods of Norwegian baking.  Then, in March, chef Thorsten Schmidt, along with interior designer Kim Dolva of the København Mobelsnedkeri flew up from Denmark to join us for the fourth Friends of Lysverket dinner.

In June, Paul Qui, chef of Qui in Austin, Texas, became the fifth guest chef in the series, followed by Esben Holmboe Bang of restaurant Maaemo in Oslo, Norway. That dinner in September was paired with wines by the erudite and articulate winemaker Abe Schoener, who flew in from the U.S. with bottles of his juice, mostly under The Scholium Project label.

Lastly, in October, I was thrilled to welcome my longtime and hometown friends, as well as co-authors Colby and Megan Garrelts, chefs of Bluestem and Rye in Kansas City, to Lysverket.  It was their first trip to Europe. We went SCUBA diving for shellfish in the crisp, clear waters of the North Sea with expert diver Knut Magnus Persson (with whom I had gone diving earlier in the year).  We drove deep into the fjords, where we found breathtaking vistas and still waters.  And we went to the Bergen farmers’ market, for a taste of reindeer and svele, Norwegian pancakes served with ruby-red jams and sour cream.

In exchange, the Garreltses shared with the Norwegians a taste of our Midwestern flavors: a dinner of fried chicken, smoked ribs with homemade barbecue sauce, and all the fixings, followed by enormous Dutch apple pies mounded with streusel.  While I enjoyed seeing the reaction of my Norwegian friends to this American fare, perhaps, more poignant for me was the nostalgia it triggered in Haatuft’s mother, who attended this dinner.  Originally from Tennessee, she had lived four decades in Norway as an ex-patriot.  As if privy to the thoughts already swirling in my head, Mrs. Haatuft reminded me that few things can replace a sense of familiarity, or, more precisely, home.

Like all of the dinners before it, this last dinner represented the best of what the Friends of Lysverket series hopes to accomplish.  More than just a cultural or culinary exchange, these dinners, as the name of the series suggests, are about good people meeting other good people.  I look forward to continuing this truly fulfilling project in 2016.

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All of these trips to Norway made it easy for me to hop around Europe.

After our last Friends of Lysverket dinner in October, for example, the Garreltses and I left Bergen for France.

Heading south out of Paris toward the Loire, we stopped for a sunset sigh at the stunning Château Chambord before dog-legging west toward Fontevraud, l’Abbaye Royale, a medieval abbey that has now been transformed into a beautiful hotel within a walled compound.  Not only was this the last residence and known resting place of Eleanor of Aquitaine – she the queen of both France and England, and mother to three kings of England and the rulers of Brittany, Poitiers, Saxony, and Sicily (among others) – but this is also where Thibault Ruggeri cooks.  I saw him win the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon in 2013.  Unfortunately, neither were to be found at Fontevraud that night.  Although I found Eleanor of Aquitaine’s effigy in the chapel, next to an effigy of one of her sons, Richard the Lionhearted, I discovered that her tomb was raided during the French Revolution.  The whereabouts of her remains are currently unknown.  As for Ruggeri, it was his night off. The hotel’s fine dining restaurant was closed, but the property’s more casual eatery was kind enough to stay open an extra half hour for us latecomers.

After dinner, we explored the abbey’s hauntingly quiet cloister under a canopy of stars as wolves howled in the moonlight afar.

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Turning south again, we dipped down to the Auvergne, where the wooded hills blazed with autumnal glory.

We arrived at Michel Bras early enough on that crisp, sunny afternoon to explore the grounds a little, before suiting up for gargouille, aligot, and that famous coulant with the runny, chocolate core.  To our delight and surprise, we awoke the next morning to a soft snow, the first of the season. Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it better.

And then back to Paris.

Since it was the Garreltses first time in the city, we saw Degas, the Eiffel, and Napoleon under a dome.  We traced generations of Louises through the marble halls of Versailles, and walked through its gardens while the symphony played and the fountains sprayed.

We ate at bistros and brasseries, and stopped for croissants and macarons and ice cream in between.  And we toasted a decade of friendship while waiters in tuxedos shaved white truffles and carved chicken en vesssie.  I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

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In January, Haatuft and his wife Annette joined me on a pilgrimage to Fäviken Magasinet in the desolate, northern expanse of Sweden.

In March, with Norwegian Airlines on strike, the three of us boarded a train in Bergen bound for Oslo, where we celebrated Haatuft’s birthday at Maaemo.

In June, I took a short detour to Helsinki, Finland.  A decade prior, I had been on the country’s west coast, in its ancient capital of Turku.  But Helsinki was new to me.  I wrote about it here.

And in September, I went to Zurich to visit my dear college friend, Solveig.  I mostly stayed in the city, spending as many afternoons as I could on the sidewalk at the famous confisserie Sprüngli admiring the tidiness of the Swiss strolling along the Bahnhofstrasse. However, I did manage to escape one night to Vitznau with a friend for a little unofficial reconnaissance.  Being within such close proximity of Nenad Mlinarevic, chef of restaurant Focus at the Park Hotel Vitznau, who was to cook later in the year at the Twelve Days of Christmas, I couldn’t resist the opportunity for a little preview.  I’m glad I went. Having Champagne and canapés on the shores of Lake Lucerne, with the Alps rising in the near distance, was among the most picturesque moments of my year.

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Solveig had also been begging me to go to Iceland with her for years.  So I finally did.

Her family owns a gorgeous home in Reykjavík, where we spent a week, using it as base camp for day trips afield.

One day, we drove around the Snæfellsnes Peninsula, stopping to climb the giant rock in Stykkishólmur harbor and have lunch at Narfeyrarstofa. We continued around the landmass to Hellnar, where we paused to have some coffee and pastries at Fjöruhúsið, situated at the mouth of a long hiking trail along the rugged coast.

In Reykjavík, Solveig and I settled into a lazy routine of long mornings at Reykjavík Roasters, or Mokka Kaffí, or Tíu Dropar over coffee and waffles, or coffee and croissants, or just coffee.  While third wave coffee is just now trickling into Iceland, most of what I found brewing was still super old-school: dark, rich, roasty, and toasty.  I loved it.

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Heading south along Iceland’s famous Ring Route, Solveig and I went chasing rainbows and waterfalls until we reached the black, volcanic beaches of Vík.  And then to her family’s cabin in the interior, set on tens of thousands of acres of their private land that stretched to the horizon in all directions.  It was breathtaking.

Surrounded by fields and streams, mountains and glaciers, we idled there a while, venturing out into the harsh landscape at the mercy of the weather, which vacillated between happy and angry.  When it was bad, we stayed inside and read, tied flies, and watched the wind scrape across the valley with horrifying speed.  When the weather behaved, we’d go hiking, or put on our waders and fly fish.  The network of streams that runs through their land team with giant salmon and trout.

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One day, I drove, alone, inland towards Landmannalauger.  Crawling over the rough, Icelandic terrain, I followed a road that was barely marked.  At multiple points, I had to raise my utility vehicle to ford streams and small rivers that crossed my path. For six hours – three hours in, and three hours out – I had no cellular service. And rarely did I see any sign of human life. No telephone poles. No fences. No structures. Not even road signs or markers, or even the tinniest bit of stray litter.

The vastness of it all was nearly incomprehensible.  And the kind of uninterrupted silence it brought was both quieting and disquieting.  The only other place in the world where I’ve experienced that level of extreme aloneness was Patagonia.

I encountered barely a half dozen vehicles all day. And when I did, they were either gorgeous, vintage Land Rovers full of yuppies with couture shades and Leicas, or strange vehicular creatures rigged together with a lot of imagination, and probably a lot of weed too, full of hippies looking for a new campsite.  Given the dramatic backdrop, and the caricatures I passed in the wilderness that day, my journey seemed a schizophrenic dream in which I passed between scenes of a Ralph Lauren commercial and a post-apocalyptic movie.  It was so surreal that, even now, I wonder if any of it actually happened.*

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Neither my parents nor I had been to Taiwan in 28 years.  So, I cashed in some miles and took them back.

My parents barely recognized the modern, sprawling metropolis where they once grew up.  Everything seemed shinier and bigger.  But, as best we could, we tried to piece together their memories and revisit the places and flavors for which they had longed abroad.

Besides of all of the delicious food we ate, one of the highlights for me was a visit to the National Palace Museum.  I vaguely remember it from my childhood trips.  Built into the side of a mountain, its treasures – most of which were smuggled out of mainland China by the Kuomingtang government during the Communist takeover – are reputedly so vast that the entire museum could change its exhibits every three months for several decades without exhausting its holdings.  Unforgettable to me were the centuries I saw unfurl across scrolls that stretched for yards and yards, each viewed by emperors and poets through the ages, who added to these paintings and writings their own comments, praises, signatures and stamps as evidence.  To someone who was born and raised in Western society, and who came to appreciate art through a Western lens, the thought of a work of art being open to such direct commentary was, at first shocking. It amounted to high-profile graffiti. But, standing before such history, having my father translate these ancient writings, revealed a lively and learned conversation among the greatest minds and might of multiple generations.  I cried.

Also, I was lucky to catch a special exhibition of paintings by Lang Shining (郎世寧).  Born Giuseppe Castiglione, this Italian Jesuit became court painter to Emperor Qianglong and brought a markedly European sensibility to Chinese imperial art. Of his works on display, I most admired his paintings of horses, many of which were energetic and dynamic.  He is perhaps most celebrated for his epic scroll painting of “One Hundred Horses.”  That massive work of art – measuring over 26 feet long – was shown with its corresponding, preliminary sketch, which Castiglione had used to gain the emperor’s approval for the official commission.**  I am, admittedly, partial to this painting, not only because I was born in the year of the horse and have an affinity to them, but because the specific character used for “horse” in its title (the second character: 百駿圖), is my namesake – the second character of my first name in Chinese.

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I’ve said it on this blog before, and I’ll say it again: I fell in love with Copenhagen.  If I could move there, I would.

I visited this Danish capital three times in 2015: once in March, once in June, and again in September.  Each time, I forced myself to discover new places, new restaurants, and new people, while making sure to return to those that I loved most.

At a particularly memorable dinner at Kong Hans Kælder in March, I met the restaurant’s new head chef Mark Lundgaard Nielsen.  In the months and visits that followed, he became a good friend and somewhat of a local guide and host for me, introducing me to Danish culture.

My interest in the past took me back to Denmark in June, when I went in search of a rogue Scotsman from the pages of Renaissance history.  Although I wrote about that portion of the trip here on my blog, I never got around to recording what happened thereafter.

Lundgaard Nielsen took me west, out of Copenhagen, to the island of Fyn, where we had a traditional Danish lunch at Sortebro Kro, and spent the night at the beautifully preserved Falsled Kro, a 16th century inn, tiled from head to toe in a rainbow of colors.  It’s unspeakably gorgeous.  The next day, we pitched a tent and set up camp on the grounds of a medieval hunting lodge and spent the next day stalking.  Successful, Lundgaard Nielsen dressed the deer he shot, and cooked us a five course dinner in the woods. Replete with Zalto stemware and china, the dinner included venison tartare, fresh from the animal, and rødgrød med flød, a nearly unpronounceable, traditional Danish porridge of strawberries, rhubarb, and cream, which he taught me to make.  I count that dinner among the most special meals I’ve ever had.

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During their annual, restaurant closure in August, Lundgaard Nielsen and his sous chef Andreas Bagh came to Kansas City.  While I appreciated their long-distance effort to visit me in my hometown (I really did), after three, unbearably humid summer days in the Midwestern heat, we decamped to San Francisco for a quick tour of the Bay Area, which took us as far north as Napa and as far south as Carmel.  That was a fun trip.

A few weeks later, I returned to Denmark.

On this last trip, Lundgaard Nielsen took me back to Fyn. We revisited chef Per Hallundbæk at the thatched Falsled Kro, spending another night in its beautifully tiled rooms.  And then on to Nakkebølle Gods, another medieval hunting lodge.  This one was owned by Lundgaard Nielsen’s friends, the Stevnhoveds.  The couple was hosting a traditional, Danish duck hunting party on their sprawling acreage, and were kind enough to extend me an invitation.  For two hours, twenty very experienced hunters downed over six-hundred birds, all of which were allotted to butchers and restaurants (unlike in the U.S., restaurants in Denmark are allowed to serve wild game).  Spending the night in that moated compound (I’ve never seen so many stars at night), Lundgaard Nielsen and I left the next morning for stag hunting in Jutland – the mainland of Denmark – before closing out our roadtrip with a traditional, Danish flæskesteg (a fat back pork roast with an especially thick rind of crackling) dinner at his parents’ house.

There is so much more that I need to tell you about Copenhagen and my travels through the Danish countryside.  But I’ll save it all for a later post.  I must move on.

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In a year-end summary, Delta Airlines, to which I am fiercely loyal (not only because they value my loyalty, but because I truly believe they are the best American carrier), notified me that my most visited airport in 2015 was SFO (San Francisco International).  While this is technically incorrect, I did travel to San Francisco quite a bit, mostly to photograph, but to eat as well.***  

I also went to New York City thrice.  There would have been a fourth visit, except the James Beard Foundation decided to move its annual awards ceremony to Chicago this year.  So, instead of New York in May, Chicago in May it was.  And what a frightful debut for the organization in the Windy City it turned out to be.  If the James Beard Foundation doesn’t find a way of making its award ceremony, and some of its attendant functions, a more pleasant experience, then I’m afraid there shall soon be no more Chicago in May for me.

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I slipped into New York at the bottom of September to catch the tail end of a special John Singer Sargent exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art before it closed.  Focused on his portraits of family and friends, this exhibition was an incredible meeting of history, biography, and beauty.  For hours, I lost myself in the magnificent folds and pleats of his brilliant brushstrokes.

On a prior trip to the East Coast, in which New York served as the trailhead to a much longer road trip through New England, I also got to see a few of Sargent’s paintings, including his famous portrait of “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit,” in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.  That trip, a photo assignment for FIAT USA, which was published in a four-part series entitled “Wanderlust,” took me through Connecticut, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, where I got to catch up with Aki Kamozawa and Alex Talbot of Ideas in Food.  I’ve always slept incredibly well when I’ve stayed with them.  Maybe it’s because they feed me so well.  Moving on from their delicious patch of paradise, I ended my trip in Maine, which had been one of only two U.S. states I had not visited.

Now, only Alaska remains.  Recommendations (for restaurants or otherwise) are welcomed.

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I’ve never been one to compromise easily, especially when it comes to the type and quality of work I want to produce, and especially the integrity of the people with whom I want to work.  So in 2015, I was not only blessed with a wide range of choices, but the luxury of choosing to work with only the very best. The level of talent, the intensity of ambition, the amount of knowledge, and the measured humility with which this has surrounded me has been an endless source of joy and inspiration.

While meeting new people, making new friends, and forging new partnerships made 2015 exciting, strengthening existing relationships made the year heartwarming.  So I can’t end this year-end review without mentioning a few of the people who have, over the past few years, not only created annual highlights on my calendar, but who have also added a sense of tradition to my life.  These are also people who set their bars well beyond reach, yet exceed expectations. They care about quality and they produce quality.  And they do it all with the utmost professionalism and care.  And so I am happy to be a part of what they do.

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In particular, I want to mention three events and the people who make them happen.

Justin Cogley moved his Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine event from March to early November.  So, I returned to the l’Auberge Carmel in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California for a third year to photograph this intimate event that gathers chefs from other parts of the world to learn about the unique and dynamic waters and ecosystems off the coast of the Monterey Bay Peninsula.  This year, he welcomed Matt Orlando, Jeremiah Stone, Benjamin Sukle, Fabian von Hauske, and Justin Yu.

Courtney Hampson dished up the ninth helping of Music To Your Mouth at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff in the hauntingly beautiful Lowcountry of South Carolina.  This was my fifth year attending this event, and my fourth as the photographer.  I’ve always loved the thoughtfulness with which this event thinks and talks about the South.  This year, Hampson dug in deeper with her commitment to not only put on a good show, with good food, good people, and good music, but also to educate. In partnership with John T. Edge and Melissa Hall at The Southern Foodways Alliance, they created “salons,” in which speakers – who ranged from botanists to distillers to chefs – hosted small-group seminars that dove a little deeper into their subjects of expertise.  I hope to write more about this important event.

And, of course, there is the Twelve Days of Christmas, to which I have devoted a dozen posts each year for the last four.  You’ll find links to all of them at the end of this year’s report.  Thank you, Christopher Kostow, Nathaniel Dorn, and your team at The Restaurant at Meadowood for giving my fairytale year its happy ending.

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I wonder, breathless, at the end of every year, how the next one could possibly top it.  Only the good God above knows.  And until I discover what more may come, I am thankful for what I have and have had, and remind myself that I’ve deserved none of it.

But, I am excited already at the prospects that 2016 holds.  On top of continuing my work with people like Christopher Haatuft and the Friends of Lysverket series (I’m packing for our eighth event as I type), and my friends Adam Goldberg, Elyssa Goldberg, and Daniela Velasco on their incredible magazine, “Drift,” I have a couple of exciting new projects and partnerships glimmering on the horizon.  I can’t wait to tell you about them.

But, I’ve made a lot of promises in this post to write about a lot of things, including my annual “best of” posts.  So, I better get to them first.

As promised way, way above, below you’ll find a full accounting of all of the restaurants I visited in 2015.  The restaurants are listed alphabetically by month.  You will find photo albums of almost all of these meals on my Flickr account.

JANUARY
Babbo (New York, New York)
Blue Koi (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bo Ling’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Carbone (New York, New York)
Casa Mono (New York, New York)
Cosme (New York, New York)
Del Posto (New York, New York)
Dirty French (New York, New York)
Estella (New York, New York)
Fäviken Magasinet (Järpen, Sweden)
Fritz’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Gramercy Tavern (New York, New York) (once, twice)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
Il Lazzarone (St. Joseph, Missouri)
Ivan Ramen (New York, New York)
James Beard House, The (New York, New York)
Jean-Georges (New York, New York)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway)
Momofuku Ko (New York New York)
NoMad Bar (New York, New York)
Reynard (New York, New York)
Spotted Pig, The (New York, New York)
Winstead’s (Kansas City, Missouri)

FEBRUARY
801 Fish (Leawood, Kansas)
A16 (San Francisco, California)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Benu (San Francisco, San Francisco)
Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California)
Brenda’s Meat & Three (San Francisco, California)
Johnny Jo’s Pizza (Kansas City, Missouri)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
Les Clos (San Francisco, California)
Mourad (San Francisco, California)
Pâtisserie 46 (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California)
Saison (San Francisco, California) (once, twice)
Taqueria Silva (Kansas City, Missouri)
Tay Ho (Sacramento, California)
Tilia (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Trou Normand (San Francisco, California)

MARCH
AOC (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bartavelle (Berkeley, California)
Bien Bar (Bergen, Norway)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Boulevard Tavern (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bror (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway)
Café Lillebror (Copenhagen, Denmark)
El Molino Central (Hot Boyes Springs, California)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Genessee Royale (Kansas City, Missouri)
Great China (Berkeley, California)
Grød (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Il Lazzarone (Kansas City, Missouri)
Joe’s Kansas City (Kansas City, Kansas)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lockeford Meat Service (Lockeford, California)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Maaemo (Oslo, Norway)
Marg og Bein (Bergen, Norway)
Michael David (Lodi, California)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Ramen Shop, The (Oakland, California)
Rudy’s Tenampa Taqueria
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Tomales Bay Oyster Co. (Marshall, California)
Town Topic (Kansas City, Missouri)
Uformel (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Vincent (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Yesterday Café (Berkeley, California)

APRIL
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Herrera’s Tenderloin Grill (Kansas City, Missouri)
Il Lazzarone (Kansas City, Missouri)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Rieger Grill & Exchange (Kansas City, Missouri)
Rye (Kansas City, Missouri)
Town Topic (Kansas City, Missouri)

MAY
Aberdeen Tap (Chicago, Illinois)
Al Forno (Providence, Rhode Island)
Arcade Bakery (New York, New York)
Beatrix (Chicago, Illinois)
Birch (Providence, Rhode Island)
Black Pearl (Newport, Rhode Island)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway)
Dove’s Luncheonette (Chicago, Illinois)
Duck Fat (Portland, Maine)
Eventide Oyster Co. (Portland, Maine)
Fat Rice (Chicago, Illinois)
Flour Bakery (Boston, Massachusetts)
Flo’s (Newport, Rhode Island)
Fore Street (Portland, Maine)
Formento’s (Chicago, Illinois)
Frank Pepe’s (New Haven, Connecticut)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
Herrera’s Tenderloin Grill (Kansas City, Missouri)
High Five (Chicago, Illinois)
Hiltl (Zurich, Switzerland)
Hugo’s (Portland, Maine)
Hungry Mother (Boston, Massachusetts)
Jupiter Outpost (Chicago, Illinois)
JP Graziano (Chicago, Illinois)
JT Farnhams (Essex, Massachusetts)
Little Goat (Chicago, Illinois) (once, twice)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice, thrice)
Margie’s Candies (Chicago, Illinois)
Marta (New York, New York)
Matunuck Oyster Bar (Matunuck, Rhode Island)
Mike’s Kitchen (Cranston, Rhode Island)
Momotaro (Chicago, Illinois)
Moody’s Delicatessen (Waltham, Massachusetts)
Nico Osteria (Chicago, Illinois)
North (Providence, Rhode Island)
North Bakery (Providence, Rhode Island)
Oleana (Boston, Massachusetts)
Parachute (Chicago, Illinois)
Reds Eats (Portland, Maine)
Revival (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Sarma (Boston, Massachusetts)
Sepia (Chicago, Illinois)
Sportello (Boston, Massachusetts)
Upland (New York, New York)
West Bridge (Boston, Massachusetts)
White Barn Inn (Kennebunk, Maine)

JUNE
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Café Lille Bror (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Café Regatta (Helsinki, Finland)
Chef & Sommelier (Helsinki, Finland)
Falsled Kro (Millinge, Denmark)
Gaijin (Helsinki, Finland)
Heirloom (Kansas City, Missouri)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lumskebugten (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Olo (Helsinki, Finland)
Pony (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Restaurant at Dragsholm Slot, The (Dragsholm, Denmark)
Schønneman (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Shawarma House 1980 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Søllerød Kro (Søllerød, Denmark)
Sortebro Kro (Odense, Denmark)

JULY
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
Pizzeria Locale (Kansas City, Missouri)

AUGUST
Aubergine (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)
Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Bouchon (Yountville, California)
Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California)
Coo Coo’s Nest (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Cotogna (San Francisco, California)
Dill (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Duarte’s Tavern (Pescadero, California)
Gott’s Roadside (St. Helena, California)
Heirloom (Kansas City, Missouri)
Gate’s Barbecue (Kansas City, Missouri)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
In-N-Out (Gilroy, California)
Jane (San Francisco, California)
Joe’s Kansas City (Kansas City, Kansas)
LC’s Bar-B-Q (Kansas City, Missouri)
Liholiho Yacht Club (San Francisco, California)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Matur og Drykkur (Reykjavík, Iceland) (once, twice)
Mokka (Reykjavík, Iceland) (once, twice)
Narfeyrarstofa (Stykkishólmur, Iceland)
No Name Pizza (Reykjavík, Iceland)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Quince (San Francisco, California)
Redd Wood (Yountville, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California)
Reykjavík Roasters (Reykjavík, Iceland) (more than thrice)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Suðir Vík (Vík, Iceland)
Taqueria Silva (Kansas City, Missouri)
Taste of Formosa (San Francisco, California)
Tíu Dropar (Reykjavík, Iceland) (once, twice)
Yank Sing (San Francisco, California)
Zuni Café (San Francisco, California)

SEPTEMBER
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Bæst (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bruno Pizza (New York, New York)
Café Lillebror (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Casa Mono (New York, New York)
Contra (New York, New York)
El Rey (New York, New York)
Falsled Kro (Millinge, Denmark)
Focus (Vitznau, Switzerland)
Formel B (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Genessee Royale (Kansas City, Missouri)
Gorilla (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice, thrice)
Hija de Sanchez (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Joe’s Kansas City (Kansas City, Kansas) (once, twice)
Kitty’s Café (Kansas City, Missouri)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
LC’s Bar-B-Q (Kansas City, Missouri)
Öpfelchammer (Zurich, Switzerland)
Pluto (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Relæ (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Schønneman (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Sprüngli (Zurich, Switzerland) (once, twice, thrice)
Storchen (Zurich, Switzerland)
Town Topic (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice, thrice)
Yuca Taco (Copenhagen, Denmark)

OCTOBER
Bien Bar (Bergen, Norway)
Bistrot Paul Bert (Paris, France)
Blé Sucré (Paris, France)
Café de Flore (Paris, France)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway)
Carette (Paris, France)
Chez l’Ami Jean (Paris, France)
City Star (Taipei, Taiwan)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
db bistro moderne (New York, New York)
Din Tai Fung (Taipei, Taiwan)
Do It True (Taipei, Taiwan)
Do Jiang Da Wong (Taipei, Taiwan) (more than thrice)
Epicure (Paris, France)
Five Happiness (Taipei, Taiwan)
Fontevraud, l’Abbaye Royale (Fontevraud, France)
Four Seasons, The (New York, New York)
Gabriel Kreuther (New York, New York)
Gran Electrica (New York, New York)
Grand Hotel, The (Taipei, Taiwan)
Kao Chi (Taipei, Taiwan)
Kang Ho Dong Baekjong (New York, New York)
Lao Dian Tou Tainan Yi Mian (Taipei, Taiwan)
Le Verre Volé (Paris, France)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Ma Bourgogne (Paris, France)
Michel Bras (Laguiole, France)
MUME (Taipei, Taiwan)
Navy (New York, New York)
NoMad (New York, New York)
Qing Zhen Zhong Guo Niu Rou Mian Shi Guan (Taipei, Taiwan)
Sadelles’ (New York, New York)
Saturne (Paris, France)
Volcanic Chicken (Yilan, Taiwan)
Yam’tcha (Paris, France)

NOVEMBER
1833 (Monterey, California)
Artisan Meat Share (Charleston, South Carolina)
Aubergine (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California) (once, twice)
Big Sur Bakery (Big Sur, California)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California)
Butcher and Bee (Charleston, South Carolina)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Daily, The (Charleston, South Carolina)
FIG (Charleston, South Carolina)
Genessee Royale (Kansas City, Missouri)
Martha Lou’s (Charleston, South Carolina)
Molina (Mill Valley, California)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Spoon & Stable (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Wild Olive (Johns Island, South Carolina)
Zuni Café (San Francisco, California)

DECEMBER
Bouchon (Yountville, California)
Ciccio (Yountville, California)
Cook Tavern (St. Helena, California)
Extra Virgin (Kansas City, Missouri)
Glen Ellen Star (Glen Ellen, California)
Hank Charcuterie (Lawrence, Kansas)
Harvest Table (St. Helena, California)
M H Bread & Butter (San Anselmo, California)
Model Bakery, The (St. Helena, California)
Octavia (San Francisco, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California) (The Twelve Days of Christmas: Humm, Mlinarevic, Puglisi, Vallejo, Skenes, Wilkinson, Floresca & Ryan, McHale, Connaughton, Tanaka, Yu, Kostow)
Saison (San Francisco, California)

~

* Following the collapse of its economy in 2008, the country has tried to recover by pumping lots of resources into attracting tourists (you might have seen advertisements for shockingly low, round-trip airfare on one of Iceland’s two airlines – Icelandair and WOW air – which requires travelers to stay in Iceland for a few days, thereby ensuring foreign revenue).  While Iceland seems to have done a tremendous job of getting foreigners to Iceland, the country doesn’t seem to have been very successful at preparing for or dealing with the increased traffic.  The infrastructure for tourism is weak, and, in many parts of the country, completely non-existent.  A country of only 325,000, which, until 2008 had enjoyed an isolationist existence, thanks to prohibitively unfriendly exchange rates with most currencies, Iceland has seen more than a million visitors in the past year, according to one statistic I heard.  Unable to regulate and enforce, Iceland is being ravaged by disrespectful tourists.  Trash left behind by hitchhikers and backpackers not only litter Reykjavík, but much of the high-trafficked areas in the rest of the country, especially the Ring Route.  Naturally occurring hot springs, which have always been free and open to public bathers, have become crowded and polluted.  And even private landowners, like my friend Solveig’s family, have had to take extra measures to keep freeloaders from camping, or, in some cases, squatting, on their property.  Although I wish I could write more about this trip, I’ll leave you with this bit of advice: if you’ve been wanting to go to Iceland, I urge you to go now, while the country is still relatively untouched.  I fear for where Iceland may be headed in the next few years and decades.  And, it should go without saying that, if you go, please be respectful of its natural beauty.

** While the painting is a part of the National Palace Museum’s collection, the sketch was on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

*** While I did travel to San Francisco quite a bit, I flew in and out of BGO (Bergen Fleisland Airport) more times in 2015, albeit on Delta’s partner airline, KLM.  Regardless, MCI – Kansas City International – has always been, and will always be my most frequent destination, as it is home.

Photos: Nearly a million fans lined the streets of downtown Kansas City, Missouri to give the Kansas City Royals a World Series victory welcome home; dinner with Mark Lundgaard Nielsen in the woods of Søbo, on the Danish island of Fyn; the still waters of Gudvangen Fjord, Norway; in the cloister at Fontevraud, l’Abbaye Royale under a canopy of stars in Fontevraud, France; a bucolic patch of wild flowers at Fontevraud, l’Abbaye Royale in Fontevraud, France; cows in the morning snow on a hill in Aubrac, Laguiole, France; a giant, bronze bull and bear turn in their age-old rivalry on a field of green before Lake Lucerne at the Park Hotel Vitznau in Vitznau, Switzerland; Solveig on the rocky shores of Hellnar, Iceland; a rainbow appears at the base of a waterfall in Skógafoss, Iceland; all alone somewhere in the wilderness on the way to Landmannalauger, Iceland; the pavilion at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial in Taipei, Taiwan; beautifully tiled room at Falsled Kro in Millinge, Denmark; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen dressing a roebuck in the woods of Søbo on the island of Fyn, Denmark; hundreds of ducks lined up after the hunt at Nakkebølle Gods on the island of Fyn, Denmark; Jane’s Carousel, now in its glass case post-Sandy, DUMBO, New York, New York; “Dr. Pozzi at Home,” a painting by John Singer Sargent on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, New York; Beavertail State Park, Rhode Island; Justin Cogley hosting a beach dinner for the guest chefs of this year’s Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine event on Carmel Beach, California; Charles Kelley rocking the night away at Music To Your Mouth at the Inn at Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen and me sitting down to dinner in the woods of Søbo, Denmark.

~

There was no runaway hit in 2015.  There were quite a few of them.

However, whereas in past years, canvassing through hundreds of dishes for my 25 favorite was a particularly difficult task – one that I was often unable to carry out successfully, forcing me to append a spillover list that often included just as many “runners up” – this year’s top dishes separated themselves rather easily from the pack, especially, the top ten, which cluster tightly on a shelf that sits considerably higher than the rest.*

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Although I still managed to put away well over a thousand plates at over 200 restaurants around the world in 2015, looking back at my year of eating produced a long, lazy yawn.  Even though I ate very well, rarely was I excited.

This caused a panic.

Have I become one of those food writers and bloggers who is tired and jaded, ruined by too many meals at the high end, or otherwise?  Have I been suspended in a thin, rarefied air for such a long time that I’ve become untethered from reality, unable to relate or rationalize?  Am I losing a sense of purpose, or a sense of enjoyment at the table? Am I expiring?  Has the time come for me to move on?

This happens you know.  I’ve seen it quite a bit – food writers and bloggers who, over the past decade, have dropped off the scene, one by one, having lost an interest in eating, or the ability to do so with as much intensity as before. Sometimes, it stems from a disillusionment with the dining culture, a creeping cynicism that, fanned and fueled by the infuriating hype and hysteria created by modern media and ignorance, blossoms into abandonment. Many succumb to exhaustion – their body, their palate, or their finances simply can’t sustain. And others realize that eating out and writing about it isn’t nearly as glamorous or lucrative as they had hoped.

And so they move on.  Can you blame them?

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But I’ve stayed.

That’s because I am, at the very core of my being, an eater. I don’t do it for glamor, or money, or fame. And my love of eating ultimately pushes me past all of the noise which has, unfortunately, come to surround it.

Is the hype unjustified?  Terribly. Are the food media infuriating?  The worst.  Is the ignorance maddening? Absolutely. Is the culture of dining bifurcating, with the majority taking a devastating slouch towards Levittown (borrowing from the bombastic Robert Bork, who, in turn, borrowed from the witty Joan Didion)?  Sadly.  And I’ve written about all of it before.

But despite all of this, is there still a lot of good food being cooked by talented people?

Thankfully, yes.  And so, I stay.

But why have I become so bored recently?

I’ve become bored because there’s a lot of sameness.  And, even more troubling, there’s a lot of doing for doing’s sake.

Over the past decade that I’ve been blogging about food, there has been an exponential growth in education and awareness of our world’s foodways.  This has led to an increased production of higher-quality ingredients, and, even more importantly, access to them.

But availability and access to better ingredients, alone, don’t give rise to better cooking.

As the internet deluges us with information, I find few chefs thinking for themselves. There’s a lot of knowing, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of understanding. And therefore, few are creating.  So, even though the quality of what I’m eating has generally increased over the past few years, and even though I believe that the standard of cooking has been raised across the board, it has only created a wide and even field on which very few stand out.

As a result, I’ve been choosing, more and more, to eat among the restaurants that please me most, returning to them instead of venturing afield in search of others.  Although I still ate widely in 2015, I began eating more deeply within a narrower range.  This made the task of identifying my 25 favorite dishes considerably easier.  Even if my pool was richer and thicker, it was slightly smaller.  I found myself returning to the same, usual suspects for the very best: for example, ten of this year’s 25 best dishes were produced by three chefs.

As in the past, simplicity seems to have been the essential key to unlocking my heart in 2015. In particular, those dishes that showcased the integrity of one or two star ingredients – whether through flavor, texture, superb cooking, or, as in most cases, all of the above – pleased me most: vegetables, barely dressed (no. 21); simple pastas (no. 22); and nicely cooked fish (no. 14) and meats (no. 10) with a just little sauce.

I found my favorite dishes of 2015 in seven different countries on three continents. They ranged from $0.50 to 280€, and were served to me on everything from styrofoam to fine china.  I ate no. 25 on the streets of Taipei, and no. 20 in a roadside kitchen in South Carolina. No. 17 was cooked for me by a friend in his home in Berkeley, California, and no. 15 I ate over a campfire at a medieval hunting lodge in Denmark. One of the dishes – no. 5 – was served to me in a cozy log cabin amidst a snowy expanse, while no. 23 arrived on a field of mauve paisley at a VFW Hall in Cranston, Rhode Island.

As always, compiling this year-end list is a humbling reminder of just how lucky I am to travel and eat as broadly and with as much depth as I do.  I am blessed.

Out of hundreds of dishes that I tasted at over 200 restaurants in a dozen U.S. states, nine countries spread across three continents, and representing nearly 50 Michelin stars (you’ll find them all listed in this previous blog post), for the eleventh year in a row, I give you my 25 favorite dishes of 2015.

The title of each dish below is hyperlinked to a photo of that dish.  In some cases, I’ve written about the dish in a previous blog post, which is hyperlinked from either the chef or restaurant name that appears below the title.

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25. BRAISED PORK RICE
(Lao Dian Tou Tainan Yi Mian; Taipei, Taiwan)

This rich, flavorful pork ragu – not a tomato-based meat sauce, rather, it’s a chunky, oily, meat sauce, with just a touch of sweetness – is commonly spooned over rice or noodles in Chinese cuisine. Usually a rather inexpensive fare, it can be found at street stalls and night markets all over Taipei, like at Lao Dian Tou Tainan Yi Mian on the busy Tonghua Street, where friends took me one night. Some of us had the braised pork with noodles, and some of us with rice. I’ve always preferred it with rice, as I think the rice soaks up the fat and flavor of the ragu better. I’ll admit that this version isn’t the best I’ve had. But it was pretty great, enough to lure me back the next night, when I sat elbow to elbow with strangers at one of many tables that spilled out of this tiny food stall onto the sidewalk. At $0.50 a bowl, it is, by far, the least expensive entry on this year’s list of my favorite dishes.

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24. PORK PATTY MELT
Meunster, caramelized onions.
(Trou Normand; San Francisco, California)

Imagine a juicy breakfast sausage – those shapeless patties barely held together by a loose, large grind – sandwiched in a buttery, golden, grilled cheese with sweet, caramelized onions.  This thing was fantastic.

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23. POLENTA
(Mike’s Kitchen at VFW Post 2396; Cranston, Rhode Island)

As the ladies at this “permanent pop-up” (as my friend Ben Sukle aptly described this restaurant) would say, this polenta was “to die for.”  It was the only thing that Sukle, a chef in nearby Providence, insisted we order that night.  The enormous, molten block of baked cornmeal, suffused together with lots of cheese, arrived in a shallow casserole smothered in red sauce.  It should’t have been good. But it was extremely so.

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22. TAGLIOLINI “CARBOMARE”
Monterey squid, gaper clam, samphire.
(Quince; San Francisco, California)

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21. L’AUJOURD’HUI “CLASSIQUE”
Le gargouillou de jeunes légumes, herbes,
graines germées, tomatillo verde.
(Michel Bras; Aubrac, France)

Could this dish, which has been copied in some form or another by chefs around the world, possibly live up to its legendary reputation?  While I was unprepared for the rainbow of colors in this “gargouille” – especially given how late it was in the season (in fact, it snowed the night we spent at Michel Bras) – I was completely taken by how comforting it was, with a warm, velvety, vegetable sauce poured over this table-top garden.

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20. CLAM CHOWDER
(JT Farnhams; Essex, Massachusetts)

It was over this bowl of buttery cream, looking out over the marshy waters of Essex, that I realized: the reason oyster crackers don’t go soggy in clam chowder is because the soup, when made correctly, is far more fat than liquid, especially in the version served at JT Farnhams, where the puffy little crisps floated likes rafts on a cap of golden butter.

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19. FRIED CHICKEN
Lima beans, collard greens, cornbread.
(Martha Lou’s Kitchen; Charleston, South Carolina)

“Your mama sure did teach you how to clean a chicken bone,” she said softly, more to herself than to me. I have to admit, I was a little nervous with Martha Lou Gadsden sitting across from me, watching me eat. So her compliment was reassuring. It took a while for my “meat and three” to come out of her small kitchen, she explained, because she fries to order. Her chicken, as she proudly pointed out, was seasoned all the way to the bone, hot and full of flavor.  I can’t say that I liked her cornbread – it was too soft, too sweet, and too fine for me, reminding me a lot of white, vanilla box cake. But her lima beans – creamy and rich – were awesome, as were the collard greens, pocketed with shaggy pieces of ham, that had been suffused with pork fat.

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18. BRESSE FARM HEN EN VESSIE
(Épicure; Paris, France)

Clocking in at 280€ – even if split in four, to account for the fact that this dish came in two services, and was intended for two people – this chicken is the most expensive “dish” on this year’s list.  After birthing the Bresse hen from the pig’s bladder in which it had been poached, our tuxedoed waiters carved the bird table-side, and plated the suprêmes (breasts) in a garland of of spinach packets stuffed with a royal of giblets, crayfish, and chanterelles all sauced with a rich vin jaune broth.  While my friend and I worked on this first service, back in the kitchen, the dark meat was carved from the carcass and plated with little more than a rich meat jus and a tuft of young herbs, all of which arrived at our table capped under a foggy glass dome.

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17. AGNOLOTTI
Potato, white truffles.
(At home with friends; Berkeley, California)

Some of the most talented cooks I know aren’t found in the professional kitchen. Formerly a cook at both Cyrus as well as The French Laundry, Alex Pitts is one of them. He’s not only incredibly bright and articulate, he also has a sharp palate, which serves him well as the assistant winemaker at Scholium Project under Abe Schoener, where he currently works. At a recent dinner he hosted at his house to celebrate the launch of his own wine label Maître de Chai (which he started with our friend Martin Winters, who was formerly a fellow cook at Cyrus and who is currently a sommelier at The Restaurant at Meadowood), he made tender pillows of agnolotti, which he filled with potato purée and enrobed in butter.  Over all of it he shaved a white truffle that he had brought back from Italy. This dish stood out among the company of very good friends in very good cheer.

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16. CURED WILD BOAR PARTS
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

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15. WILD DUCK
(Nakkebølle Gods; Fyn, Denmark)

After a spectacular hunt, during which 20 veteran hunters downed over 600 birds in 2 hours, my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen plucked one fresh – the body still warm – raised a fire on the lawn of the medieval hunting lodge where we hunted, and roasted the bird whole on a broken branch that I found. Taking a hunting knife, he unzipped the bird onto a cutting board and sprinkled a little salt over it. The bird was juicy, flavorful, and very tender, surprisingly so given how fresh it was. It was one of the best things I ate last year.

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14. COD HEAD
Fried cod tongue and potato salad with lovage.
(Matur og Drykker; Reykjavík, Iceland)

I had fish heads (not in a Chinese restaurant) three times in 2015 (coincidence or trend?).  Twice I was served whole-roasted fish heads by a chef as a part of a tasting menu (cod with dill oil at Bror in Copenhagen, and tilefish glazed with maple-mirin butter at Contra in New York). Both were very good. But the one that I loved the most was the giant cod head that I ordered off the menu at Matur og Drykkur in Reykjavík.  It was as large as my own head, and had been cooked in chicken stock with dulse.  Spilling out of its giant, gaping mouth were battered and fried pieces of buttery cod tongue.

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13. WILD ASPARAGUS
With shrimp, blanquette sauce fortified with Danish cheese, and chives.
(Falsled Kro; Millinge, Denmark)

These logs of white asparagus were as fat as they were tender. And Per Hallundbæk, chef at the centuries-old Danish inn Falsled Kro on the island of Fyn, smothered them with a rich, buttery blanquette sauce, sharp with Danish cheese and studded with tender shrimp, that showcased their milky sweetness.

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12. SMOKED BEEF RIB
Black pepper, black vinegar.
(Justin Yu presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas;
The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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11. NAPLES LONG PUMPKIN
Coconut, Swarnadwipa.
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

These pumpkins, grown by Saison’s head farmer Adam Rusk, are checked for ripeness, cut from the vine, and then let to age in the sun to thicken its skin.  Properly cured in this way, the gourds can keep for up to a half a year or more, preserving the remarkable, dewy sweetness of the flesh inside.  To show off both the meatiness and breezy freshness of the preserved pumpkin (this one had been cellared for nearly six months), chef Joshua Skenes presented it in a couple of different ways, including a steaky block that had been slightly dehydrated above the hearth, concentrating its flavor and imbuing it with smoke, as well as freshly grated pumpkin that was unexpectedly juicy and bright.

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10. STAG AU POIVRE
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

I watched my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen shoot this stag in the wild.  I saw it decapitated, gutted, and skinned. I helped unhang the carcass and load it into Lundgaard Nieslen’s car.  I watched him and his sous chef break the carcass down the next day.  And later that night, he served it to me, prepared au poivre, table-side flambé and all. But, beyond the rare proximity that I had to this piece of meat, following it literally from field to table, I was astonished by how tender and delicious it was.  For that, I was completely unprepared.

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9. PARSNIP
Burnt gjetost toast, parsnip, and white truffle.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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8. SALTED SHEEP RIBS
Cabbage from Fokhol glazed with lamb fat and vinegar.
(Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)

I smelled it before I saw it.  And its taste lingered long after it had left the table. As I wrote in an earlier blog post about this salted sheep rib (a traditional Christmastime meat for Norwegians), which had been glazed with a tangy vinegar sauce: “We used our fingers to pick the meat off the bone.  It was dense and salty, and funky in the way that I like sheep meat to be.  I especially loved the flavorful pockets of fat in between, which were even more pungent than the meat.  This dish was a compelling rebuttal to my earlier complaints about the thinness of modern Scandinavian cooking at the high end.  Here was a dish that was grounded in tradition, and yet refaced to great affect.  It was not repackaged beyond recognition.  Nor did it come with a social studies lesson (I had the benefit of knowing the cultural significance of the cured sheep meat in Norwegian cookery only because I stumbled upon it at a market in Bergen and inquired about it out of curiosity). The story wasn’t in its ties to Norwegian nationalism, or some other geeky footnote.  The story was, simply, its deliciousness.”

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7. DUCK
Glazed in orange sauce, with celeriac purée.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

As I wrote earlier, this “duck, roasted whole, arrived at my table bronzed and burnished.  The bird, with its long neck curving towards me, was carved and plated with a dollop of celeriac purée, the rounded sweetness of which was cut short of a full circle by the bitter fragrance of orange in a sauce that glowed with warming spices.  I’ve never had duck à l’orange so vibrant, so alive before.  The outstanding sauce work made it so.”

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6. BEET “FIRE IN THE SKY”
Bone marrow, roasted over the coals.
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

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5. WILD DUCK
“Tasty paste.”
(Fäviken Magasinet; Järpen, Sweden)

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4. SMOKED RAW SEPIA
Salsa mexicana, avocado.
(Cosme; New York, New York)

The texture of the squid was exquisite, slippery and silky, and just a touch slimy. The smoke was pronounced, but not cloying, rounded out by a bright, lively “salsa mexicana” and creamy avocado. This dish is what chef Enrique Olvera does best: he makes you long for a Mexico that doesn’t actually exist outside of his restaurants.

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3. SALT-BAKED TURBOT
Olive oil “blanquette,” small winter leek, bianchetto.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

I had salt-baked turbot twice at Kong Hans Kælder last year. Although I count both of those dishes among the very best I had in 2015, I list here the first instance, which I described in an earlier blog post: “Uncapping the golden dome of a baked, salt-dough crust, [chef Mark Lundgaard] Nielsen revealed a steaming tranche of turbot.  He gently filleted the meat off the bone, plated it with some melted leeks, and smothered it all with velvety, white sauce.” Over this, he shaved rust-colored bianchetto truffles, which “magnified the grassiness of the olive oil in this lighter version of ‘blanquette’ sauce to produce a flavor almost indistinguishable from white truffles.” [Here is a video of sous chef Andreas Bagh serving the salt-baked turbot on my second visit.]

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2. OUR CORN
Butter, white truffles.
(Christopher Kostow presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas;
The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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1. RADISH
The whole plant, cultured butter.
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

Chef Joshua Skenes halved the meaty funk of his house-cultured butter with the grassy sharpness of radishes in this spectacular reexamination of a classic pairing.  A spoonful of the golden, clarified butter was drizzled over a a shingled tent of daikon, under which assembled a rainbow of radishes – cooked, raw, and pickled; root, stem, and greens. Together, it was a dynamic meeting of flavors and textures that arrived at a rare crossroad of thoughtfulness and deliciousness.  For these reasons, this dish sits atop all others I had in 2015.

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* As I wrote last year: “…although I created this annual post [eleven] years ago with the title ‘best of…,’ in the years since, I have come to dislike the misleading nature of it (for a more in-depth discussion why, read here). I do not claim, of course, that these are the 25 best dishes from the year [2015], for I have not eaten all of the food prepared in all of the restaurants around the world.  Even if I were, by some gastronomic miracle, to have done so, and survived, who am I to pronounce what is the “best?” Rather, these are the best dishes that I had in [2015], in my opinion.  That is why I have deliberately avoided using the word ‘best’ to describe the food mentioned in this post, preferring, instead, to refer to them as ‘my favorite’ dishes.  I realize this is a rather pedantic point of clarification, but one that is important to me.”

Photos: Naples Long Pumpkin at Saison in San Francisco; our tuxedoed waiters plating Bresse farm hen cooked en vessie at Epicure at le Bristol in Paris, France; wild ducks, still smoldering, presented on a bed of pine at Fäviken Magasinet in Järpen, Sweden; braised pork rice on the sidewalk of Tonghua Street in Taipei, Taiwan; Michel Bras’s colorful gargouille at his eponymous restaurant in Laguiole, France; the meat and three plate of fried chicken, lime beans, collard greens, and cornbread at Martha Lou’s Kitchen in Charleston, South Carolina; fat logs of wild, white asparagus under a buttery sauce of Danish cheese and shrimp at Falsled Kro in Millinge, Denmark; Peter Pepke, the maître d’ and house manager of Kong Hans Kælder preparing the table-side flambé for stag au poivre, Copenhagen, Denmark; drizzling clarified, cultured butter over an assortment of radishes at Saison in San Francisco, California.

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I started issuing a list of my favorite desserts in 2011 because I noticed something exciting happening in pastryland, and I wanted a record of it.

At the time, many pastry chefs were branching out and exploring new territory, while others hunkered down to improve upon what was already there.  And in just a few, short years, together, they have widened the borders of their domain, and have made it a considerably better place in which to treat ourselves today.  Once relegated to the corner of the kitchen as an afterthought, desserts have moved up on the restaurant menu to be an integral part of the dining experience.  Pastry chefs too, once nameless and faceless, have moved into the spotlight, making a way for themselves apart from the restaurant line behind which they’ve traditionally been hidden.

While I’ve celebrated this sweet progress for the past four years, I noticed its growth stunting in 2015.  And I’d like to take a moment to talk it through.

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In my prior post about my favorite dishes of 2015, I had expressed my increasing boredom with cooking at the high end, pointing to a homogenization and commoditization of ideas as the probable cause.  I’ve noticed something similar happening with pastries and desserts.

While the overall quality of what is being produced has increased, much to the benefit of consumers like me, I feel like the frenetic pace at which ideas and creativity had been churning in the pastry kitchen has slowed considerably – at least in the limited circles in which I have been eating.  But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  As I said, I think that industry standards have risen because of it, as pastry chefs, collectively, have begun to narrow their field, focusing on what’s important.  They’re pushing for higher quality among themselves, which has created higher expectations among their audiences.  You definitely won’t find me complaining about that.

As a result, I think we’ve arrived at a high plateau in pastryland, affording all – pastry chefs and diners alike – a clearer survey of what’s out there, and more even and steady footing.  Although I’ve seen far too many carrot and beet desserts (I get it, they’re both colorful, sweet, and not fruit, and therefore “unexpected”), I’ve also seen far fewer flights of fancy that sound more interesting than they are good. There was a stretch, early on, during that period of frenetic excitement to which I referred, when I felt like pastry chefs were raiding Dr. Seuss’s closet for the strange and whimsical and parading their find for spectacle (not unlike what the American political parties seem to be doing this election season). But their fascination with the remote has thankfully abated, and pastry chefs seem increasingly content to leave whatever experiments they’re conducting in the kitchen in favor of offering the tried and true at the table.  And that too is a really good thing.

So, as I sat down to review my year in eating, I began realizing that 2015 was more about trading in excitement for the satisfaction of finding good, quality cooking, which is something for which I constantly long, and for which I have advocated often here.  That being said, the lack of excitement did make it harder for me to find 25 desserts about which to write.  So, free of quotas and editorial requirements that might dictate otherwise, I have decided to trim this year’s roster accordingly, choosing only to feature what truly excited me in 2015.  Therefore, you will only find 15 desserts below.

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I ate a frightening amount of confections throughout my travels in 2015, not all of which were in restaurants, or as a part of a meal (that is to say, not the type of desserts that are the primary focus of this annual list).

In fact, I’d venture to guess that the majority of my sugar intake happened in pastry shops, bakeries, and during afternoon coffee stops along the way.  Since this year-end round-up is just as much about preserving, for my own memory, the best of what I have eaten as it is about sharing it with you, I want to take a moment to record for all of us some of the more memorable sweets I had in 2015 that aren’t listed among the 15 below.

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My appetite for ice cream is insatiable. And when I find it, I often want it all.

That is why I particularly loved Østerberg Ice Cream in Copenhagen, where you can get a waffle cup (bowl?) filled with mini-scoops of all twelve flavors in the case. All of the ice creams are churned in-house, and present a colorful palette of tropical (l found dragonfruit and lychee ice creams, for example) and more traditional options. (Why don’t more people make dark chocolate sorbet? I love dark chocolate sorbet.)

Just across the city’s “lakes,” I found one of Jacob og Jakob Ice Cream carts parked at the base of Rosenborg Castle.  The wide, open Kongens Have park, which stretches out from the castle’s moat, was the perfect place to enjoy a hand-dipped licorice ice cream cone on a sunny, summer day in Copenhagen.

Further towards the center of the city, near Kongens Nytorv, in the cellared Kong Hans Kælder, a restaurant that I visited thrice last year, there is a handsome ice cream and sorbet trolley (in addition to a well-stocked gueridon of French cheeses).  Every time it wheeled around, I perked up in my seat to survey the colorful selection from which they curl perfect, egg-shaped quenelles onto a frosty slab of marble.  And every time, as the colorful triptych was placed before me, a silver sleeve of large, wafer dentelles alighted beside.  Together, it’s perfect.  (After dinner, there’s also a stunningly beautiful box of chocolate truffles, which they leave on the table for you to enjoy over coffee.)

In gloomy Reykjavík, I found Turkish pepper ice cream at Ísbúðin Valdís along the city’s dock-side warehouses.  Although widely popular in Scandinavia, that was a new flavor for me (it’s licorice spiked with ammonium chloride and peppercorn). The ice cream’s ashen, grey color, belied its slightly soured, peppery heat.  I loved it.

And in Paris, I relished a return to Maison Berthillon on the Île St-Louis, where the flavors are always seasonal and strong (this time, I especially admired my scoop of boozy “Creole” – rum raisin – ice cream).

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If you like ice cream, you must go to Margie’s Candies on the corner of Armitage and Western in Chicago.  While the interior looks like something from Archie Bunker’s dreams, the menu looks more like something from mine.  It’s entirely devoted to ice cream: sundaes, shakes, and banana splits (which, like this sweets shop, are far more charming than they are pretty).

Speaking of banana splits, I had a beautiful one while taking an afternoon coffee on the sidewalk at the famous Confiserie Sprüngli in Zurich.  I whiled away a sunny afternoon there, admiring the well-tailored Swiss strolling up and down the Bahnhofstraße.

My love affair with pie continues (and it will never end).

I stuffed my face with the icebox pies at Town Topic in Kansas City more often than I’d like to admit (and chef Justin Yu is correct: the pie shakes here – literally, a slice of pie blitzed into a milkshake – are not to be missed).  And I’m pretty sure I had every pie that Megan Garrelts offered on her menu last year at Rye in Leawood, Kansas at least a dozen times each (her coconut and banana cream pies remain my favorite, but there also appeared a terrific rhubarb pie, fragrant with citrus).

In August of 2015, I horrified my Danish friends with the amount of pie I ordered for the three of us at Duarte’s Tavern in Pescadero, California. But at least this time, I finally got to try the pecan pie that had sold out the first time I was there (I wrote about that visit last year).  It was very good.  Later, in November, I was lucky enough to have a friend swing through that forlorn town along Highway 1 to pick up two slices of Duarte’s pies and deliver them to me down the coast in Carmel: blueberry and ollalieberry, please and thank you Shawn Gawle.

In Chicago, I swung by Bang Bang Pie Shop on my way up to Wisconsin for lunch at a friend’s place.  I think we agreed the key lime and spicy “Mexican silk” pies were our favorites.

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The breakfast pastry is its own kind of wonderful, isn’t it?

While the Norwegians love their svele – those dense pancakes that I had a couple of times in 2015, slathered with jam and sour cream – Icelanders love waffles.  The one at Kaffi-Mokka in Reykjavík was so large that the checkered mattress arrived practically falling off the plate.  The one at Tíu Dropar down the street was cut cross-wise, and was crispier, which I preferred.  But both were served with whipped cream and jam, which, together with the waffle, offered an indulgent foil to the stiff, ultra-dark coffee they drink in that country.

Neighbor Bakehouse in San Francisco’s Dogpatch district makes terrific viennoiserie, including a giant chocolate-filled claw and a beautiful pistachio and blackberry “croissant” powdery with confectioners sugar.

I found terrific gibassier – that bready, sugar-dusted pastry kissed with anise and orange – at both Pâtisserie 46 in Minneapolis and Standard Baking Co. in Portland, Maine.

I had an English muffin from The Model Bakery in St. Helena, California for breakfast almost every day I was in Napa for the Twelve Days of Christmas.  Among the many luxuries that passed my way during that three-week run, I count these buttery buns among my most favored.  They toast up so well, golden and gorgeous.

And nearer to my home, I was thrilled to discover that the young brothers Petrehn, Taylor and Reagan, whose ages combined barely surpass my own, have opened up a bakery and coffee shop in their hometown of Lawrence, Kansas (perhaps better known to the rest of America as the home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks).  They named it, simply, 1900 Barker, which is its address.  Taylor sheets his own dough, and makes incredibly flakey croissants (some of the best I’ve had in the U.S.), quiches, and terrific breads (he mills up to 30% of his own flour, he told me).  Kind, enthusiastic, articulate, and uncompromising in their push for quality, the Petrehns give me hope for the future of pastryland.

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With a few exceptions, this year’s list of my favorite desserts is comprised of relatively simple propositions.

You’ll find little more than ice cream and some garnishes at the top and bottom of the list, and at a couple of points in between.

Rice pudding appears twice.  That’s surprising, considering I don’t even like rice pudding – proof that anything can be made great if made well.

There are cookies, hand pies, and even a molten chocolate cake – proof that simple can be spectacular if crafted with care.

Brooks Headley, the talented pastry chef of Del Posto for many years, has had a strong track record here: five of his desserts have appeared on this list in the past four years (at least one a year, including the number one dessert in 2013).  So, it’s not surprising that two of his desserts found their way onto my list of favorites again this year.  While I won’t preclude the possibility of his reappearance here in the future (and I very much hope that he does reappear here), I was very sad to see Headley leave the pastry department in 2015 to pursue his own venture, Superiority Burger. Hat tip to you, Mr. Headley. I wish you the best of luck (which I’m sure you won’t need).

But, as that great pastry chef moves slightly off-center stage, another waits in the wings for a reprise.  After four years away from the kitchen, John and Karen Shields are gearing up to open Smyth in Chicago.  Together, they have consistently produced desserts that have made my year-end list of favorites (two in 2011; and one each in 2012 and 2013).  They give me hope that I might find excitement again in 2016.

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I traveled widely in 2015, and tasted countless desserts in over 250 restaurants around the globe. And I record here my 15 favorite from that year.  [The title of each dish below is hyperlinked to a photo of that dish.  In some cases, I’ve written about the dish in a previous blog post, which is hyperlinked from either the chef or restaurant name that appears below the title.]

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15. SALTED CARAMEL ICE CREAM
Honey, olive oil, ground coffee.
(Casa Mono; New York, New York)

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14. RISALAMANDE
(At home in Egernsund, Denmark)

Risalamande – a bastardization of the French riz à l’amande – is a Danish, Christmastime dessert.  As its name suggests, it’s rice pudding with chopped almonds folded in.  One whole, blanched almond is also added, and, as tradition goes, whoever finds it gets a prize (sort of like finding baby Jesus in the king cake).   I had the pleasure of being introduced to risalamande by my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen’s family.  His father made this dessert to cap a special Christmas feast he cooked for me at their home, which included a giant pork roast wrapped with a thick rind of crackling.  The pudding was rich and creamy, and the nuts in it, having swollen with milk, had gone tender, almost indistinguishable in texture from the rice.  A side of meatycherries, with their ruby run of residual acidity helped slim things down just a bit.  That was my favorite part.

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13. COCONUT
Coconut sorbet, longan, lime.
(MUME; Taipei, Taiwan)

This dessert is exactly what one needs on a hot, steamy, night in Taipei.  It was cold and refreshing, bringing the tropical fragrance of lime and longan together with the milky sweetness of coconut. Australian Kai Ward, who is co-chef at MUME with Long Xiong and Richie Lin, doubles as pastry chef here.  And he’s doing a fine job of it.

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12. RIZ’O LAIT, GRAND MÈRE PHILO… ACTION
Whipped cream of salted caramel, granola.
(Chez l’Ami Jean; Paris, France)

This dessert appeared on my list of favorite desserts in 2011.  And it’s not surprising that it appears again this year.  In the five years since I last had the rice pudding at Chez l’Ami Jean, I’m happy to report that it has not changed: a giant bowl of creamy porridge, large enough for four or eight, light as air, with salted caramel whipped cream and granola on the side.  At Stéphane Jégo’s Chez l’Ami Jean, you shouldn’t end your meal any other way.

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11. QUESO FRESCO
Peanut, respado of preserved cherries, mezcal.
(Christopher Kostow presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas;
The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

I’ll admit: when I wandered over to the pastry station to see what they were making for dessert that night, I was a little confused by what I found.  Queso fresco cheesecake?  With a peanut crust?  And shaved ice?  Say what?  But, together, it was fantastic – a miracle, in fact – combining a number of things for which I have little fondness – cheesecake, peanuts, and mezcal (I know, I’m losing credibility quickly here) – and turning them into an exciting dessert. Particularly, I loved the tart, preserved cherry respado (shaved ice), subtly spiked with the boozy, leathery, smokiness of mezcal that approximated the flavors of Mexico without reducing them to a caricature.

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10. RØDGRØD MED FLØD
Strawberry and rhubarb stewed with vanilla,
and served warm with heavy cream.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

So difficult to pronounce is rødgrød med flød (which literally translates as “red porridge with cream”) that the Danes use it, half-jokingly, as the yardstick by which proficiency in Danish is measured.  Mark Lundgaard Nielsen first introduced me to this traditional Danish dessert on a hunting trip. He instructed me how to prepare the ingredients and cook them over the campfire: I combined strawberries, rhubarb, sugar, and vanilla beans, split, in a dutch oven and brought it all to a simmer with some water. Stewed until the fruit was soft, the warm compote was served in a bowl with a spot of heavy cream.  A few nights later, he served me a more refined version at his restaurant, Kong Hans Kælder, which I list here as one of the best desserts I had in 2015.

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9. SUR UNE INTERPRÉTATION DU COULANT
ORIGINEL DE ’81
Le biscuit tiède coulant à la vanille de Tahiti,
crème glacée butternuts & coulis beurre noisette.
(Michel Bras; Aubrac, France)

What many claim to be the father of the modern “molten chocolate cake,” Michel Bras’s “biscuit tiède coulant à la vanilla de Tahiti” (the provenance of which the chef proudly date-stamped on the menu: 1981), arrived at our table, slightly modified.  In an “interpretation on the original,” this tall, cylindrical cake, which oozed a runny heart of warm chocolate, was crowned with a turn of butternut ice cream, and sauced with brown butter coulis. It was worthy of sitting atop a world-wide phenomenon that took dessert menus from here to Tibuktu by storm.

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8. BANANA FRITELLE
Cloudberry syrup.
(Brooks Headley presenting at the Friends of Lysverket #3
Lysverket; Bergen, Norway)

Brooks Headley’s apple fritelle appeared on this list in 2014.  In 2015, at the third Friends of Lysverket dinner in Bergen, Norway, Headley, in the spirit of the dinner series, which encourages guest chefs to draw inspiration from local Norwegian ingredients, modified his fritelle, replacing the crunchy-crusted apple fritter with one made from banana. Having lost some of the natural acidity in the apple, he found it again in cloudberries, which he reduced to a syrup, bringing balance back to this terrific composition of textures and flavors.

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7. MANDARIN ICE CREAM
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

I had this dessert over a half dozen times in 2015, and every time, this ice cream, which was stuffed into a hollowed-out mandarin, was just as good as the last: a spoonable creamsicle, with the texture of marshmallow fluff.

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6. APPLE HAND PIES
(Lisa Donovan presenting at Music To Your Mouth;
The Inn at Palmetto Bluff; Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina)

For the sake of deserved emphasis, I’m going to be crass for a moment and quote a friend, who, in a fit of enthusiasm for pastry chef Lisa Donovan (formerly of Husk Nashville), said, “Everyone should consider themselves lucky to eat any pastry that Lisa Donovan shat out.” (I will leave this friend’s identity obscured, and let him come forth to claim credit for that colorful nugget when and if he’s ready.)  These hand pies, which Donovan served at an intimate symposium on apples that she presented along with Diane Flynt of Foggy Ridge Cider at Music To Your Mouth, had an incredibly soft, flaky crust, and a sweet-tart filling of apples spiked with black pepper.  To my great happiness, these buttery, golden-brown crescents reappeared the next morning at the “Pie in the Sky” breakfast; a pie-themed breakfast (!) waiting for us at the finish line of the 5K by the same name. Ms. Donovan, you owe me a recipe…

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5. MELANZANE E CIOCCOLATO
Alla Napoletana with sheep’s milk ricotta stracciatella.
(Del Posto; New York, New York)

This dessert appeared among my favorites in 2011, and again in 2012.  As if foretelling his impending departure from Del Posto, in January of 2015, Brooks Headley came out of the kitchen to present it one last time, a figurative table-side bow with the dessert – an unlikely meeting of eggplant, chocolate, and sheep’s milk – that has brought me so much pleasure in the past few years.  Thank you, Mr. Headley.

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4. HUSK MERINGUE
Corn mousse.
(Cosme; New York, New York)

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3. THUMBPRINT COOKIES
Raspberry jam.
(Fäviken Magasinet; Järpen, Sweden)

These soft, buttery cookies seemed a little misplaced at breakfast.  So, mistakenly, I relegated them to the outside circle of plates as an afterthought to the more exciting spread of cured and potted meats, offal, cheeses, bread, jams, and juices before us.  Of course, when I finally got around to them, they were a welcomed discovery at the end. Thankfully, I found the recipe in the Fäviken Cookbook when I got home.  It’s listed as “Douglas’ Shortbread Biscuits” on page 208.  I’m sure the butter and eggs used at Fäviken had a lot to do with why they were so yellow, so soft, so delicious. But the version I made at home from the recipe wasn’t bad.  Simple, but incredibly well-made, that thumbprint cookie I had on a snowy, dark morning in the northern expanse of Sweden was one of the most memorable moments for me in 2015.

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2. GJETOST ICE CREAM
Black apple, lovage.
(Christopher Kostow presenting at the Twelve Days of Christmas;
The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

Lovage can sometimes be a little overwhelming to me. And so can gjetost – the “brown,” Norwegian cheese that is essentially caramelized goat’s milk whey.  So balance (which is one of Christopher Kostow’s many fortes) was key to making both of them shine brilliantly in this dessert that put the sweetness of a dried “black” apple at the center of it all.  The apple (Sierra Beauty varietal) had been reduced to a shriveled, meaty knot, the result of a baking and dehydrating process that takes over 60 days, concentrating its flavor, giving it depth.

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1. MILK ICE CREAM
Caramel cooked in the fire, smoked cocoa nibs.
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

Milk ice cream, as bright and fresh-tasting as the morning dew, provided the perfect, pristine backdrop on which to stain a smokey stream of warm, buttery, salted caramel. Cocoa nibs, also smoked, provided a bitter, crackling crunch, bringing the sweetness of it all in check. A simple sundae made with top-shelf ingredients and top-shelf care, this was my favorite dessert of 2015.

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Photos: The Riz’o Lait at Chez l’Ami Jean in Paris, France; a waffle cup with twelve mini scoops of ice cream at Østerberg Ice Cream in Copenhagen, Denmark; coconut (top) and Turkish pepper (bottom) ice cream at Ísbúðin Valdís in Reykjavík, Iceland; chocolates from Confiserie Sprüngli and macarons from Ladurée in Zurich, Switzerland; the waffle at Kaffi-Mokka in Reykjavík, Iceland; Brooks Headley plating melanzane e cioccolato at Del Posto in New York, New York; the salted caramel ice cream at Casa Mono in New York, New York; Brooks Headley (in the background) plating his banana fritelle at the Friends of Lysverket at Lysverket in Bergen, Norway; rødgrød med flød on the campfire in Søbo, Denmark; the milk ice cream with smoked caramel and cocoa nibs at Saison in San Francisco, California.

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In 2015, quite a few tracks upon which I had been running slowly began to converge.  While my destination remains unclear, my direction has become much more so.  Rapidly disappearing is my desire to keep apace with the restaurant industry, as I watch food media disintegrating into a pile of clickbait and shallow memes, the overwhelming weight of which makes it almost pointless to dig out the few, worthy nuggets therein.  And social media has so sucked the “cult” out of “culture” that so much of what I loved about dining and restaurants has become repugnant to me, having devolved into a great, churning mass of groupies circling the few, the glorious who have managed to charm their way into the eye of the storm, and who relish their haloed seat amidst the calm.

While I’ve always moved at my own pace here, in the past year, I’ve untethered myself even more, enjoying a greater range of motion to explore, and to invest my time and attention where I think it matters most.

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In my voracious search for pleasure in eating over the past dozen years, I strove to be as thorough as I could, given my time and means.

For many obvious reasons, I was able to cast a much wider and more finely knit net here in my own country than abroad.  So exhaustive, in fact, has my tour of America been that, in the last couple of years, I’ve become sated here at home, having just about eaten everywhere I really want to eat in the U.S.  And so, God willing, I have, fortunately, had the opportunity of turning my attention afar.

But none of what I do – my travels, my photography, this blog – has been for the pursuit of gustatory pleasure alone, although that is certainly the primary motivation.  I do love to eat, and it is unthinkable, sometimes, the things I have done for food.

There are many other pleasures and purposes I seek in life.  There are the pleasures that I derive from adventure, and learning – about food, yes, but also about culture, history, and art, and especially where they intersect each other.  And even more important to me is the soul-satisfying prospect of finding others with whom I can share all of these things.   To these ends, I have been blessedly fulfilled, especially so in 2015, a year in which I was able to focus more on the wider, richer universe to which life has given me access.

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In my preceding post about my favorite desserts of 2015, I acknowledged and applauded an overall rise in the level of quality coming out of pastry kitchens.  Here, I expand that to apply to cooking in general, which has improved vastly in restaurants over the past decade, accelerated by the cross-pollination of information made possible by the internet and an increasingly mobile pool of talent. In terms of ingredient quality and presentation, the wide gulf that used to separate casual and formal dining, amateur and professional cooks, and neighborhood and destination restaurants has been narrowed considerably, making now a better time to be cooking and eating out than ever before.

Not only have chefs become more ambitious and clever, but diners have become more eager (although, sadly, not necessarily more discriminating).  So, as I also expressed in my prior post about desserts, I think it has become harder for chefs and restaurants to distinguish themselves in general on this higher plateau to which we have all arrived, forcing some to tread the mill of hype, constantly reinventing themselves to hold the attention of a less and less educated audience: a pop-up on one continent this year, a pop-up on a different continent the next. [To those of you who might accuse me of moralizing what many might simply consider to be good business decisions, I ask that you read my prior rumination entitled “a martyr and a millionaire…”]

But I have no interest in re-litigating matters that have already been tried here before (read my last half-dozen ruminations). What I do want to do, however, is attach them as exhibits to my present resolve:

I have spent the past dozen years searching for those exciting, ripening gems in the culinary world, only to watch many of them spoil in the limelight when I find them.  And I’m growing weary of it.  While my optimism and sense of adventure pushes me to continue exploring and searching, I’ve been gravitating more and more towards that which is steady and consistent. Perhaps, this is evidence of a growing conservatism that comes with age. Or maybe it’s just experience talking.  Either way, eating intensely for over a decade – and especially so in the last five years – has made me more reluctant to play the odds of disappointment when there are sure and trusted pleasures to repeat.*

While my year-end lists of favorite dishes and desserts allow me to piece together a shiny mosaic with the brightest bits from my year in eating, this – my annual list of favorite restaurant meals – allows me to render, more thoughtfully and meaningfully, the values and perspective that I bring to the table as a diner.  It’s a chance for me to celebrate chefs and restaurants for reasons beyond the technicalities of their craft alone.  As I surveyed the meals that I had in 2015, this became very apparent to me.

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But be not misled.  Technique, ingredient quality, and consistency still comprise the foundation upon which good cooking is built.  And you should (always) assume that they are an essential part of every meal that appears on my year-end list of favorites.

What I am saying, however, is that, beyond those essentials – all of which are attainable given enough dedication and resources – there are the intangible, unquantifiable, and admittedly subjective qualities of creativity, inspiration, aspiration, and sincerity, the latter of which is perhaps becoming the most important ingredient on the dinner table for me.  These are the big-picture things that separate the gathering crowd on that wide, high plain, to which I referred earlier, from the few peaks that reach up and beyond in the distance.  These are the things I value most.  These are the things for which I search.  And these are the things that, having found them, I celebrate here.

After reviewing the hundreds of meals I had in 2015, five stood noticeably apart and higher than the rest.  So, this year, in keeping with my commitment of only telling you about the very best, I depart from my tradition of listing 10 meals in favor of a shorter list of those that truly distinguished themselves: five chefs at five restaurants who cooked five incredible meals.

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But before I proceed further, I need to unhook myself from a potential snag.

If I am to evaluate the sincerity of others, then it’s only fair that you evaluate mine.  And in order for you to do so, I need to disclose a few things.

I have become good friends with three of the chefs listed below.  And I have a professional, working relationship with two of them.  Furthermore, although I paid for meals at four of these restaurants in 2015, I also did not pay for quite a few of them – those meals were either gifted to me, or assumed as a part of the cost of our professional relationship.

These things matter.  Because, regardless of how impartial I can claim to be, they have given me a level and frequency of access to a realm that is beyond the reach of many, if not most.  And their potential influence cannot be disregarded.  So it’s only fair that you know about them.

But allow me a short rebuttal of mitigating factors:

If you ask any of the three chefs named below with whom I am friends, and the many who are ancillary to our friendship, I think they would testify that our friendship grew out of my admiration for their talent, their work, and their ethos – the reasons why I celebrate them in this annual, year-end post.  That is to say, I became friends with them because I admired their work (and, of course, our friendship progressed because we share common ground, and, perhaps more significantly, because they value my honesty, especially when critical), and not the other way around (that is, that I admire their work because we were first friends).  I would apply the same logic to the two professional relationships herein.  I will also add that, I have far more friends and professional contacts in the industry about whom I don’t write.  Conversely, if I find their work worthy of attention, I eagerly write about those with whom I have no relationship at all; that would include two of the chefs named below.

The friendships and professional liaisons that I do have, along with the free meals that I receive, present expected complications and conflicts for anyone who, like me, chooses to straddle the blurry bordered life of mixing the personal and the professional.  Some might charge me as irresponsible, if not, at the very least, foolish for trying to keep one foot on each side of the divide.  But, given the alternative of not writing, not sharing, and not recording, I happily assume risk and responsibility.

Since I am a fierce capitalist, I will always encourage you to vote with your readership.  If you deem me suspect, turn me off.  But that’s not going to stop me from doing what I love doing here.

All of that having finally been said, let me now turn to telling you about the best meals I had in 2015.

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In 2015, I had more than one meal at each of the five restaurants listed below.  For two of them, I had little choice (not that I minded), as I spent the night at each and therefore had both dinner and breakfast there. And lest you dismiss breakfast as an afterthought, it is the breakfast, not dinner, at one these restaurants that earned its place here among my best meals.

For the other three restaurants, I returned multiple times, sometimes as an accessory to professional work, but mostly by choice.

And this is significant because, while these restaurants were given more opportunities than most to impress, the fact that I returned – and, in a few cases, returned often – should tell you that they did impress, and repeatedly so.  In fact, even though I can name the specific meal that earned each of these five restaurants a place on this year’s list, most of the meals I had at these restaurants would have bested all others.  And since, together, they numbered more than ten, it was an important factor in my decision to collapse them together into a shorter, more focused list this year.  Also, so razor thin were the margins, and so vastly different yet equally compelling were all of the meals I had at these restaurants, that I have also dispensed with the tiresome task of ranking them.

So, instead of just enumerating specific meals that impressed me in 2015, this post recognizes the chefs and restaurants that did so most consistently.  You’ll find them below, listed alphabetically by the restaurant’s name.

Clicking on the names of the restaurants listed below will take you to an album of photos from that meal.

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FÄVIKEN MAGASINET
(Järpen, Sweden)

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What could be that good?  I explored this question concerning destination dining – and specifically about Fäviken Magasinet, a restaurant located in the great northern expanse of Sweden – in this earlier blog post.  While I concluded, more or less, that the sum of any trip is greater than its parts, that shouldn’t take away from the fact that my dinner at Magnus Nilsson’s restaurant was, undoubtedly, the highlight of my detour to Järpen last January, and, as it turns out, one of the very best meals I had in 2015  (the breakfast wasn’t bad either).  Nilsson’s cooking showcased the high quality of his products, and in tempering flavor and finding balance, he avoided many of the faults I have found with Scandinavian cooking.  His commitment to his craft and cause are clear (and if you can’t experience it for yourself, they are eloquently explained in the Fäviken Cookbook).  I spent more than twice as long traveling to and from Fäviken as I actually spent at Fäviken.  And I was not disappointed.

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KONG HANS KÆLDER
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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I ended my blog post about my first meal at Kong Hans Kælder in March of 2015 by hoping that I’d return soon and often. And God bless, I did, as I had the opportunity to eat in that storied cellar in June, and again in September of that year.  While all of those dinners were incredible, that first one in March remains the most impressive, as Peter Pepke, the restaurant’s manager, and his staff introduced to me a new level of class and hospitality. But, more importantly, it was chef Mark Lundgaard Nielsen’s unfussy and immaculate revision of classical French cooking that begged me back.  I had turbot excavated from a salt-baked shell and coated with a light, olive oil-based blanquette.  There was rosy duck à l’orange, carved table-side, and tiny but tender Pyranees lamb served with its own kidney fat under a lusty sauce of pistachios, mustard, and preserved lemon.  In my travels, when possible, I try to spend my last night in a city at the restaurant that means the most to me. In 2015, I had the great fortune of ending three trips to Copenhagen at Kong Hans Kælder.  And, I was pleased to do so, as I wrote earlier, “with such like-minded people, whose talents and grounded sense of purpose I admire.  Together, they preserve and practice a high caliber of cooking and care that is disappearing. Kong Hans Kælder is located at Vingårdstræde 6, where it has been for half a millennium and more.  Starless for now, I’m positive that it will not be starless for long…  I commend it to you.”

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MICHEL BRAS
(Aubrac, France)

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I’ll be honest: I sort of dragged my feet to Michel Bras. Like many chefs, it had been Colby and Megan Garrelts’s lifelong goal to make the pilgrimage to Laguiole, to the restaurant that inspired their generation of cooks.  So, on a trip to France in October with these two longtime friends, I agreed to go, more out of camaraderie than curiosity.  I don’t think any of us expected to find Michel Bras in the kitchen (and we didn’t) – especially now that he has handed the reins over to his son Sébastien Bras – or for the restaurant to be the same as it was when he was in the kitchen.  But I don’t think any of us were prepared for how magical a trip to this iconic restaurant would be either.  But laying aside the magnificent drive down from Paris, the breathtaking setting of the restaurant on its perch overlooking the Laguiole countryside, and the first snowfall of the season as we woke up the next morning, the food here was pretty great.  While dinner was certainly memorable – especially for the table-side aligot service, which had our captain stretching velvety ribbons of whipped potatoes high in the air – it was the breakfast here that I will never forget.  At the center of a Magritte-inspired field of blue sky powdered with puffy clouds anchored a basket of flakey viennoiserie, buttery pastries, and beautifully baked breads.  As servers arrived in quick succession, they set into orbit a galaxy of jams and butter, yogurt, juices, coffee, tea, and rice pudding, all of which circled our table as each of us tried a little bit of everything.  There were delicate, eggy crêpes speckled with fines herbes.  And in one corner of the room was a tidy gueridon of charcuterie and cheeses, to which we were encouraged.  If you have the opportunity to visit Michel Bras, you must stay for breakfast.

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SAISON
(San Francisco, California)

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I had about a half-dozen dinners at Saison in 2015. And although any of them would rank among the best meals of the year, not all of them were as flawless or as exciting as my last one there in early December. In fact, it was because my penultimate meal there was below par that I was driven to return one last time. I’m glad I did, because at this last meal, chef Joshua Skenes rebounded with what was surely the most impressive dinner I had at this restaurant last year.  Everything, from the bowl of radishes with funky, cultured butter, served towards the beginning of the meal (my favorite dish of 2015), to that refreshing milk ice cream with smoked caramel at the end (my favorite dessert of 2015) was perfect.  Even the meaty fist of beet, which had been slightly dehydrated above the hearth, concentrating its flavor and tenderizing its texture – a dish that I have had countless times before – was better than ever. What I have always loved about Skenes’s cooking is that he puts flavor first, and works his way backwards in order to find it.  Quality at Saison is not a matter of if, but how.  And Skense’s ability to deliver it consistently has landed his restaurant Saison on my list of favorite meals for the fifth year in a row.

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THE RESTAURANT AT MEADOWOOD
(St. Helena, California)

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I’ve had many, very good meals at The Restaurant at Meadowood (in fact, I’ve had nearly 50 of them).  But none of them moved with the weight and confidence of the dinner I had there at the beginning of December of 2015.  It was the night before the Twelve Days of Christmas and Christopher Kostow and his team kept me spellbound for three hours with a thrilling menu that was more refined and thoughtful than any I’ve had there before.  From top to bottom, the courses were flawless, many of which I recognized as the culmination of ideas and dishes I had seen before, those primitive prototypes now fully realized, complete.  And together, they left an indelible mark on the evolutionary timeline of Christopher Kostow’s ambition, and his new Napa cuisine.

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BUCKET LIST

For eight years now, I have kept an ongoing wish list of restaurants I’d like to visit, and places to which I’d like to travel (mostly for food).  What has sort of become a “solera system” of distilling the overwhelming stream of new and existing restaurants in the world, this bucket list has served as a funnel for me, helping me focus my wishes and wants.

After a 28-year absence, I finally returned to Taiwan in 2015.  I’d like my next destination in Asia to be in the Southeastern countries: Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore.

Lamentably, Australia remains my last continent (other than Antarctica). But the good news is that I just booked my tickets for a two-week trip, split between Sydney and Melbourne.  So, my Aussie readers: suggestions and recommendations for real this time.  Please, and thank you.

I’ve heard great things about Clown Bar in Paris.  Outside the city in France, I will mention again Sa.Qua.Na in Honfleur, and Alexandre Couillon’s La Marine in Noirmoutier.

I combed through Copenhagen quite thoroughly in 2015.  But outside the city, I’d like to get to Paul Cunningham’s hamlet inn Henne Kirkeby Kro on the western coast of Denmark’s mainland.

In neighboring Sweden, I bring forward Matthias Dahlgren and add Speceriet (both in Stockholm), and Daniel Berlin, located near Malmö.

A recent trip to London (January of 2016) reminded me how much I love it there, and how many places I still have yet to visit. Poor planning made me miss an opportunity to dine at James Knappett’s Kitchen Table. So that remains on my list.

To the south, in Spain, Azurmendi and Disfrutar.

I’ve had a surprising number of friends posting from all over Italy recently, and I feel that a more in-depth eating trip in that country is warranted.

In South America, I bring forward Peru, Colombia, and Brazil.  There’s so much to see and eat on that continent.

I’ve now been to 49 of the 50 U.S. states. But there remain vast stretches of uneaten territory across my country’s map.

In the South, I have yet to visit Justin Yu’s oxheart in Houston, Donald Link’s Pêche Seafood Grill in New Orleans, and Justin Devillier’s La Petite Grocery, also in New Orleans.

After a patchy four-year absence, John and Karen Shields seem palpably close to returning to the restaurant world.  It’s called Smyth, and it will be in Chicago. And I will definitely be there.

In New York, I’d like to get to Semilla, Wildair, and I’m awfully curious what Ronny Emborg is up to at atera.  Reports from that jewel box in TriBeCa are surprisingly rare and few.

San Francisco has seen quite a few openings in the past two years that have caught my attention.  Among them, Californios and Al’s Place top my list.

I finally made it to Portland, Maine in 2015.  But Portland, Oregon remains a glaring hole on my travelogue – I was last there in 1999, long before the relatively recent restaurant boom there.

It’s also been more than a decade since I was last in Hawaii. And Chris Kajioka (formerly of Vintage Cave in Honolulu, and the opening team of Mourad in San Francisco) has moved back to his home state to open Senia (in the spring of 2016, I hear). If I can manage a trans-Pacific stop, I will.

Here at home in the Midwest, I’m in deficit.  Most urgently, I need to get to The Bachelor Farmer and piccolo, both in Minneapolis.

And, of course, I’m always circling back to restaurants I’ve visited before.

In the United States, I would love to return to Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson’s Frasca Food + Wine in Boulder (my last and only meal there was in December of 2008).  Scott Anderson has reopened elements in Princeton, New Jersey and David Kinch and reopened Manresa in Los Gatos, California. I’d like to revisit both.

Abroad, I’d most like to revisit Asador Extebarri in Axpe in the Basque mountains; Studio in Copenhagen; and The Sportsman in Seasalter on the coast of Kent.   And, what day goes by that I don’t long for the balmy breeze of the Côte d’Azur while dining at Louis XV on that marble terrace at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo?

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As you might have noticed, this annual post has always focused on meals that I had in restaurants (hence its title).

But, truth be told, many of the most memorable meals I have every year are elsewhere – sometimes because of company, or the setting, but often because of the food too.  This was especially true of 2015.

On my five trips to Norway for the Friends of Lysverket series, Christopher Haatuft and his cooks always prepared a packed lunch for our day tour, which usually took us to some breathtakingly beautiful and remote location.  Easily portable, and always cold, these meals were not glamorous but for the settings in which they were dropped.  Maybe it was the chill that made me particularly hungry that day, or maybe it was the familiar taste of home  that I loved so much, but I’ll never forget inhaling a meatball sandwich on the deck of a seventy-foot sailboat, with the tilted Northern sun doing its best to soften the bite of the brisk, North Sea gale, as we parted the waters toward the island home of Ole Bull.  That was a great meal.

I also had a number of unforgettable meals with my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen, chef of Kong Hans Kælder. On a hunting trip on the Danish island of Fyn (that’s “fyoon“) in June, he staged a magical five-course dinner for us at our campsite in the woods, replete with Zalto stemware and venison tartare, fresh from a roebuck that he shot and dressed just minutes before.  In August, he and his sous chef Andreas Bagh came to visit me in America, and after a long day of driving us up the California coast, I soaked in the afternoon sun on Dillon Beach while the two of them shucked dozens of oysters that we had bought down the road in Tomales Bay and prepared a spread of cheeses, fresh figs, charcuterie, and avocados that we had gathered from at the farmers market at the Ferry Terminal in San Francisco.  A month later, in September, I was back on the island of Fyn with Lundgaard Nielsen for a fowl hunt at his friends’ hunting lodge, after which he cooked us a dinner of quail with lingonberry, a gratin of potatoes, and roasted onions.  The next night, we drove over to the mainland peninsula of Jutland, where his parents welcomed us to their home with a traditional Danish, Christmastime feast, which included flæskesteg – a beautifully roasted log of pork laminated with a thick layer of crispy crackling –  and big bowl of risalamande – a rice pudding with almonds and cherries that was among my favorite desserts from 2015.

He’s done it before, and he did it again in 2015: Justin Cogley, chef of Aubergine at the l’Auberge Carmel, kicked off his third annual Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine event with an intimate dinner on Carmel Beach for the guest chefs (and me).  Trenching out a table, complete with a wrap-around banquette – all of which was formed out of sand – Cogley and his sous chef Devin Rose set up a campfire and unpacked a seaside picnic dinner of suckling pig with cornbread, coleslaw, and cheddar rolls.  That was a pretty great way to have dinner.

And I can’t leave 2015 behind without mentioning a dinner that my friends Alex and Stephanie Pitts cooked for me at their home in Berkeley, California, along with Geoff Davis and Marty Winters.  Pitts and Winters, who, together with Davis, had been cooks under Douglas Keane at Cyrus in Healdsburg, had both left the kitchen for the wine industry. Currently, Pitts is the assistant winemaker at Scholium Project and Winters is a sommelier at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  To celebrate the launch of their own wine label Maître de Chai (for which I have photographed), they hosted this small dinner, to which I was lucky to be invited. Alex made agnolotti over which he shaved a white truffle that he had just brought back from Italy (one of the best dishes I had in 2015).  Geoff, who is now chef at James Syhabout’s The Dock in Oakland, baked crab soufflés, golden and wonderful (they really were).  And, if it were not for Stephanie’s key lime pie, I might not have even agreed to go to this dinner at all (truth: when Marty texted me what they were making for dinner, I scrolled over the agnolotti and soufflé ambivalently, and landed on the key lime pie with resolve).  It lived up to all of my expectations.

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* I know that most people do not eat in restaurants enough to arrive at this level of scrutiny. As I wrote in my last, year-end restaurant post: “… I want to take a moment to acknowledge my unique position in the dining community. Lest you think that my sense of reality beyond the starched linens of the world’s top tables is distorted, I am well-aware that the vast majority of diners – even the most well-traveled ones – do not eat like I do. Even those who have the wherewithal to travel and eat with as much breadth may not desire it.  And even if they do, they may not enjoy the level of access to chefs and restaurants with which I have been privileged.”  On the other hand, I can only imagine that a limited ability to eat out – especially at the high end – only intensifies the fear of disappointment.

Photos: The crowned “H” for Hans in the kitchen window at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; walnuts by the fireplace in the rotunda of The Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, California; the lounge at Michel Bras looking out over the rolling hills of Laguiole, France; a bottle of fine wine on my table at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; the fireplace in the living room at Fäviken Magasinet in Järpen, Sweden; ducks in the hearth at Saison in San Francisco, California; chef Magnus Nilsson’s great fur coat at Fäviken Magasinet; a box of truffles at Kong Hans Kælder; breakfast on a field of Magritte at Michel Bras; caviar with toasted Parker House rolls at Saison; pork collar with cherries and fennel at The Restaurant at Meadowood; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen making dinner over the campfire in Søbo, Denmark; Marty Winters pouring wine, while Alex Pitts sets the table in Berkeley, California.

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I’ve been playing tag with London all of my adult life: always flirting, but never letting myself get caught in what would surely be a financially devastating love affair.

So, perhaps purposefully, I have always kept my visits to the city brief.

My recent trip in January was no exception.

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The purpose of this latest layover was two-fold. Of primary importance, it was an opportunity for Christopher Haatuft – the chef of Lysverket, with whom I’ve been working on the Friends of Lysverket series – and me to visit his friend James Knappett, who will be the guest chef, along with Bradford McDonald (formerly of Governor in New York and now chef of Lockhart, a barbecue restaurant in London), at the ninth Friends of Lysverket dinner in early March. Knappett and his wife Sandia Chang have two restaurants in the city’s Fitzrovia neighborhood.

One of them, Bubbledogs, is a Champagne and hot dog bar. It’s in a narrow, shotgun space ergonomically fitted with hightops, counters, and stools. This is where Haatuft and his wife Annette, and their two Norwegian friends (who happened to be in London) met me for a late dinner one night. The menu is comprised of a short, but creative roster of hot dogs like the “Buffalo” – with hot buffalo sauce and blue cheese – and the cheeky but delicious “Horny Dog,” what us Yankees call a corn dog. I liked those two the best of the ones we ordered (disclaimer: Knappett picked up our tab.) In the back of Bubbledogs is Knappett’s Michelin-starred, 19-seat wrap-around counter restaurant aptly named Kitchen Table. Due to very poor planning on my part, I wasn’t able to eat there. It remains on my bucket list.

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My other purpose was to flirt, of course. For someone like me, London is irresistible.

In addition to its blossoming dining scene, the city is rich with history, art, culture, couture, and the performing arts.

It had been decades since I last walked through the abbey at Westminster, that gothic grave with its mind-boggling collection of giants, many of whom could not have coexisted so peacefully in life as they do now in death. I spent hours in the church, pausing every few feet to marvel at the millennium of British history swirling around me: underfoot, Sir Winston Churchill; above, Sir Isaac Newton; and beside me, the religiously estranged Elizabeth and Mary Tudor, “partners in throne and grave” there those two sisters rest together “in hope of one resurrection,” declares their joint tomb.

Can you believe I’ve never been to the British Museum? I’ve seen the Parthenon and the Pyramids, but I have never seen the stunning creatures that once decorated and inhabited those ancient sites, now stripped and empty, mere skeletons of their former glory. Despite the moral outrage and objection to the way these artifacts were confiscated and removed from their homeland (some would say “stolen”), I, for one am glad that they landed in the hands of those who could and have preserved them. Centuries later, there they are, Lord Elgin’s marbles and Henry Salt’s mummies, for all to see.

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Whereas Americans are comfortably (some might say tragically) so, the French outrageously so, and the Italians emotionally so, the British are and always have been impeccably dressed.

I stopped in John Lobb to admire the cobblers’ work (I refer to the Edwardian bootmaker at no. 9 St. James Street, and not the retail shop of ready-to-wear by the same name a few blocks away – a spinoff sold to the French luxury label Hermes in the 70s). A pair of bespoke shoes here starts at 3,600 pounds sterling (at current trading, approximately $5,500).

Around the corner is the shirt-maker Turnball & Asser, where, in the basement, I found a honeycomb of rooms lined floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, with dress shirts of every style, color, and size (and, of course, they’ll custom make yours if you like).

And I floated down Savile Row, just a little tipsy from the sartorial splendor on display at the tailors Gieves & Hawkes, Chittleborough & Morgan, Henry Poole & Co., and The Huntsman, where I admired a stunning dinner jacket on a body form, glowing in the light of the crackling fireplace. Across the street, I wandered into Gaziano & Girling, tempting myself with the company’s fine leather footwear, also bespoke (I especially liked this cobbler’s more angular Deco line).

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Two days I spent like this, blissfully wandering the city alone, with no reservations and no expectations.

I had lunch at Barrafina – the original location on Frith Street in Soho. It’s a Spanish-style tapas bar. And the food here is as terrific as everyone says it is. I had fried baby artichokes and a fat, golden-brown Spanish tortilla stuffed with melted onions and thinly sliced potatoes bound together with sweet gravy. Certainly not authentically Spanish, there was also terrific crab toast – a rather British thing, here done in a rather Spanish way, the crab having been mixed with a thick, tomato paste. I also had a beautiful wing of skate, as well as a big fat pear poached in wine and piped with cream. Barrafina does not take reservations. But if you’re lucky enough to find an empty seat at its counter, I highly recommend it.

I had afternoon tea at The Wolseley, a grand café and restaurant that still observes this beloved British tradition. The finger sandwiches and petite sweets arrived on a tiered tower capped with a silver dome, under which I found two, fluffy scones, still warm. When I finished the sandwiches, my server removed the plate and promptly replaced it with another set.

I whiled away part of one afternoon in the cavernous Waterstones bookstore at Piccadilly. Afterwards, I strolled down the street with my new book to the Rivoli Bar at The Ritz, where I settled in for a quiet read over a cup of coffee and a fantastic banana soufflé served with a scoop of boozy ice cream.

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I met a friend for drinks at Bar Boulud at the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge. It’s nothing like the Bar Boulud in New York City. This one is far less a bar and more a restaurant.

After my friend hurried off to catch her train, I walked upstairs on a whim and asked for a table at Dinner by Heston Blumenthal. The hostess informed me that I was in luck: they had just one table left. And to her word, the place was completely packed otherwise.

The Salamagundy, a warm salad of chicken oysters and bitter greens, was delicious. And so was the famous “meat fruit” – a trompe l’oeil mandarin orange made of silky chicken liver. But, honestly, I could have simply ordered the spiced pigeon (served with artichokes) and finished with the buttery “Tipsy Cake” (served with a beautifully burnished tranche of spit-roasted pineapple) and left just as happy.

Four courses and a side, plus a half-pour of wine cost me nearly $200 here. Given its location and namesake, Dinner is priced par for its course (despite the dip the British Pound took that week against the American Dollar). But it is no steal.  Yet, I cannot dispute the quality of the products or the cooking here, which were solid and sure. I’d go back.

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I stumbled into Prufrock Coffee on Leather Lane and liked it enough to return with my friends the next day. The baristas here seem to know what they’re doing. And they serve a pretty great avocado toast for breakfast (yeah, it’s one of those kinds of coffee shops).

The Haatufts and I had brunch at Barnyard, chef Ollie Dabbous’s restaurant on Charlotte Street. It’s a curious mash-up of checkered flannel, rough plank siding, corrugated metal, and oil barrel chairs. From the look of it, I couldn’t decide if I was in my neighbor’s barn, or the Aussie Outback. Either way, judging by the scene, it seems to have captured the attention of the young, attractive British crowd, which had been lured out of bed on a Saturday morning to flood this small restaurant. What little we ordered was good. There were some rosy slices of cold roast beef on a bed of young greens and a crusty raft of bread. This open-face sandwich came with a sidecar of warm, horseradish buttermilk. We shared potted shrimp on pikelet – a dense pancake – with lots of lovage. And, there was hearty bowl of chorizo hash beneath a glistening duck egg, with its sunny-side up.

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On our last night together, my Norwegian friends and I closed out our visit to London at Lyle’s in Shoreditch.

I first encountered James Lowe when he was chef at St. John Bread & Wine, a restaurant I’ve always liked for its simple but steady cooking. Subsequently, I missed him at Ten Bells, a pop-up partnership he had with Isaac McHale (who I met recently at the Twelve Days of Christmas; he’s the chef of The Clove Club) and Ben Greeno (who left to open Momofuku Seiōbo in Sydney). [Speaking of Ten Bells, the Haatufts and I dropped by this multi-storied craft cocktail bar – its interior is positively Dickensian – earlier in the afternoon for a drink. The “pork scratchings” they sell there are extraordinarily good – the rinds were crisp and light, and yet coated generously with waxy fat.]

Lowe’s sensible style of cooking at St. John Bread & Wine was evident in his food at Lyle’s. Although the plating style here seemed slightly more complicated, his focus remained simple. The ingredients were clean and fresh, and his flavors true. This natural approach to cooking, as well as with the wine list, reminded me of Contra in New York. And, not unlike Contra, Lyle’s also offered an affordable set menu with a few supplements, all of which we took.

There was a plate of beautiful house-cured meats that we shared, in addition to a pair of roasted teal (a small type of duck) served with inky red beets that had been slightly shriveled to concentrate their sweetness. Those two dishes were highlights. I also loved our second course – a bowl of plump mussels in a warm, milky broth threaded with shredded Brussels sprout tops.

I thought the dessert fussiest of all, a shapeless jumble of pumpkin ice cream in a whey caramel with meringue shattered all over it. Though I loved the flavors – especially the bitterness of the dark, whey caramel – all the commotion muddied its effect. I rather preferred the incredibly delicious brown butter cakes at the end. They were fantastic.

It was pouring when I left Lyle’s, happy and full. And by the next morning, as I sat on the tarmac at Gatwick waiting for the de-icing hose, it was snowing.

There is so much of London I have yet to explore and eat – whole neighborhoods I have neglected and have yet to discover. Despite being wary of its pricey allure, I just can’t stay away.  I look forward to returning soon and often.

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Not surprisingly, the traffic leaving Paris was horrible, so we had fallen behind schedule. Despite that, I insisted that we stop at the Château Chambord on our dip southward to Anjou. It had been over two decades since I last saw it.

Although we arrived too late to enter the castle grounds, we paused to marvel at the massive, Renaissance structure, blushing with the pastels of dusk. It’s hard to believe that this, the largest châteaux in the Loire Valley, had been intended merely as a hunting lodge, a boastful show of wealth and power by its builder Francis I.

My friends Colby and Megan Garrelts and I soaked in the silence of that sprawling estate – which we had to ourselves – before hopping back in our rental and speeding off towards Fontevraud.

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Night had fallen as we pulled up to the ancient gates and rang the bell.

Fontevraud was a monastic order and abbey founded nearly a millennium ago under the rule of the Angevin empire. Once known for providing shelter to women of all levels of society, due to its royal patronage, it later became a favorite refuge and retreat for the nobility. In fact, Eleanor of Aquitaine, that medieval heiress to one of the largest and wealthiest territories in Europe of her time, which helped put her on the thrones of both France and England, had been the abbey’s earliest benefactress (for an excellent biography, I recommend Alison Weir’s “Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life“). After firmly establishing the Plantagenet dynasty by producing a shockingly large brood of heirs, she retired from court life to Fontevraud. She died and was interred here, along with her second husband, Henry II of England and two of their children – their son Richard I of England (also known as “The Lionhearted”) and daughter Joan of Sicily.

Hermetically sealed from the few, sleepy villages that dot the area, Fontevraud remains within a walled compound to this day. The ancient buildings now comprise a museum and a hotel, the latter of which is housed in a priory.

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Even if we had arrived early enough to have dinner at the hotel’s main restaurant, it would have been closed that day. It’s a pity, since I had watched the head chef Thibault Ruggeri win the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon in 2013. And I would have loved the opportunity to eat his food.

In fact, at that late hour, we were lucky to get anything to eat at all. As we checked in, the front desk informed us that our last option within miles – a bistro in the hamlet just on the other side of the abbey’s walls – had just closed for the night. And due to a private party, the hotel’s more casual bar eatery was closed as well. But realizing that we were without options, the hostess rang the bar kitchen and asked if they could put something simple together for us. Grateful for the generous accommodation, we put our luggage in our rooms and rushed downstairs.

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We learned that the hotel had recently come under new management. The resulting renovation was evident. In stark contrast to its ancient structure, the hotel’s interior looked and smelled new, with wooden fixtures and furnishings designed in a minimalist style.  Nowhere was this juxtaposition of old and new more apparent than in the hotel’s “bar,” which was housed in what had originally been the priory chapel.

The cavernous space with high, vaulted ceilings was grand, filled with only a few, starkly simple wooden booths.

Our table doubled as an interactive, electronic screen that offered an historic and virtual tour of the abbey. Novel though it was, there was no way to turn it off. And that was annoying.

But, we were lucky to have a table at all.  And, having traveled all day without eating, we were even grateful for the short “prix fixe” dinner, which can best be described as a bistro bento box, with three “courses” arriving together on a tray. There was a fist of rabbit pâté wrapped in caul fat. There was “paella” (which wasn’t good enough to stand alone without the scare quotes), and a much better piece of beef.  We washed all of it down with a bottle of Chinon from a winery up the road.

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Encouraged by the front desk to explore at our leisure (we were given iPads that included interactive maps of the grounds), after dinner, the three of us set off into the dark towards the abbey, which loomed in the night like a sleeping giant, awash with moonlight. Casting long shadows, the three of us whispered our way around the hauntingly quiet structures. Our breath hung in the chilly air as we dared each other into the inky corners of the vast network of corridors and rooms. At the top of one staircase, we found a large hall bathed in red light. Crude, wooden canoes lay scattered about. It was a creepy scene made even creepier by a soundtrack of wind chimes that tinkled gently, mimicking the chills that ran up our spines. Mischievously, Colby whispered, “Redrum,” which sent all of our grown asses pathetically flying back down the stairs. (The next day, we learned that it was an art installation.)

Sufficiently spooked, the three of us headed back to our rooms, serenaded by a pack of wolves in the distance falling on some wretched creature wailing to its death. It was surreal.

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Daybreak revealed a hoary frost that had coated everything with a dull glisten.

Breakfast in Europe is almost always a delight. And breakfast at Fontevraud – included in the price of our rooms – was no exception.  Served in the small cloister of the priory, it included a simple but excellent spread of jams and juices (including pear) and cheeses and meats. There was coffee, fresh fruit, and breads of all kind, including one that could have been mistaken for chocolate cake.

After breakfast, we returned to the abbey for a better look at some of the frescoes and rooms that had been too dark to appreciate the night before. I was especially thrilled to find the colorful and shockingly well-preserved effigies of Eleanor of Aquitaine and three of her family members in the abbey’s church. Sadly, their royal tombs were raided during the French Revolution, and the whereabouts of their remains – if they still exist – are unknown today.

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Turning southwest, we headed towards the breathtaking puys of the Auvergne, which were ablaze in a patchwork of autumn colors.

It was a gorgeous, sunny afternoon when we turned off a lonely country road to climb the narrow, winding drive up to Michel Bras’s stunning property.

The restaurant perched on a steep hillside, jutting out like a shiny spacecraft, offering a breathtaking survey of the rolling countryside of Laguiole below.  Shingled down the slope were about a dozen guest rooms, all built into the side of the hill in an earth-contact fashion, as if emphasizing the Brases’s focus on terroir.

In our rooms, too, were wonderful reminders of the land around us: soap and shampoo made from local vegetation, soda infused with herbs from the area, and a backpack with a map of the grounds – an invitation to explore.

But, as we settled in, a thick curtain drew across the sky, chasing the warm afternoon, and our hopes for a quick hike, to an abrupt and unexpectedly chilly end.  By the time we headed to dinner, autumn had turned to winter.

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As I had written in an earlier blog post, Michel Bras had not been high on my bucket list.  First awarded three Michelin stars in 1999 (a distinction it has held, uninterrupted, since), the restaurant had, in the estimation of many, lost its relevance some time ago.

But relevancy has never driven my dining agenda (although it has, undeniably, influenced me).  If anything, I usually greet relevancy with skepticism.

But Michel Bras is, perhaps, an exception. Once, it had been the kitchen to which all kitchens looked for innovation and aspiration – was there a cookbook of its time that made more of an impact on fine dining worldwide than Bras’s?  Relevancy was this restaurant’s raison d’être.  And that relevance then, however irrelevant it might make Bras seem now, is what I wanted to experience.

So, the restaurant’s irrelevance now was not my fear.  My fear was change.

Had Sébastien Bras, who had inherited his father’s toque some years ago, taken the restaurant in his own direction?  Or, had he attempted to preserve his father’s menu?  What if he was trying to do both, and as a result, doing neither very well?

I suppose it would be unfair of me to expect Bras the younger to soldier on, curating his father’s culinary museum out of filial duty or a sense of obligation to chefs, tourists, and “foodies” who travel from afar.  Even more cruel would be to assume that he couldn’t possibly have anything worthy to add to his father’s legacy.  I’m sure it’s no mistake that the restaurant’s name – Bras – is cast generously enough to ascribe authorship to the family at large, if not at least both father and son, now that the baton has been handed off.

But Sébastien Bras is certainly not the first or only to live in the shade of an agnatic shadow, one which stretches across many culinary dynasties: the Pacauds at l’Ambroisie; the Troisgroses and Pics at their eponymous maisons; the Arzaks of Spain; and the Santinis of Italy, not to mention the long-standing generations that have populated Japan with countless sushiyas and kaiseki establishments.

My wishes and expectations of Bras were unfair.  I had missed Bras when it was Michel Bras.  And I shouldn’t wish it back under different circumstances, should I?  It wouldn’t be the same.

So, although Bras had become relegated to a lower rung of my checklist, I suddenly found a renewed interest and excitement for it.

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We had not expected to find chef Michel Bras at the restaurant. And, indeed, he was not there.  But his son Sébastien greeted us in the kitchen, and Sébastien’s lovely wife Veronique welcomed us at our table.

The food was good.  Actually, it was very good.  Everything was cooked correctly, and the flavors were true. Faithful to terroir, the cooking showcased the ingredients at their prime, many of which were from the surrounding land.  This ethos has become the Bras legacy – started by Michel, and now reaffirmed under Sébastien.

From our tasting menu, four dishes stood out.

First, there was Michel Bras’s famous “Gargouille,” presented as ‘l’Aujourd’hui, ‘Classique.'”   Not only was the variety in this salad impressive – composed of nearly three dozen herbs, flowers, and vegetables – but so were the colors, especially at that late hour in the season, when the garden usually drains of all hue and humor.  I’ve had many versions of this dish made by chefs who were inspired by this original, which I now consider worthy of its reputation.  What I especially loved about it was the warm, velvety vegetable sauce poured over the salad – a dressing – that transformed what appeared to be a bright and light salad into an unexpectedly comforting and hearty dish.

There was also a thick slab of foie gras, “ni chaud ni froid” – “neither hot nor cold.”  The most remarkable thing about it was the texture – as silky as custard, but sturdy enough to cut with a knife. It wore a beautiful, golden crust, and yet leached no oil.  I can’t say I loved it – I prefer foie gras as pâté.  But, I appreciated it for the flawlessness of the technique and craftsmanship.  And, together with the three, slightly dried grapes, which burst with sweetness, it was certainly delicious.

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Arriving with our beef course was a giant bowl of aligot, a regional dish specific to l’Aubrac.  Our captain started whipping the mashed potatoes, which had been mixed with uncured cheese, until it became surprisingly mastic.  Pulling thin ribbons of aligot high into the air, he gracefully rolled them around a spoon.  Moving quickly, he transferred the aligot, which remained intact while in the orbit of his confidence, to individual bowls, where he let the soft mass finally settle.  It was magical. When I looked up, Megan was in tears.

For me, the aligot was far more memorable for its table side show than for the eating.  Beyond the novelty of it, I appreciated it most for its texture – there was an elasticity and snap to it that was strange and wonderful.

Lastly, near the end of our dinner, we were served Michel Bras’s famous coulant, about which I had written in an earlier blog post about my favorite desserts of 2015.  Date-stamped 1981 on the menu, Bras’s “molten chocolate cake,” one of few claimants to being the original (some also credit Jean-Georges Vongerichten), has had an undeniably wider reach than his Gargouillou.  The version we were served was infused with Tahitian vanilla and served with butternut squash ice cream and a brown butter coulis.  It was terrific.

We finished the meal with a cheese cart, which offered a beautiful selection from the region.  And, at the end, our table was invaded by a phalanx of mini ice cream cones, which our server filled with a rainbow of flavors.

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Our hometown Kansas City Royals were in the playoffs for the second year in a row after a thirty-year absence (having made it to the World Series the year before, we were defeated in the seventh game).  While I am a shameless bandwagoneer, Colby Garrelts is a die-hard fan.  As our dinner drew to a close, he became restless in anticipation of the upcoming game.

When our captain came to our table for one, final sweep, Colby asked if the restaurant could send a bottle of wine to his room.  They happily obliged, and Colby spent the night blissfully live streaming the game with some nice juice.

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We awoke to snow.  And it was glorious.  And so was breakfast, which I included among my five favorite meals from 2015.

As with many European restaurants that are attached to their own inns – like Le Grenouillière on the northern coast of France, in de wulf in the Belgian countryside, and Fäviken Magasinet in the northern reaches of Sweden – an overnight stay at Michel Bras, and, especially the breakfast, were the highlight for me.

In my blog post last year about my trip to Fäviken Magasinet, I had weighed the value of destination dining.  I concluded that the value was rarely in the destination, but rather the journey and, especially, those with whom you share it.  This trip was no exception.

Dinner at Michel Bras was very good.  Admittedly, it was better than I had expected.  And breakfast, as I said, was a showstopper.

But, as we unwound our way back down to that lonely, country road, with Colby dozing off to recover the night he sacrificed to the playoffs (the Royals went on to win the World Series, the first time since 1985), I thought not of our dinner, or our breakfast.  Rather, I marveled at that ancient abbey, which had sheltered kings and queens, and little old me.  I remember run-walking through the night with Colby and Megan in nervous silence as wolves bayed in the moonlight.  I warmed at the thought of the Bras family, who had been unspeakably hospitable –  as we left, we spied a class of grade school children in the kitchen getting a hands-on tutorial in that Michelin-starred kitchen as a part of the “semaine de gout” (a weeklong tradition where French children are exposed to the culinary world); Veronique Bras had also handed us gift bags stuffed with books and videos and other goodies from the Bras gift shop; a generous parting gift.  And now, as we headed back north, I soaked in the stillness of the Aveyron, blanketed in the year’s first snow.

Suddenly, our six-hour drive back to Paris didn’t seem quite long enough.

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You will find all of the photos from Fontevraud, l’Abbaye Royale here, and all of my photos from our trip to Bras here.

Photos: Flowers in the morn at Fontevraud, l’Abbaye Royale; Château Chambord at dusk; tiles at Fontevraud; a patch of flowers at Fontevraud; two photos of Fontevraud at night, the latter of which was taken inside the cloisters of the main abbey; a tower of the main abbey at Fontevraud; a rose and herb garden in the frosty morning at Fontevraud; Bras, perched on the side of a hill above Laguiole; whipping aligot at Bras; “l’Aujourd’hui ‘Classique,'” a salad at Bras; the dining room at Bras; mini ice cream cones at Bras; cattle on a snowy hillside at l’Aubrac, just outside of Bras.

Recently, I’ve been increasingly engaged in dialogue about food sustainability – whether it be in panel discussions, seminars, or casual conversations with friends. The food cognoscenti – media, consumers, and chefs alike – are turning the spotlight to this subject.  And that’s a great thing.

Yet, I have great unease as I listen and learn.  In quickly realizing that I am in the sliver demographic that is able to eat primarily at restaurants with the smallest carbon footprint, it has become concurrently apparent to me that there is an increasingly inverse correlation between the carbon footprint of a restaurant and the carbon footprint of its clients.

Looking at it from that angle, I am very much a part of the problem.

Maybe this is because we’re only at the foothills of a steep climb in reprogramming the way the world thinks about its foodways.  And so micro-sustainability is a novelty that will attract the novelty seekers – gastronauts who have the resources and time to crisscross the globe in search of what I call hyper-terroir cooking.  Given time, perhaps that kind of cooking will normalize, and the novelty (and thus the novelty seekers) will wear thin.  As more and more chefs and restaurants shrink the carbon footprint in their kitchens, hopefully, the carbon footprint in their dining rooms will shrink as well.

But for now, it is ironic that many of the most visible chefs, the ones with the biggest platforms, the ones leading the global dialogue on sustainability, run restaurants that primarily attract clients from faraway.  And inversely, it is ironic that many diners who pride themselves in dining sustainably, are not necessarily doing so.

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If you stitch together all of the days and weeks of my last eight trips to Copenhagen, the ledger will show that I’ve spent over two of the last 22 months in Denmark.  And I’ll be spending another week there on my upcoming trip to Europe, which will mark my twelfth trip to the Danish capital.

Although I’ve left a trail of Danish crumbs strewn across this blog recently, it’s been a regrettably disorganized one: here’s one post, for example, and here’s another, among many others in which I’ve dropped references and thoughts about eating in Denmark.  Sadly, I haven’t had enough time to gather these travel and dining experiences together in a comprehensive report.  And, it’s unlikely that I ever will.

However, it has become increasingly apparent that I need to contribute some of what I’ve learned from my time in Denmark to cyberspace, less for my own record, and more to relieve the growing number of requests I’ve been receiving for advice on Danish dining.  Coming from strangers and friends alike, they’ve been arriving at an overwhelming rate recently.

As I’ve written before, I’m averse to issuing shorthand recommendations or declarations about restaurants in the form of lists, rankings, and the like. That sort of laziness makes caricatures of chefs and restaurants, creates undeserved hype, and degrades the consumer base.  I won’t do it.

At the same time, I recognize that blogs like this one are sources of information and opinion. And, to the extent that I am able, I eagerly share both.  So, given the unusual density of contact that I’ve had with the Danish restaurant scene and culture recently, I submit, here, some of my favorite places to eat and drink in Copenhagen, many of which I have visited repeatedly and appreciate for the quality and consistency of the cooking.  To be clear, the following is not merely a laundry list of all of the places I’ve eaten in Denmark, thoughtlessly vomited out more for my sake than yours – you’ll find that relatively irrelevant accounting on my restaurant log, which is, perhaps, only useful as a reference for the number of times I’ve been to a restaurant, and the recency of my visits.

Rather, this post will highlight the restaurants, coffee shops, and eateries where I choose to spend my time and money, and where I feel confident sending you to do the same.  I hope it helps.

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Before I attempt to show you around, let me first herd the elephants out of the room.

There are a handful of usual suspects that will surely crowd the radar of anyone visiting Copenhagen: Christian Puglisi’s relæ; Rasmus Kofoed’s Geranium (currently, the only restaurant in Denmark with three Michelin stars); and Rene Redzepi’s noma are considered by many as required eating.  Some might also add to that starry host Matt Orlando’s amass; Nicolai Nørregaard’s kadeau; and Torsten Vildegaard at Studio at the Standard.

I’ve been to all of them, and others of that ilk, like the two Michelin-starred a|o|c.  And they’re all very good, collectively quilting a lovely, if not slightly fetishized and redundant patchwork of Scandinavia’s pastoral and littoral. I’ve shared my thoughts on this topic quite extensively before, and I’m loathed to tax it further here. Plenty of ink has been spilled over these restaurants, and you don’t need me to tell you about them.  If they interest you, I commend them to you without reserve.

Instead, I prefer to focus on the many, terrific places – some of them perfectly ordinary and everyday, others extraordinary and unique – that I deem more expressive of this city, and its culture, which I have come to love.  For these reasons, and many more as you shall see, they have become a part of my routine when I’m there.

As I expressed in an earlier post, I have an evolving relationship with Denmark.  Once a tourist with a checklist, I have since made somewhat of a second home there with wonderful and, hopefully, lasting relationships. Together, they’ve altered my perspective of the Danish dining scene, putting into context and, indeed, normalizing much of what is distorted in the foreign press.

Although there are places all over Denmark I’d like to tell you about, in the interest of time, I will focus here on the city of Copenhagen.  But as you read the following, I will be preparing to take you afield in my next post.

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The scarcity of places in Copenhagen that offer what most would consider a proper breakfast suggests that locals aren’t accustomed to eating out in the mornings (in fact, although their culture is changing, the Danes aren’t accustomed to eating out regularly at all).  Most breakfast options are cold, or portable – morning pastries and croissants, for example.  But it’s certainly not for a lack of options that I start my day in Copenhagen, almost without exception, at Atelier September on Gothersgade near Kongens Nytorv.   Inheriting its name from the antique store that lived in this space before Frederik Bille-Brahe took it over, this café offers a short, chalkboard menu of espresso drinks, tea, and simple but thoughtfully composed plates. I’ve been to Atelier September so many times that the staff often starts pulling the shot for my noisette (akin to a macchiato) as soon as I walk in.  Invariably, I’ll have the granola bowl, with grapefruit, blueberries, and mint. But I’ve had practically everything on the menu, and there’s really no wrong choice.

In the neighborhood of Nørrebro, you’ll find Mirabelle, which is part of Christian Puglisi’s expanding family of restaurants.  Although it’s primarily a bakery, and although it only served breakfast when I first visited, it now serves food all day (I’ve been once at night, when its dinner menu is dominated by pasta). Here, you’ll find the classic Scandinavian breakfast of rye bread, cheese, ham, and a soft-boiled egg, in addition to a selection of viennoiserie.

My friend Kim Dolva first introduced me to Grød, which has since opened multiple locations around the city, including one on Guldsbergsgade, just a few blocks from Mirabelle. The name, pronounced in Danish, is suggestive of its fare: “gruel,” or, what we in English might more properly call “porridge.”  Everything here is grain-based, from it’s morning menu of oat, quinoa, and chia porridges, to its more expansive lunch and evening menu, which includes risotto, congee, and daal-based porridges.  You’ll even find risalamande, a Danish rice pudding which, as its francophone name suggests, includes chopped blanched almonds, and, traditionally, a warm cherry sauce.*

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My consumption of bread, butter, and coffee skyrockets when I’m in Europe, and especially so in Scandinavia, where all of it is particularly good.

On my most recent trip, I spent three mornings, nearly back-to-back-to-back, eating my way through the viennoiserie at the corner café at 108.  They’re terrific: flakey, buttery, and dark.  (I don’t know why people are afraid of a little color on their morning buns – who wants blonde, doughy croissants?)  The ones I had were glazed – with sour apple, for example, and another with aronia berries.  The one that seems to draw the most attention – perhaps for novelty, or perhaps because it is actually very good – is a danish glazed with fermented beef (the emphasis is on the beef, not the fermented).  The café also serves a hot, plated lunch, which I hope to try on a future trip.

Some claim the croissants at Democratic Coffee to be byens bedste (“the city’s best”).  While they are very good, and the coffee here is very good as well, truth be told, I first made a habit of this place because it offers free wifi (it’s attached to the Copenhagen Main Library). And that is primarily why you’ll find me here occasionally, working on my laptop.

Niels H.C. Nielsen shrugged off the corporate suit to open Foloren Espresso, a small café on Store Kongensgade where I’ve been spending more of my time lately.  For a while, Nielsen was a one-man operation, plying his craft alone, very much with the ethos of the small coffee shops of Japan from which he draws inspiration.  More recently, I’ve noticed him adding a few faces behind the counter.

Coffee Collective gets a lot of attention. While its roasts tend to be too light and acidic for me, I cannot deny its place among the very best coffee that Copenhagen has to offer right now.  The original café is on Jaegersborggade. But due to its more central location, the Coffee Collective counter at the Torvehallerne food hall near Nørreport sees me far more often.  If you don’t want coffee, I recommend the hot chocolate, topped with whipped cream, of course.

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Danes don’t really eat out at lunch either.

There are a few high-end restaurants – particularly the ones that rely heavily on international diners – that use lunch service to help relieve an overwhelming demand for reservations (you’ll find most of those restaurants listed at the top of this post). Otherwise, they probably wouldn’t bother opening during the day.  But, setting aside those restaurants, and others that cater mostly to tourists, lunch options in Copenhagen are generally limited to something quick and portable – like the bánh mì I often pick up to-go from District Tonkin – or something more traditionally Danish. I almost always opt for the latter.

The Lumskebugten of today is very different from the Lumskebugten of yesteryear.  Dating well beyond the 19th century, when this seaside tavern catered mostly to sailors, the restaurant is now a rather charming relic amidst the modern, corporate-looking headquarters of the Danish shipping giant Maersk, which threaten to swallow it from all sides.  Lumskebugten’s colorful history – including the origins of it’s rather strange name, an ominous reference to the dangerous, sandy banks that once lay just beyond the restaurant’s doors – can be found in a tiny, Janus-faced book available at the restaurant (they give them out for free) – the cover on one side is in English, the other in Danish; with the story told from the two covers inward in a bilingual mirror.

I first arrived at Lumskebugten on a sunny afternoon.  I sat outside alone on the patio and ordered a smørrebrød of sliced corned veal tongue served with pickles and creamy horseradish.  Despite my attempts to relive that rather perfect lunch, I’ve only managed to return on rainy days, forcing me inside. Despite the restaurant’s raucous maritime origins, its interior is now as elegantly dressed as the restaurant’s plates – the simple look of a generation or two ago.  At lunch, it’s usually smørrebrød: buttered bread draped with smoked salmon under a cloud of scrambled eggs wearing a feathery cap of dill, or a rosy veil of roast beef and tarragon cream mounded with fried onions.  All of it – even those chocolate-covered marshmallows the Danes call flødeboller (if you’ve had the French, German, or Belgian versions, you’ll know it has a regrettably pejorative nomenclature and past) – is served on those lacy, hand-painted porcelain plates by the Royal Copenhagen china company.

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You’ll find Royal Copenhagen crowding the tables at Schønnemann too, where tradition is kept alive with its “classical Danish lunch.”  Like Lumskebugten, this old tavern dating to 1877, now sunken below street level, offers an Old World charm, preserved in its seemingly endless menu of smørrebrød and convivial atmosphere, no doubt lubricated by its list of over 140 labels of snaps.

Make sure you’re hungry; the food is hearty.  I can barely make it through two plates of smørrebrød. And if you attempt an order of “tartlets,” you might think twice before ordering more.  They come two to a plate, the flakey, fluted shells mounded with shrimp, or mushrooms, or chicken; all of it swimming in Hollandaise.  Your server might arrive with an extra pot of sauce, as did mine, and, against your protest, proceed to drown the lot in more Hollandaise.

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Although I’ve always had a great experience at Schønnemann, I should note that there has been a change in personnel, and I haven’t had a chance to return since. Until I do, I cannot recommend it without reserve.  Last year, I was made aware that a number of longstanding members of the staff – both front and back of the house – left Schønnemann.  Teaming up with the restaurateurs of the Michelin-starred restaurant Formel B, they opened Palægade, located on the street of the same name.

So, it was unsurprising to see quite a few familiar faces when I visited Palægade.  It was also unsurprising to see a similar menu.  At lunch, you’ll find the same classic smørrebrød you’d have at Schønnemann or Lumskebugten – fried plaice with shrimp; rullepølse – a rolled pork sausage sliced thinly; or pickled herring topped with a “smile” (an appropriate way of describing an open, drooling soft-boiled egg).  And it seems to have earned the trust of locals rather quickly – I’ve tried walking in twice since, and both times, the restaurant was fully committed.  Because I visited so soon after its opening, I will reserve judgment on Palægade until I have more opportunities to prove its worth.  But for now, I will only say that, despite its comparatively modern interior – a marked departure from its tavern type – after all, it was built in 2016 and not the 1800s – I do hope the restaurant remains true to the form of its fare, the kind of hearty, no-nonsense deliciousness that is the very bread and butter of Danish cookery.

[A worthy aside: Speaking of hearty, Danish cuisine, I turn briefly to Restaurant Gammel Mønt.  Apparently, the prodigious-sized portions of this prodigious-sized chef are legendary. (I made the mistake of standing in the doorway to his kitchen, saved only by a server, who yanked me out of the way just as chef Claus Christiansen steamrolled through. I was assured, after-the-fact, that he would not have stopped.)  I have only had one dish there, and therefore have little to report at this time.  But, based on that one dish, I know this man can cook. It was eel, cut into two-inch segments, panfried on a stovetop in the dining room.  They came mounded on a serving platter and, as with Danish tradition, were portioned onto our plates, the server ringing the outer rim with the segments until they completed the circle. They were terrific. I didn’t study the menu, but from the brief glance I took, I know I’ll be back for more.  Note: this restaurant is only open for lunch, private arrangements at night.]

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Despite the name, I don’t think I’ve ever had ice cream at La Glace, an old-school conditori that has operated at Skoubogade 3 since 1870.  Here, you’ll find the prissy, frilly cakes of a bygone era lining the café’s refrigerated cases, and more whimsical versions of them in its window displays.

Although the cakes here are very good (and its morning vienoisserie as well), it’s not the main reason I like La Glace.  I like it because it dares to preserve something of the past, including a slower space in which to while away an afternoon with a book or a friend.  I’ve actually never sat inside the café – it’s almost always full, and there’s usually a wait to get in, thanks to the tourists who flock here for obvious reasons (although the crowds seem to have been alleviated by the café’s recent expansion into the space next door).  I’ve always lucked out on the sidewalk with great weather and an empty table.

[Incidentally, if you are looking for ice cream, Jakob de Neergaard – former chef of the celebrated Søllerød Kro, and whom I first encountered in 2011 photographing the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, where he served as the Danish judge – has teamed up with Jacob Marsing-Rossini to create Jacob og Jokob Ice Cream. I particularly love their licorice and vanilla ice creams; the former wonderfully subtle, the latter immensely fragrant.  I always hope to chance upon one of their ice cream carts parked at the northern gate of Rosenborg Slot, near the castle’s ticket office.  But recently, I discovered an entire freezer case full of their ice cream in the basement “mad og vin” market at the Magasin du Nord department store at Kongens Nytorv. The pint-ish-sized cartons are insulated in their own styrofoam case.]

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You won’t find as many tourists at A.C. Perchs Thehandel. But the doily set will be out in full force at this teashop (thehandel), which claims to be the oldest in Europe, and has a royal warrant from the Court of Denmark as the official purveyor of tea to Her Majesty, Queen Margrethe II.

The teashop proper is on the ground level, a crowded cubbyhole that spills its overflow onto the narrow Kronprinsensgade. But upstairs, you’ll find a surprisingly capacious tea room, where you can sit and order from the shop’s menu of over 140 different teas.  Here, you can also have a proper, British afternoon tea service, with a tree of scones, finger sandwiches, and sweets. The Ritz it is not. But pomp is not the Danish way. And neither is that its purpose or place in Copenhagen society. Rather, like La Glace, A.C. Perchs Thehandel offers a comforting reassurance that Danish society still values the traditions of its past, and preserves them for tomorrow.

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There is no wine list at Vedstranden 10, a wine bar that favors “natural” labels.  You tell your server your preferences, and they bring you a taste of something they think you’ll like.

When the weather’s nice, I prefer to sit outside at the tables lining the canal across the street.  Otherwise, the interior is a series of what I describe as living room vignettes, cozy corners meant for sharing.  There is a food menu here, which isn’t widely advertised.  You have to ask for it.  It’s so short, in fact, your server might just recite it for you. In particular, Vedstranden 10’s version of the croque monsieur, a crusty, burnished wonder, is worth ordering.  It doubles as dinner for one, or a hearty snack for two.

Before you leave, look up.  Vedstranden 10 – which is also the wine bar’s address – has a magnificently preserved milk glass ceiling.  Prohibitively expensive to reproduce, these opaque, glass tiles, which are shockingly common in Copenhagen, are becoming increasingly rare elsewhere.  (You’ll also find a beautiful milk glass canopy at Atelier September.)

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The field in Copenhagen widens considerably at dinnertime.

Bæst and its sister restaurant Manfreds og Vin, both under Christian Puglisi’s umbrella, are usually at the top of my list – especially so on Sundays and Mondays, when they’re both blessedly open on nights when the city offers few options otherwise.

Based on proximity alone, Bæst is usually a far easier reach for me.  As its name suggests – it means “beast” in Danish – you’ll find a rather impressive selection of cured meat on the menu.  There’s also fantastic housemade burrata and about a dozen wood-fired pizzas with knobby, blistered rims and a terrifically elastic crust (my favorite one is generously threaded with Lolin anchovies).  If you want to sample widely, consider the “Big Bæst,” an almost indiscriminately generous tasting menu, served family-style. Bring your friends and strap on your appetites – it’s a lot of food.

“Manfreds – (probably) the world’s only veggie-focused restaurant famous for its raw meat”: this irony is proudly declared on the restaurant’s website, along with its claim of serving almost entirely certified organic products.  Indeed, the beef tartare here, creamy with egg yolk and crunchy with breadcrumbs, is very good.  But so is everything else, which strikes me as a markedly masculine version of the daintier, prettier food served at Puglisi’s relæ across the street.  Like Bæst, the food here is simple, hot, and tasty.  (But unlike Bæst, Manfreds is also open for lunch.)

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As with most of the world, French cuisine dominated the Danish fine dining scene for the better half of the 20th century. It wasn’t until fairly recently that chefs, worldwide, untethered themselves from les sauces mères and started looking to their own cultures and foodways for a new definition of refinement.  Nowhere has this been more prominent than in Denmark, where a new generation of chefs have inspired a nearly universal reevaluation of cultural identity in the culinary world.+

But you’ll still find undercurrents of classic, French cooking alive in Copenhagen, running more true at places like Bistro Pastis, or the more upmarket le Sommelier, and, to a lesser degree at Bistro Bohême, where Per Thøstesen convincingly blurs cultural borders with a successful, revisionist – here, a specifically Danish – approach to French cooking.  All three are terrific options, especially the latter.

But n’est plus ultra in this arena is Kong Hans Kælder.  It is not only the height of Franco-Danish culinary hybridity, but the pinnacle of refinement, peerless in almost every way.

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Now, before proceeding further, I must throw caution to my enthusiasm for this restaurant. I have become very good friends with a number of the staff members, especially the head chef, Mark Lundgaard Nielsen, and Peter Pepke, who is, in every sense of the title, maître d’.  Treated very much like family, I have paid embarrassingly little for my excesses there.  So, you have every reason to be skeptical of my praise.

But, having made these disclosures, and having been hounded for my opinion on Copenhagen dining – to the point of feeling the need to write this post – I will tell you, without hesitation, that Kong Hans Kælder earns my highest commendation.  I have dined there no fewer than eight times – at least once on each of my last eight trips to Copenhagen.  And at each turn, Nielsen, Pepke, and the Kong Hans Kælder team have defied expectations, improving with each successive meal.

Strip away its storied setting – an ancient cellar in the oldest building in the city – its liveries, and its fineries, and the restaurant’s most significant virtue remains: an uncompromising dedication to quality and consistency that is becoming increasingly rare, even among the very best restaurants I visit. In his craft of cooking, Nielsen goes beyond just knowing.  What comes out of his kitchen demonstrates true understanding.  And for that uncommon achievement, Kong Hans Kælder ranks among a precious handful of restaurants worldwide – no more than the number of fingers on two hands – that, according to my standards, merits a special journey.

What does that mean?  I’ve written about Kong Hans Kælder on this blog before: once, shortly after my first meal there, and again when I included the restaurant among my favorite meals of 2015.  Please read those posts and know that my verdict does not waver. Rather I reiterate it here: at Kong Hans Kælder, cooking is back.

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The same disclosures I made about Kong Hans Kælder apply to Marchal, without which I would consider myself irresponsible for proceeding further.

Here, the apple has not fallen far from the tree: just a couple of blocks away from that ancient cellar is the stately Hôtel d’Angleterre, where Andreas Bagh has recently donned the top toque at its Michelin-starred restaurant (a title formerly worn by Ronny Emborg, now chef at Atera in New York City).  Bagh is largely responsible for introducing me to Nielsen, for whom he helped reopen Kong Hans Kælder in 2014, and under whom he served as assistant chef for two years (he also did his chef apprenticeship at Kong Hans Kælder under Thomas Røde, before going on to work for Thomas Herman at Nimb, for Rasmus Kofoed at Geranium, and returning to Kong Hans Kælder with Nielsen).

I’ve had the pleasure of two meals at Marchal under Bagh’s nascent charge (he started in June of 2016). And his pedigree is clear. He not only demonstrates a respect for classical, French technique, but, more significantly, has a steady command of it.  Reminiscent of the hearty and hot à la minute cuisine I’ve enjoyed at Kong Hans Kælder, Bagh’s cooking is confident and precise. And his plates – all large-format, à la carte; no tasting menu here – are clean, if not also stunning; Bagh has a noticeable flare for presentation. But let that not distract you from the flawlessness of what is served on them: silky squid, juicy duck, and, perhaps my favorite thus far, a beautiful bowl of wild mushrooms with chestnut agnolotti.

Although he seems to be off to an impressive start, from thoughtful conversations we’ve had, I know that Bagh demands more of himself.  He is young, ambitious, earnest, and almost blindingly dedicated to his craft.  I look forward to watching him reach.  And so should you.

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Quite a few years ago, Daniel Boulud urged me to go to Mielcke & Hurtigkarl.  I forgot about his recommendation until earlier this year, when I met Jakob Mielcke.

How would I describe Mielcke’s food?  Boulud couldn’t really do it when I asked.  And I’m not sure I can either.

Yellow beets and pineapple under a veil of compressed daikon dusted with coffee; shiitake mushrooms with caviar and elderflower cream; and seaweed cereal – as a dessert: Many of Mielcke’s combinations defied comprehension or logic.  Indeed, some of them sounded downright gross.   But they weren’t.  His food was unexpectedly lovely.  There was an element of escapism and a fairytale fantasy about Mielcke’s cooking, and the place – a lone-standing jewel box, quietly tucked away in the royal gardens of Frederiksberg.  But despite its whimsy, at the core of his cooking is solid technique.  And it is for this – even though I’ve only been to Mielcke & Hurtigkarl once – that I mention it here.

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My first stop in Copenhagen after dropping my bags off is usually at VeloBarista, where my friend Henrik Storland makes classically styled bicycles, the most common mode of transportation in the city.  And, as the name of his small workshop suggests, he also serves coffee out of an attached, walk-up window.

Henrik will be the first to tell you that his espresso drinks are inexact: the amount of milk he pours is directly correlated to how engaged he is in conversation.  But that’s okay, because the more we talk, the more milk he adds to his strong pulls, which prevents me from completely rocketing out of his shop on one of his beautiful bikes, which he always generously lends me for my time in the city.  (Note: his bikes are for sale, and not for rent.)   I’ll usually linger a bit while Henrik makes a few adjustments to my ride; perhaps poke my head in next door at the Københavns Mobelsnedkeri, where my friend Kim Dolva designs beautiful furniture and fixtures.  Sometimes, if I’m there when Dolva’s woodworkers ring the lunch bell hanging outside, I’ll join his crew, who stop their work daily for a midday meal together – I love that.

VeloBarista isn’t just my first stop in the city; it’s usually my last stop as well.  And I have so enjoyed bookending my time in Copenhagen with that quiet bike ride along the water, down that wide esplanade to Islands Brygge, the city’s warehouse district, to return my bike to Henrik.

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Am I lucky to have happened upon Copenhagen at the right time?

An exciting momentum seems to be propelling the city forward right now, least of which is the constant talk of new restaurants, which always gives me a reason to return.

Noma, of course, is closing and moving.

Bille-Brahe, who I look forward to seeing regularly outside Atelier September with his dog Skat, has recently opened Havfruen (“The Mermaid”), a sit-down restaurant in Nyhavn.

And my friend Will King-Smith, the erstwhile assistant head chef of Geranium, has announced plans to open his own restaurant in the city center soon.  I can’t wait.

Ironically, just as the very culinary movement that arguably jump-started this Danish renaissance shows signs of waning, Copenhagen’s horizon shimmers.  If you don’t go now, go soon.  And when you do, please report back.  I’d love to hear about what you’ve discovered.

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*  Traditionally, risalamande is served at Christmastime. One whole blanched almond is mixed in, and, similar to the fève in the French galette du roi, the person who finds it in their portion wins a small prize.

+ Notwithstanding the fact that I am an editor for Ambrosia, a magazine about food culture, I urge you to find a copy of vol. 2, which focuses on Denmark. It includes a number of conversations with chefs – particularly, the interviews with Frederik Bille-Brahe, Bo Bech, John Kofod, and Per Hallundbæk – in which this deep-rooted French bias in Danish fine dining is discussed.

Photos: The colorful rowhouses of Nyhavn; the builder king Christian IV’s magnificent Børsen – stock exchange – at night; breakfast at Atelier September; morning pastry and coffee at 108 Corner Café; hot chocolate and coffee outside of the Coffee Collective at Torvehallerne; the lovely interior of Lumskebugten; smoked salmon smørrebrød with scrambled eggs at Lumskebugten; the interior of Schønnemann; veal tongue with horseradish cream at Schønnemann; pouring cream into the Danish “red porridge” – rødgrød med fløde – at Palægade; ringing the plate with eel at Restaurant Gammel Mønt; the window display at La Glace; the tea station in the tea room at A.C. Perchs Thehandel; a “living room vignette” at Vedstranden 10; the interior of Manfreds og Vin; pizza with Lolin anchovies at Bæst; oysters with lobster roe at Bistro Bohême; the cellar interior of Kong Hans Kælder; chef Mark Lundgaard Nielsen carving fowl at Kong Hans Kælder; white truffles shaved over warm potato purée and egg yolk at Marchal at the Hôtel d’Angleterre; chef Andreas Bagh carving duck at Marchal at the Hôtel d’Angleterre; the dining room at Mielcke & Hurtigkarl; Henrik Storland at his bike shop VeloBarista in Islands Brygge; a shimmering sunset on the canal at Islands Brygge; the dining room at Kadeau Copenhagen.

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My friend Mark was digging into a salad he had packed.  The late-autumn sun was dropping quickly toward the tree line, and with it, the temperature.  It began to rain, lightly.

The two of us were sitting up in a blind barely large enough for one of us. Packed in like canned sardines, standing practically chest-to-chest, I was scouting over his shoulder, and he over mine.  With a sudden nudge, he pushed the salad toward me, as if asking me to take it. Confused, I chose the wrong instinct: instead of following his prompt, I whipped my head around to catch two hares scurrying across the field behind me. By the time I turned back around to free Mark of the salad, it was too late. He quickly brought his shotgun up to aim, just as the hares disappeared into the tree line.

This was my first time hunting with Mark in over a year, and it was the first time we walked away empty-handed.

I’ve spent some early mornings and beautiful sunsets amidst field and stream with Mark Lundgaard Nielsen.  He’s the head chef of Kong Hans Kælder, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Copenhagen about which I’ve written before.  He’s also a skilled hunter.  And I’ve had the pleasure of accompanying him on a few hunting trips, during which he’s landed fowl, deer, stag, and almost two hares.  It has been these road trips, and others I’ve taken through Denmark, on my own or with other friends, that have not only  revealed some of the lovelier, quieter corners of Denmark, but have also taught me an incredible amount about Danish history, culture, and tradition.

In my last post, I surveyed the dining scene of Copenhagen.  In this post, I take you afield to a few of my favorite places to eat outside the capital city.

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First, a little geography.

The mainland of Denmark is like a little claw that juts up into the North Sea from Germany (I have yet to determine if this is why it’s called Jutland – Jylland in Danish). Setting aside the country’s territories of Greenland and the Faroe Islands far to the west, the rest of Denmark lies to the east of this mainland in a cluster of islands, the largest of which are connected by bridges.  Directly east of Jutland is the island of Funen (Fyn in Danish), known as “Denmark’s garden”.  And connecting Funen to the island of Zealand (Sjælland in Danish), still further east, is the Storebæltsbroen, the Great Belt Link, the third longest suspension bridge in the world, and the longest outside of Asia.  It is on the eastern side of this eastern island of Zealand that you will find Copenhagen, which is connected by a tunnel bridge across a narrow strait to Malmö, Sweden.

But this is not the end of the Danish domains.  Still further east – too far for a bridge connection – is the island of Bornholm.  It sits by itself, closer to the coasts of Sweden and Poland than the rest of Denmark.

Despite this splintered drift from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea, the Danish lands are not immense.  All told, Denmark measures just over 16.500 square miles.  Slightly larger than the state of Massachusetts, Denmark would fit into my home state of Missouri four times, with room to spare.

Surely you could look up all of this information yourself.  But I include it here to emphasize the smallness of the country, and how easily one could explore beyond Copenhagen, by car, train, or plane. I’ve done it all.

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It only takes three and a half hours to drive from Copenhagen on the eastern end of Zealand clear across Denmark to Henne Kirkeby Kro on the west coast of Jutland.  In this sleepy hamlet of the same name, Paul Cunningham runs a lovely little “kro” (Danish for “inn”), where you can have one of the best dinners in Denmark, and stay the night too.

The inn, which dates to the end of the 18th century, offers a dozen, recently renovated rooms.  The one in which I stayed, located in the Jægerhuset – a building on property referred to as the “hunting lodge” – was as capacious as it was comfortable, with every modern amenity you might desire.  But I didn’t spend much time there.

There was afternoon coffee, served in the inn’s salon, after which I spent the balance of the afternoon exploring the vast gardens out back, and around the 13th century Henne Kirke – Henne Church – on the adjacent plot of land.

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Although Cunningham is every inch the jolly Brit that he appears to be, he is, an all other respects Danish: he moved to Denmark years ago, married a Dane, learned Danish, and now cooks food that is expressive of the terroir that surrounds him in his adopted homeland.  My dinner included oysters from Limfjord to the north, and shrimp from Rømø, an island in the great tidal flats of the Wadden Sea, to the south. I had veal from Grambogaard – a slaughterhouse on the neighboring island of Funen, which only accepts livestock from farmers meeting certain standards. And of course, there were greens from the garden outside, including herbs that were baked into the bottom of a beautiful loaf of bread that arrived upside down to show off the leafy imprints.  The Danes are good at a lot of things, and bread-making is high on that list.  The crust was golden-brown and thick, with a well-structured interior.  The Danes are also great at eating butter, and there was a generous curl of that too.

I woke up to an incredible spread.  Breakfast, which was served in a separate building, included fruit, yogurt, muesli, eggs, and a selection of breads, jams, and cold cuts.  Halfway through eating, a cook appeared with a sizzling skillet of thick-cut bacon and sausages.  It was fragrant with sage and rosemary, sprigs of both having been thrown into fry in the fat.  That was terrific.

Although I’ve only been once – earlier this year in May of 2016 – it’s not hard for me understand why Henne Kirkeby Kro was recently awarded its first Michelin star.

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There are two restaurants on the island of Funen worth visiting.  Both are just a little over an hour by car or train from Copenhagen.*

At Sortebro Kro, chef John Kofod Pedersen cooks classic, Danish cuisine inside a timbered inn dating to the early 19th century.  No longer used as a working inn, this tavern is part of Den Fynske Landsby (or, The Funen Village), a collection of buildings preserved from the time of Hans Christian Andersen – the celebrated Funen native who lived in the nearby city of Odense.  Artificially arranged as a 19th century working village, Den Fynske Landsby now operates as a museum.  In fact, the structure that houses the restaurant – which now leans at alarming angles – was moved here from its original location near the sortebro (“black bridge”), for which it is named.

Pedersen’s larger dishes seem to have a French favor to them (see my previous post for a discussion on the influence that traditional French cuisine has had on the Danish dining culture): a strip of plaice with capers and chives; a tender slice of pork with a little jus.  The cooking is straightforward and good, à la minute and hot.

But, it is for Pedersen’s lunchtime spread of Danish smørrebrød that Sortebro is especially celebrated. Truly, it is not to be missed.

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The smørrebrød are presented in kits – trays brimming with all sort of goodies and condiments.

You might have, for example, a pot of tiny shrimp, with some dill, mayonnaise, and lemon wedges.  Or, you might have a variety of herring – pan-fried, pickled, and marinated – served with onions, scallions, diced green apple, hard-boiled eggs, raw yolks, curry sauce, and potted lard coated with freshly chopped dill.  There’s also eel, and sausage, and those buttery tartlets (here, filled with chicken and topped with bacon) that I’ve come to love.

Smørrebrød is incomplete without bread.  Not surprisingly, the selection at Sortebro Kro is fantastic.  Guard yourself – it’s easy to overcommit here.  I have. But I’ve always left full and happy.

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In the south of Funen, near the village of Millinge, is Falsled Kro.

This thatched wonder dates to the 16th century.  Unlike Sortebro Kro, Falsled Kro is very much a working inn.  In fact, it is the only Relais & Châteaux property in all of Scandinavia that offers overnight accommodations – the only other Relais & Châteaux properties in Scandinavia are restaurants: Lieffroy in the nearby city of Nyborg on the west coast of Funen, and Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen.

I’ve had the pleasure of staying here twice – both times on hunting trips.

Words cannot begin to describe how magical this place is.

Not only is the inn splendidly preserved, but it is located on a beautiful stretch of coastal land. The tiles in some of the rooms, alone, are worth a visit (here’s one room in which I stayed, here’s another).  But so is the food.

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I’ll never forget the very first dish I had at Falsled Kro: a plate of fat, white asparagus mounded with tiny shrimp and smothered in a rich blanquette sauce fortified with a sharp, Danish cheese.  It was a magnificent example of the Franco-Danish style of cooking that I celebrate, and to which chef Per Hallundbæk subscribes: using the reliable techniques of classical, Continental cooking to showcase the unique flavors and sensibilities of the Scandinavian culture.  And he’s particularly good at doing it.+

Hallundbæk grows much of his own produce on property, and he smokes his own salmon too.  And he gets some of his meat from a farm just down the road.

Although the entire inn offers an idyllic escape to a different time and place – I especially loved the rainy afternoon I spent by the fireplace with a book in the inn’s sitting room – the original dining room is particularly so.  It has not the expansive, panoramic view of the coast afforded by the new extension.  Rather, it serves as a haven from the noise of modernity.  I love it there.  I know you will too.

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I’ve heard it bruited that you can actually drive from Copenhagen over to Sweden and catch a ferry to the island of Bornholm.  I worry about the time commitment involved.  I flew instead – the flight is less than an hour from Copenhagen.

I only spent one day there in 2014, the purpose of which was to eat at Kadeau.  Situated on a rise overlooking the Baltic Sea, with a lush garden attached, it’s one of the most beautifully situated restaurants I’ve ever visited.  I only mentioned it briefly in my annual recap of 2014, and I’ll mention it briefly here again as a worthy destination on Bornholm. The original inspiration for Nicolai Nørregaard’s Copenhagen outpost of the same name, this location is only opened seasonally during the warm months (as is much of Bornholm, which depends heavily on summer holiday traffic).

While on the island, I was taken to Christianshøj Kro.  Tucked away in the middle of a forest, this tiny inn employs mentally disabled workers, “who are capable of serving and working as kitchen assistants. They help to give the experience at the inn a special touch, where everything they do, ‘comes from the heart.'”  It was a beautiful, balmy day, and my friend and I had lunch outside on the patio.  And it was terrific.  They offered juices from Bornholms Mosteri – a juice company located on the island that uses local fruit – and a simple, but incredibly well-cooked menu.  If you find yourself on the island, make time for it.

I’ve heard chatter of new places on Bornholm.  Not that I need a reason, but it’s time I go back.

As well, for the rest of Denmark, there are far more places to explore.  I’d like to visit Aaarhus – Denmark’s second largest city – as well as the Faroe Islands, and one day, Greenland too.  Please send your recommendations, if you have any.  I’m always looking for good food and a new adventure.

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To see photos from my meals at the places mentioned in this post, click on the following dates of my visits below:

Christianshøj Kro (2014)
Falsled Kro (2015/1; 2015/2)
Henne Kirkeby Kro (2016)
Kadeau Bornholm (2014)
Sortebro Kro (2015; 2016)

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* Take a train from Copenhagen Central Station to Odense.  From Odense train station take a cab.

+ I mentioned this in the footnotes of the previous post, but I’ll mention it here again: vol. 2 of Ambrosia Magazine has excellent interviews with both John Kofod Petersen of Sortebro Kro and Per Hallundbæk of Falsled Kro.

Photos: A table scene from Sortebro Kro; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen on the hunt in Funen; a six-point stag being dressed, Jutland; a curious door in the middle of the garden at Henne Kirkeby Kro; the dining room at Henne Kirkeby Kro; bread and butter at Henne Kirkeby Kro; the well-preserved interior of Sortebro Kro; pork with some jus at Sortebro Kro; a magnificent spread of smørrebrød at Sortebro Kro; steaks on the Molteni at Falsled Kro; the dining room at Falsled Kro; the sitting room at Falsled Kro; pork with cavalo nero at Christianshøj Kro on Bornholm; the view from Kadeau Bornholm on Bornholm; Kadeau Bornholm at night.

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The calendar has turned for the twelfth time on this blog, and once again, I find myself nearly immobilized by the daunting task of gathering the previous year in one post.  What has proven perennially to be one of my most challenging exercises, pausing to regroup, reflect, and record at year-end has turned out to be one of the most rewarding ones as well.  So, I continue it here.*

If 2015 was a fairytale, 2016 was an odyssey. Beyond its epic scale and scope, which words and pictures could not possibly capture or contain, as with any true odyssey, much of my journey was internal, intangible, and invisible.  2016 included much soul-searching, as I continued to evaluate my trajectory, my purpose, my destination.  Unpacking it here will take some time.

As in previous years, I write this post mostly for my own file.  So, if you’re not interested in reading about my year and only interested in seeing the list of restaurants that I visited in 2016 – a log that I include annually with this year-end round-up – skip to the bottom of this post.

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It’s hard to believe, but I broke my previous travel record.  The equivalent of circling the globe six times, I touched down in a dozen countries across four continents in 2016.  In May and June alone, I flew over 60,000 miles, as I shuttled across hemispheres, visiting Asia and Australia on separate trips, and Europe twice.  And, with two years left on the clock, I exceeded my goal of visiting 40 countries before I turn 40.  Adding three new countries to my list last year, my tally now stands at 42.

It’s hard to imagine, but I also think I ate better than ever before – even as I went further off the grid, or probably because of it.  (More on that in my upcoming, year-end series of posts about food and restaurants).

And, as a writer and photographer, I continued to work with some of the very best and most talented people in their fields.  They are the ones who kept me moving, inspired, and excited for all the tomorrows that pulled me through 2016 at an unprecedented pace.  For them, I am especially grateful.

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Indeed, photography has taken up an increasingly large slice of my pie in recent years.  And photography jobs took me all over the world in 2016.  They ranged from the editorial to the advertorial, the practical to the commercial.  I found my work more rewarding than ever, as I gained more freedom and latitude of expression in it.  An increasingly self-selecting crowd, I find that those who engage me for work are doing so because of my photojournalistic approach to photography.  As such, they give me very little to no instruction and allow me to inhabit the experience, be it an event or a setting.  And that’s been immensely gratifying.

In February, I photographed Gourmet Fest, a Michelin star-studded event hosted by chef Justin Cogley at l’Auberge Carmel in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, in partnership with Relais & Châteaux.

In May, I did two photography projects with AirBNB, one in Memphis and another in Copenhagen.  In that month, I also photographed for my friend Solveig’s family company Regal Springs Tilapia on the island of Sumatra, Indonesia.

Paris saw me briefly in early August, when I swung through for a quick photoshoot for Atsushi Tanaka at his Restaurant A.T.

In September, I traveled with chef Joshua Skenes of Saison on a three-week hunting and fishing trip through California, Oregon, and Idaho.  All of it, including a week in Sonoma, was for his upcoming Skenes Ranch, a project which remains shrouded in much mystery to the public.

And in November, I returned to Palmetto Bluff to see what delicious mischief Courtney Hampson had conjured up on a mid-autumn night’s eve amidst the woods of South Carolina’s Lowcountry.  This was my sixth time attending Music To Your Mouth, and it was the sixth time I watched her cast a spell over a delicious series of feasts in a magical wood of live oaks swaying with moss.  It remains one of the highlights of my year.

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If passion is at the heart of good cooking, then generosity is the soul through which it should live.

Chef Gavin Kaysen puts this in practice through his Synergy Series, which took me to Minneapolis four times in 2016.  This quarterly event raised awareness and funds for local charities in the Twin Cities.  When the four chefs he invited – all of them friends from his time cooking in New York: Michael White, Michael Anthony, April Bloomfield, and Daniel Boulud – heard that their dinners sold out in minutes, they all agreed to cook for two nights to double the winnings.  That, truly, is the spirit.  [Kaysen plans on continuing the Synergy Series in 2017, and has announced the four chefs who will cook at Spoon & Stable this year.]

At a time when many chefs are retreating from the big cities to the less-glamorous, less-expensive markets of our country, Kaysen does it the way I wish more chefs would: bringing his sphere of influence home to attract talent and attention to the shallower ends of our nation’s pool.  I am constantly searching for a way to do the same in my hometown of Kansas City.  It is one reason why I have continued to help organize a couple of charity dinners that not only brings dollars to those who need them, but moves the culinary spotlight to my region for a couple of nights each year.

For all you young cooks from second and third-tier cities, go out and see and taste the world.  That’s important, it’s imperative.  But consider taking the resources you acquire home, and enriching the soil from which you came.  A rising tide lifts all boats.

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Christopher Haatuft, chef of Lysverket, continues to be an advocate and ambassador for his hometown of Bergen, Norway.  Despite an increasingly busy schedule from an expanding career in television, he remains devoted to his restaurant and those who work for him. Over the past three years, through a series of dinners and events that I’ve been lucky to help plan and document, he has celebrated and enlarged his and my circle of friends, and the friends of Lysverket.

As in 2015, my collaborative work with the Friends of Lysverket series took me to the rainy west coast of Norway five times in 2016.  Given how much time I spent with Haatuft and the team at Lysverket, and how regrettably little I wrote about it, I think it necessary to devote a bit of space to it here.

There was a British invasion in January with guest chefs James Knappett and his wife, sommelier Sandia Chang, of Kitchen Table and Bubbledogs in London; Russell Batemen of Colette’s’ in Watford; and Bradford McDonald (an American expat in London) of Lockhart. We foraged among tidal pools, and visited a farm high in the mountains, where we watched a lamb slaughtered in the snow.

In June, Lysverket hosted Atsushi Tanaka of Restaurant A.T. (Paris, France) and José Gabriel Cerdá Contreras of Restaurant Hoze (Gothenburg, Sweden).  We visited one of the last, remaining whaling ships – the Olavson – on the west coast of Norway, and learned about that dying industry (and tasted raw whale right off the butcher block).

And in August, on a rainy dock by the fjord, American chef Paco Roberts introduced Lysverket to a seafood boil, using a trove of fresh shellfish that our friend and diver Knut Magnus Persson had harvested: tubs mounded with crabs, scallops, clams, and mussels.

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While these international partnerships promoted the kind of cross-cultural pollination that first inspired this project, I particularly enjoyed watching Haatuft slowly turn homeward for inspiration and motivation in 2016.  Friends of Lysverket nos. 8 and 12 were highlights for me because they celebrated the wealth of resources in Haatuft’s own community.

In March, Haatuft used Friends of Lysverket to gather the restaurant community of Bergen to consider it’s own future and fate on the heels of the city being named a “City of Gastronomy” by UNESCO (The United Nations Education, Science, and Cultural Organization is, among other things, tasked with designating and preserving our world’s “heritage”).  In addition to hosting a panel discussion among local food journalists, Haatuft opened the forum to the public, inviting the city into his kitchen to cook their version of Bergen’s iconic fish soup.  What we would call a chowder in America, this seafood soup is acidulated with a touch of vinegar.

At this eighth Friends of Lysverket, we also threw a barbecue block party at which about a dozen Bergen-area chefs lit up the grills and smokers and cooked for the city.  There was a spit-roasted suckling pig, sausages, and lamb heart tacos.  I brought some rich, thick Kansas City barbecue sauce from my home town to share.

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In December, with the Christmas season in full swing, Haatuft and his staff stopped to share their own families’ yuletide recipes with each other.  For the twelfth Friends of Lysverket, they gathered to cook one, big Christmas family meal.

Irmelin Meidal and her mother Marit made krumkake (wafer-thin waffles rolled into a cone shape) and rossettbakkels (snowflake-shaped fritters dusted with powdered sugar).  Julia Torsvik and her mother made tørre vafler – a thicker, dry, crisp waffle.  August Cernic made monk – a batter-based pastry akin to a donut hole (or Danish æbleskiver, or the Japanese takoyaki). It, too, was dusted with powdered sugar.  Cernic also made his grandmother’s hertuginnekake (“duchess cake”), rich with nuts.

But there were members of the Lysverket family from all over the world. And they shared their recipes too. Khang Doan’s family is from Vietnam, and he made his mother’s spring rolls.  Anna Kim Thorsden, from Denmark, made sur-rib – pork rib meat set in soured aspic, a traditional Christmas dish from her home in Jutland.  Agurtzane Galarza, who is Basque, made her mother’s marzipan recipe and shaped the mound of sugared almond into a crocodile, just the way her mother does.  And Haatuft’s mother, Debbie, originally from my neighboring state of Tennessee, made good-old, American no-bake cookies, and a soft pinwheel made from peanut butter, potatoes, and lots of sugar.

Haatuft and some of his cooks made the traditional staples of Norwegian Christmases: lutefisk – lye-cured cod, which has to be soaked before it’s steamed; mashed rutabaga (the Norwegians call it kohlrabi); fat back with crackling (akin to the Danish flæskesteg); and pinnekjøtt – salted and dried (and sometimes smoked) mutton ribs, which also have to be soaked before its boiled.

This Christmas family meal embodied the very best of what Haatuft wants out of The Friends of Lysverket: a cross-cultural dialogue and an appreciation of the other; community.

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All of this travel for work made it easy to explore afield.

My trip to Indonesia made Singapore a sensible side-trip.  With my extra miles, I flew my father out for his seventy-fifth birthday, and in part, so he could see an old friend he hadn’t seen in decades.  It was my first time on this island nation.  And it was delicious.

We indulged in the confluence of Chinese, Malay, and Indian cooking unique to Singapore.  We had sweet and spicy chili crab; white and silky chicken rice; a restoring broth of pork ribs; and a terrific introduction to Peranakan culture and cooking at Malcolm Lee’s restaurant Candlenut (since awarded a Michelin star in Singapore’s inaugural guide).

Four days was not enough.

~

~

And two weeks was definitely not enough for Australia.

Fresh off a six-month stint with Médecins sans Frontières in Papua New Guinea, my friend Dr. Tomostyle met me down under, together with our friend Jonathan Alphandery.  The last time the three of us saw each other was in Tokyo, where Dr. Tomostyle was living in 2014.  Two years later, our reunion took us to his home turf.

Originally from Paris, Jonathan immigrated to Australia a few years ago.  He now owns and operates the Ladurée franchise for the country, and is very active in the food community.  We could not have had a better host or guide for stay.

In Melbourne, we had dumplings in Chinatown (with a mousse-like mackerel filling), and croissants in Fitzroy.  There were tulips to be plucked from the garden at Attica, and further afield, a quiet, countryside inn at Brae (my first time driving on the left!).

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Surry Hills was our base in Sydney.  With a dozen very good coffee shops at our doorstep, all of them serving very good food, we had little reason to leave our bohemian enclave (I started most of my mornings at either Reuben Hills or Single Origin Roasters, all within a stone’s throw of our apartment).

But we’re glad we did.

Thanks to Jonathan, we found good food all over the city.  There was a terrific orange duck at Billy Kwong in Potts Point, and a buttery nduja, ham and grilled cheese sandwich at Bar Brosé in Darlinghurst.

Our three-hour lunch at Sixpenny in the Stanmore neighborhood was a highlight, as was dinner at Bennelong in the iconic Sydney Opera House.  There were velvety sheets of maltagliati with shiitake, scallions, and an alluring “wok hay” at ACME in Rushcutters Bay, and a giant mud crab for the smashing at Ester in Chippendale.

In between, Dr. Tomostyle and I toured the city.  We walked the Sydney Harbor Bridge, and wound our way around the coves from Bronte to Bondi Beach.  And everywhere we went, coffee, coffee, coffee.

Tomo, Jonathan – can we do it again?

~

~

I was all over Europe.

In January, the Haatufts and I visited London: tea at The Wolseley, soufflé at the Ritz, Lord Elgin’s marbles, and an afternoon at Westminster.

In March, we went to Stockholm.

With the U.S. Dollar so strong, especially against the pound sterling in the wake of Brexit, London called again, and I answered in August.  I found a a delicious revival of imperial India at Gymkhana.  I paid my respects to the Georgians and the great Tudor king at Windsor.  And, for the fourth time, I hopped on a train bound for Faversham station to have lunch at an old pub on the windswept coast of of Whistable: I’m happy to report, The Sportsman is as good as ever.

I had two nights in Oslo to see a couple of friends.  It was a brief stopover on the way to Bergen.

And in October, a friend and I took a quick getaway to the Basque coast of Spain to eat, eat, and eat.  We had jamón at midnight, with lots of sherry. We had fat porcini sautéed with foie gras. And we reveled over a five-hour lunch, kissed with a hint of smoke, high in the Basque mountains.  It was wonderful.  All of it.

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I went to Denmark six times in 2016.  I was mostly in Copenhagen.  But I also wandered afield and explored some of the country’s quiet corners.

In Roskilde I spent half a day in the Domkirke, Denmark’s ancient cathedral and crypt.  Here, you will find the splendor of Danish royalty preserved under magnificent canopies – jaw-dropping chapels lined with the stunning sarcophagi of kings and queens, princes and princesses.  I followed a group of British tourists into the otherwise empty church, only to discover that they were a society of organists there to see and play the famous Herman Raphaelis instrument dating to 1554.  They invited me up to the organ loft, where they lined up to play for a lone, lucky American who happened to be at the right place at the right time.  It was incredible.

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On my last trip to Denmark, in December, I spent Christmas with my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen’s family in Jutland.

Tradition is alive and well in the Nielsen household, where the nisse (Danish Christmas elves) are ever watchful, and snaps flows like water.

Our three-day yuletide celebration started on the 24th, with a traditional Christmas eve lunch of rice porridge (ris en grød is taken with a little cinnamon sugar and a pat of butter), after which we walked a few blocks to the town chapel for Christmas eve service.

The Nielsen’s had been kind enough to stage a Christmas eve dinner for me in September of 2015.  At the time, none of us anticipated that I’d be back for the real deal.  There was flæskesteg (fat back with a thick rind of crackling), roasted duck, boiled potatoes with brown gravy, caramelized potatoes, cabbage, and, of course, lots and lots of risalamande.  Originally a way to use up leftover rice porridge from lunch, risalamande has now become synonymous with Danish Christmas.  To the ris en grød is added sugar, vanilla and chopped blanched almonds.  All of it chilled and then mounted with whipped cream, and one whole, blanched almond is folded in (whoever finds it wins a prize).  It is served cold with warm cherry sauce.  After dinner, we ringed the Christmas tree – lit with candles – and sang carols (traditionally, I think there are seven), after which we exchanged gifts.

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On Christmas morning, I took a run through the woods at Gråsten Slot – the queen’s summer palace.  While the queen is away, the royal lands are opened as public parkland.  I was shocked to be able to walk up to the palace and literally touch it.  There were no guards.  But there was no graffiti either.  The grounds were immaculate.  America, this is why Danish people can have nice things, and we can’t.

Julfrokost – Christmas lunch – is the centerpiece of the day.  We started at two o’clock in the afternoon, and finished near midnight.  In between, there were five courses, each involving multiple – sometimes a dozen – dishes.  And all of it was homemade by Mark and his father. There were two types of pickled herring, two versions of pan-fried herring, breaded fish, smoked eel, smoked salmon, and a mound of Danish shrimp, all of it served with half a dozen condiments and bread (of course).  That was just the first course.

Then came the cold cuts: eight types of charcuterie, including pâté, head cheese, sur-rib, and wild game saucisson.  There was leverpostej – hot liver pâté served with mushrooms and bacon (out of everything served, this was my favorite), and blood sausage, taken with a drizzle of maple syrup and a dash of cinnamon.  And bread (of course).

We moved onto hot meats in the third course: another round of flæskesteg, two types of sausages, and ham, served with pickled red cabbage, creamed white cabbage, and creamed kale.  And bread (of course).

There about a dozen cheeses, including a baked round of creamy Vacherin.  And, there was bread (of course).

And finally, risalamande.

Between each course, the entire table was cleared and reset.  And each night, all of the tapers – dozens of them around the house – were removed and refreshed, and the dinner table cleared and reset one last time, ready for the next day.

We drove over the border to Germany on the morning of the 26th for a walk through the border town of Flensburg.  Unfortunately, the Christmas market stalls were closed.  But Mark found his favorite pita joint – Papa Imbiss – and insisted that we share a gyro.  Down the street, we stopped into Hansens Brauerei, a brewery dating to 1781, for a mug of beer and a plate of curry wurst.

And if you can believe it, we returned to Mark’s parents’ home to repeat julfrokost.  All five courses.  From top to bottom.  All of it.

Nobody does Christmas like the Nielsens.  Nobody.

Tusind tak, min familie!  (You can see all the photos from my Danish Christmas with the Nielsen’s here.)

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The density of my work travel and international travel curtailed my domestic travel in 2016.

I was in Chicago twice – once for the James Beard Awards, and again much later in the year to eat at a couple of newly minted Michelin stars.  (It’s about time, John and Karen Shields!)

My friends Catherine and Ralph got hitched.  So, Beverly Hills for a long weekend.  (There really are worse ways of spending time in Los Angeles…)

In June, I was in Seattle, briefly, to see my goddaughter, Adalena. Her mother, my friend Solveig, threw a part for all of us godparents. It was lovely.  I need to spend more time in that upper-left corner of our country.

And in October, I popped into New York – my first visit to the city in a year, and my only trip there in 2016 – to speak at the New York Wine & Food Festival (I was on a panel about food and travel with some terrific folks, well-seasoned in both arenas).  I did quite a bit of eating while in New York, but sadly, very little was worth mentioning here.

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Here at home, in Kansas City, we said farewell to a couple of dear friends.

After 42 years, The American Restaurant – designed by Warren Plattner, with an opening menu by James Beard – closed to the public.  Over my lifetime, I have eaten at this restaurant scores of times, and have, for nearly a decade, worked with the chef in hosting a number of wonderful charity dinners that have brought some of America’s brightest and best to Kansas City. I have been reassured, however, that this iconic space – which really should be on an historic registry – still has life, and will continue under different terms.  The greetings card giant Hallmark, which opened and owns the restaurant, has reached out to a number of people in our community, including me, to help form its future.

And on Christmas day, I received the sad news that Jennifer Maloney, chef of Café Sebastian at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, left us.  Years ago, when I was writing as a restaurant critic for a local publication – a tenure that some Kansas City chefs now affectionately refer to as “the reign of terror;” honesty was my strong suit – Jennifer didn’t take my review of her restaurant so well.  In her rather curt and straightforward way, she voiced her objections to me.  Loudly.

Of course, years later, she and I had a good laugh about it.  And under that boisterous, sometimes gruff exterior, I discovered a tremendously humble and generous heart.  She was as funny as she was sincere, always quick to self-deprecate and the first to praise others.  She became one of my biggest cheerleaders as I walked off of the firm and into the unknown, always encouraging me to pursue my passion.  Her warm smile and tight hugs always allayed any self-doubts I had, even if momentarily.  I’m sorry I never told her that.  Rest in peace, Jennifer.  You will be missed.

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What’s on the horizon?

Every year, I fear peering over the ledge, because I have a hard time believing that it could possibly get any better.  And yet, for the past six years, it has – breathtakingly so.  And for all of it, I look up and give thanks.  I know I have earned very little of it, and deserve even less.

Before 2016 ended, 2017 had already started to take form.  I have a number of commitments on the books, including another Gourmet Fest, the Synergy Series, and the Friends of Lysverket.  Although I missed my time in Napa this past December, many of you will be happy to know that The Twelve Days of Christmas will be remounted this year.  As in the past, I’ll be reporting from Kostow’s kitchen then.

The gaps always seem to fill themselves in.  And every year I marvel at that, and I have enjoyed the adventure in it.  But in the past year, I’ve been growing increasingly dissatisfied with just letting my year unfold without much direction.  In 2017, I hope to move more purposefully through the calendar.

I was published in the July, 2016 issue of Food & Wine Magazine – my trip with my parents to Taiwan in 2015 appeared as an article that I wrote and photographed about eating through the night markets of Taipei.  I’d like to write more in 2017.  In fact, I’d like to write a book.  It’s been a lifelong goal, and I feel the time is ripe.

I want to run a marathon.   It too, has been a lifelong goal, which was recently delayed due to knee surgery.

And, there are specific places in the world I’d like to see: Russia (St. Petersburg), India, Peru, Thailand, and Alaska (the only U.S. state I have not visited) are top on my list.  Now that I’ve tackled 40 before 40, I’m working towards 50 before 50.

The scary thing is, now that I’ve broadcasted this to the public, I might actually have to do it.  I hope I get to tell you about some, if not all of these adventures in the coming year.

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For my own record, but also to add context to my upcoming posts – my favorite dishes, desserts, and restaurant meals of 2016 – I include here a list of every restaurant I visited in 2016.  They are listed alphabetically by the month in which I visited them.

JANUARY

A.C. Perchs Thehandel (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Alléhjørnet Thai (Bergen, Norway)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Barrafina (London, The United Kingdom)
Bare Vestland (Bergen, Norway)
Barnyard (London, The United Kingdom)
Bistro Bohême (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bistro Pastis (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bubbledogs (London, The United Kingdom)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Dinner by Heston Blumenthal (London, The United Kingdom)
District Tonkin (Copenhagen, Denmark) (one, twice)
El Dorado (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kadeau (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lady Bird Diner (Lawrence, Kansas)
Lyle’s (London, The United Kingdom)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Mirabelle (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Radio (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Rivoli at The Ritz (London, The United Kingdom)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas) (once, twice)
Smakverket (Bergen, Norway)
Ten Bells (London, The United Kingdom)
Wolesely, The (London, The United Kingdom)

FEBRUARY

American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bella Napoli (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
El Tonayenses at 14th Street (San Francisco, California)
Kin Khao (San Francisco, California)
Los Gatos Café (Los Gatos, California)
Manresa (Los Gatos, California)
North (Leawood, Kansas)
Tacos Cala (San Francisco, California)

MARCH

108 at Noma (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Anarki (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (5x)
Bæst (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bakfickan (Stockholm, Sweden)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Cowgirl Creamery (San Francisco, California)
District Tonkin (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frankie Farelanes (Lee’s Summit, Missouri)
Ipsen & Co. (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Krökstrom (Kansas City, Missouri)
Lumskebugten (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Matsalen (Stockholm, Sweden)
Mielcke & Hurtigkarl (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Otto (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Shawarma Grill House (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Snickerbacken 7 (Stockholm, Sweden) (once, twice)
le Sommelier (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Speceriet (Stockholm, Sweden)
Zuni Café (San Francisco, California)

APRIL

American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Corner Table (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Fika (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Freddy’s Pizzeria (Cicero, Illinois)
Gjusta (Venice, California)
Hi-Lo Diner (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Night + Market Song (Los Angeles, California)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Spago (Beverly Hills, California)
St. Genevieve (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Staymaker at the Journeyman (Three Oaks, Michigan)
Timothy’s Restaurant (Union Pier, Michigan)
Wolfgang Puck at the Hotel Bel-Air (Bel-Air, California)

MAY

Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen (Memphis, Tennessee)
Arcade (Memphis, Tennessee)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (4x)
Bæst (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bar DKDC (Memphis, Tennessee)
Beatrix (Chicago, Illinois)
Beauty Shop (Memphis, Tennessee)
Bistro Bohême (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Boon Tong Kee (Singapore)
Candlenut (Singapore)
Carolina (Lake Toba, Indonesia)
Central BBQ (Memphis, Tennessee)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Din Tai Fung (Raffles City; Singapore)
Dove’s Luncheonette (Chicago, Illinois)
Filling Station, The (Lee’s Summit, Missouri)
Founder’s Bak Kuh Teh (Singapore)
Gus’s World Famous Hot Chicken (Memphis, Tennessee)
Henne Kirkeby Kro (Henne Kirkeby, Denmark)
Hija de Sanchez (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Hog & Hominy (Memphis, Tennessee)
Jumbo Seafood (East Coast; Singapore)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kul (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Las Tortugas (Germantown, Tennessee)
Marchal (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Mirabelle (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Mellben Seafood (Tao Payoh; Singapore)
Palægade (Copehagen, Denmark)
Porcellino’s Craft Butcher (Memphis, Tennessee)
Prime (Medan, Indonesia) (once, twice, thrice)
Publican (Chicago, Illinois)
Second Line, The (Memphis, Tennessee)
Sortebro Kro (Odense, Denmark)
Vedstranden 10 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Yusho (Charter Oak pop-up) (Chicago, Illinois)

JUNE

ACME (Sydney, Australia)
Attica (Melbourne, Australia)
Automata (Sydney, Australia) (once, twice)
Bachelor Farmer, The (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bachelor Farmer Café, The (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bar Brosé (Sydney, Australia)
Bar Sajor (Seattle, Washington)
Belle’s Hot Chicken (Melbourne, Australia)
Bennelong (Sydney, Australia)
Billy Kwong (Sydney, Australia)
Bourke Street Bakery (Sydney, Australia)
Bræ (Birregura, Australia)
Cornersmith (Sydney, Australia)
Cumulus Inc. (Melbourne, Australia)
Devon on Danks (Sydney, Australia)
Eastside (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Edition (Sydney, Australia)
Ester (Sydney, Australia)
London Plane, The (Seattle, Washington) (once, twice)
Lune Croissanterie (Melbourne, Australia)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway)
Marion Wine Bar (Melbourne, Australia)
Mr. Wong (Sydney, Australia)
Porch & Parlour (Bondi Beach, Australia)
Reuben Hills (Sydney, Australia)  (once, twice, thrice)
Rockpool Bar & Grill (Sydney, Australia)
Salumi (Seattle, Washington)
Shandong Mama (Melbourne, Australia)
Single Origin Roasters (Sydney, Australia)
Sixpenny (Sydney, Australia)
Spice Temple (Sydney, Australia)
Surly Beer Hall (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

JULY

1900 Barker (Lawrence, Kansas)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bachelor Farmer, The (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bachelor Farmer Café, The (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
ça va (Kansas City, Missouri)
Hank Charcuterie (Lawrence, Kansas)
Heyday (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Jarocho Pescados y Mariscos (Kansas City, Kansas)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Spoon & Stable (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Sundry, The (Kansas City, Missouri)

AUGUST

1900 Barker (Lawrence, Kansas)
Alléhjørnet Thai (Bergen, Norway)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Aubergine (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)
Bæst (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bench, The (Pebble Beach, California)
la Bicyclette (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)
Brown & Loe (Kansas City, Missouri)
Boot Café (Paris, France) (once, twice)
Buvette (Paris, France)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway)
ça va (Kansas City, Missouri)
le Cinq (Paris, France)
Clown Bar (Paris, France)
le Comptoir du Relais (Paris, France)
Fragments (Paris, France)
Fuglen (Oslo, Norway)
Golden Hind, The (London, The United Kingdom)
la Glace (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Gymkhana (London, The United Kingdom)
Havfruen (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Hija de Sanchez (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Little Napoli (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)
Luca (Carmel-By-The-Sea, California)
Lumskebugten (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway)
Marchal (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Miznon (Paris, France)
Oklava (London, The United Kingdom)
Restaurant A.T. (Paris France)
Sentralen (Oslo, Norway)
Sportsman, The (Seasalter, The United Kingdom)
St. John Bread & Wine (London, The United Kingdom) (once, twice)
Vaaghals (Oslo, Norway)
Vedstranden 10 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Wolseley, The (London, The United Kingdom)
Yank Sing (San Francisco, California)

SEPTEMBER

101 (Reno, Nevada)
20th Century Café (San Francisco, California)
511 Main Fountain & Pizzeria (Ashton, Idaho)
Anthony’s Mediterranean (Redding, California)
Californios (San Francisco, California)
Cotogna (San Francisco, California)
El Molino Central (Boyes Hot Springs, California)
Fremont Diner (Sonoma, California)
Girl and the Fig (Sonoma, California)
Hank Charcuterie (Lawrence, Kansas)
Joe’s Kansas City (Kansas City, Kansas)
Miminashi (Napa, California)
Morimoto (Napa, California)
Ole’s (Sugar City, Idaho)
Pho Lee Hoa Phat (Vacaville, California)
Port Fonda (Kansas City, Missouri)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Tay Ho (Sacramento, California)
Zuni Café (San Francisco, California)

OCTOBER

108 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
108 Corner Café (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice, thrice)
American Restaurant (Kansas City, Missouri) (once, twice)
Asador Etxebarri (Axtondo, Spain)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Bachelor Farmer, The (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Gammel Mønt (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Ganbara (San Sebastián, Spain) (once, twice, thrice)
Gandarias (San Sébastian, Spain)
Gunter Seeger (New York, New York)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
Ibai (San Sébastian, Spain)
Jean-Georges (New York, New York)
Joe’s Kansas City (Kansas City, Kansas)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Leeway Franks (Lawrence, Kansas)
Marchal (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Méson Bidea Berri (San Sébastian, Spain)
Modern, The (New York, New York)
Pho Hanoi (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Rufino Osteria (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Terrebone (Lawrence, Kansas)
Untitled at the Whitney (New York, New York)

NOVEMBER

Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Eddie V’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Jessamine’s at the Montage Palmetto Bluff (Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina)
Stock Hill (Kansas City, Missouri)

DECEMBER

108 Café (Copenhagen, Denmark)
3 Arts Club Café (Chicago, Illinois) (once, twice, thrice)
Alléhjørnet Thai (Bergen, Norway)
Alma (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
American Restaurant, The (Kansas City, Missouri)
Antler Room (Kansas City, Missouri)
Au Cheval (Chicago, Illinois)
Bachelor Farmer Café, The (Minneapolis, Minnesota) (once, twice, thrice)
Bar La Grassa (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bistro Bohème (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Café Alma (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway)
Cindy’s (Chicago, Illinois)
d’Angleterre Hôtel (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Elske (Chicago, Illinois)
Fat Rice (Chicago, Illinois)
Hansens Brauerei (Flensburg, Germany)
Lou Lou (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Loyalist (Chicago, Illinois)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (once, twice)
Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen (Chicago, Illinois)
Marchal (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Mirabelle (Copenhagen, Denmark)
North (Leawood, Kansas)
Oriole (Chicago, Illinois)
Papa’s Imbiss (Flensburg, Germany)
Rudo (Copenhagen, Denmark) (once, twice)
Smyth (Chicago, Illinois)
Spoon & Stable (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Stock Hill (Kansas City, Missouri)
Upton 43 (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

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* Here are my year-end posts for 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Photos: “Water Fools,” a water circus at the Festspillene i Bergen, Bergen, Norway; a lion dances in Chinatown, San Francisco, California; the Cirkelbroen in Copenhagen, Denmark; McWay Falls at the Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park along Highway 1 in California; Place de la Concorde, Paris France; Gavin Kaysen and Daniel Boulud at Spoon & Stable in Minneapolis, Minnesota; a lamb being slaughtered in the snow at Tveite Gård in Voss, Norway; Knut Magnus Persson boils crabs on his dock in Sotra, Norway; a spit-roasted suckling pig at the Friends of Lysverket No. 8 at Lysverket, Norway; the Norwegian flag rips in the wind atop the Ulriken, over looking Bergen, Norway; rossettbakkels frying in oil; lanterns strung across the colorful streets of Chinatown, Singapore; Marion Wine Bar in Melbourne, Australia; mackerel dumplings at Shandong Mama in Chinatown, Melbourne, Australia; breakfast at Reuben Hills in Sydney, Australia; the colonialist-era interior of Mr. Wong in Sydney, Australia; Lord Elgin’s Greek marbles at the British Museum in London, The United Kingdom; prawns at Asador Etxebarri in Axtondo, Spain; Rosenborg Slot in Copenhagen, Denmark; a coffee kiosk at Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen, Denmark; the Nielsen’s tannenbaum, lit with candles, Egernsund, Denmark; risalamande at the Nielsens’; fish course at julefrokost at the Nielsens’; cheeses at julefrokost at the Nielsens’; the “Oculus” at the World Trade Center in New York, New York; the cast of the 2016 Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant in Kansas City, Missouri; the night view from atop the Norwegian Operahouse in Oslo, Norway; Bronte Beach, New South Wales, Australia; and a painter resurfaces the pool at Icebergs as the waves break over the wall, Bondi Beach, New South Wales, Australia.

~

In 2015, I yawned.

So, in 2016 I did something about it.

I took my foot off the culinary gas pedal, tuned out the lists and rankings, and returned to the basics. I’ve never been a conformist, but, more than previous years, I focused on eating where I had found joy before.  And, when exploring afield, I relied on those I personally knew and trusted, and followed their lead.

As a result, I ate better in 2016 than any year before.

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~

What makes a great dish?  I’ve examined this question now twelve times on this blog.

Although I still don’t have an answer (and don’t know that I ever will), I’ve certainly narrowed the scope of what I know will bring me pleasure.

Creativity?  Great, but not required.

Visual beauty?  Again, wonderful, but too often a mere distraction.

Story?  Context is nice, but really not necessary.

For me, simplicity is key, as is quality.  Soulmates, often separated, when found together, they sing.

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As in the past, my favorite dishes from 2016 were incredibly simple.  You’ll hardly find more than three things on any of the plates listed below: some creamy brains with brown butter; some bones in their own broth; a pigeon with its own juice.

Representing diverse perspectives, they come from 18 restaurants in seven countries on four continents. No. 24 I ate while squatting on an overturned milk crate; no. 11 I ate standing in a bar with a floor littered with used napkins; and no. 20 found me in one of the most iconic opera houses in the world.

At the same time, there was quite a bit of overlap on this list, and with previous years’ lists.  Four of my favorite dishes from 2016 were from one meal, 11 of them were from just four restaurants, and four of them were among my favorite dishes from previous years.  As I said above, in 2016, I found favor again where I had found favor before.  And I was thrilled that the standards and consistency at those places had remained intact.

Indeed, the high concentration of deliciousness among a small group of places on this year’s list excluded many very good dishes – some of which have appeared on previous year’s lists – from making the cut.  Suffice it to say: a different time, a different instance.

Editing this list is never easy.  Unlike meals, which have many moving parts to consider, a very good dish could happen anytime, anywhere.  And so the field is particularly wide, and surveying it particularly tedious.  As in the past, this year it required me to scroll through and review thousands of plates that I had at over 200 restaurants (you’ll find them all listed in this previous blog post), in addition to many other meals with friends and family.  I wish I could tell you about more of them, like the leverpostej – a warm liver pâté with mushrooms, buried under a mound of bacon – that my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen’s father Torben made for Christmas dinner in Denmark – or the impromptu salted antelope fried rice Joshua Skenes made one night after returning from a hunt to find an empty kitchen, save rice, eggs, and a refrigerator of chili oil. Or what about the finnochiona and fontina sandwich , with garlic pangrattato, capers, and anchovies I had Salumi in Seattle?  These, and many others hang on the cusp of recognition here.

Historically, this post, more than any post all year, receives the most clicks on this blog (surprisingly, even more than my upcoming post about my favorite meals).  However, I insist that these anthologies remain immaterial beyond the four corners of this screen.  I make no universal declarations or pronouncements here.*  Rather, I memorialize the following 25 dishes primarily because I want to remember them. And, for the brief moment that others pass through, I hope they join me in celebrating the most delicious moments of my year, and those who made them possible. For the dozenth time, here they are.

The title of each dish below is hyperlinked to a photo of that dish.  In some cases, I’ve written about the dish in a previous blog post, which is hyperlinked from either the chef or restaurant name that appears below the title.

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25. ROAST CHICKEN SALAD PITA
(Miznon; Paris, France)

The chicken was still slightly warm, a mix of white and dark meat.  The dressing was light – an aioli that had probably broken, it was more like oil and vinegar.  And throughout, was the fragrance of fresh parsley.  We had ordered many other things. But, as we sat at the open doorway, watching people scurry about in the rainy alleys of the Marais, this was the only thing on the table I wanted.

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24. SALTED ANCHOVY TOAST
(Gjusta; Venice, California)

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23. CAVIAR
Shiitake and elderflower cream.
(Mielcke & Hurtigkarl; Copenhagen, Denmark)

This sounded like a disaster.  It should have been a disaster. But, like most of what Jakob Mielcke presented, it was, in fact, tremendously, and if I may say so – surprisingly – delicious.  He demonstrates that there is still value in the unexpected; a rare talent.

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22. WHOLE FLOUNDER
Lemon, butter, caper.
(Marion Wine Bar; Melbourne, Australia)

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21. PEPPER CRAB
(Jumbo; Singapore, Singapore)

Chili crab, every one raved.  Chili crab – you must have it when you go to Singapore.  The version at Jumbo is good; sweeter than I expected.  But what I didn’t expect is how much more I’d love the pepper crab.  Buttery and musky with white pepper, the sauce was, as we Americans would say, finger-licking good.  I’m sure there are better versions in Singapore (at least this is what I’ve been told by others). If you have recommendations, I invite them.

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20. JOHN DORY
Served on the bone with orach, turnips,
native coastal greens, umami butter.
(Bennelong; Sydney, Australia)

If it weren’t for my friend Jonathan Alphandery’s commendation, I might have dismissed Bennelong as a “scene” restaurant. You go to see and to be seen, and for the incredible setting – inside one of Jørn Utzon’s sail “shells” of the Sydney Opera House.  And my faith in Jonathan was reaffirmed when John Dory appeared whole – roasted on the bone, glistening with a touch of butter.  The meat was firm, but tender, and fell effortlessly away from the bone.

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19. SAISON RESERVE CAVIAR
Smoked in kelp, served with egg custard
and Parker House rolls.
(Skenes Ranch; Sonoma County, California)

A pound of it – a pound of caviar, wrapped in kelp – arrived at our table of three. The packet had been gently smoked in the hearth, and was carefully unwrapped before us.  It was the same set-up I’ve had before at Saison – egg custard, Parker House rolls – but family-style.

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18. POTATO
Cheese, egg yolk, Alba white truffles.
(Marchal; Copenhagen, Denmark)

I was straight off a trans-Atlantic flight, still bleary eyed from lack of sleep, when Andreas Bagh showered my table with so much white truffle that, honestly, he could have served me cardboard underneath and I wouldn’t have known or cared. Strip away the opulence of it all – the stacks of gold-rimmed Bernardaud china, a blinding blizzard of white gold, and the setting of a grandame hotel – and you’re left with impeccable technique and the comfort of Old World simplicity: some potato purée, some cheese, and an egg yolk.

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17. CHULETA
A salad of lettuce with vinegar and oil.
(Asador Etxebarri; Axtondo, Spain)

[This dish topped my list of favorite dishes of 2012.]

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16. SAUTÉED BRAINS
Brown butter and celeriac.
(St. John Bread & Wine; London, The United Kingdom)

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15. PIGEON DE MESQUER
Pommes de terre.
(Clown Bar; Paris, France)

I honestly don’t know what was better, the pigeon or the roasted potatoes that came with it.

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14. PAN-FRIED EEL
Creamy potatoes and lemon.
(Restaurant Gammel Mønt; Copenhagen, Denmark)

I’ve been told that sea eels are a rare find these days in Scandinavia. And so it was an honor for us that Claus Christensen presented us with a platter mounded with this delicacy.  Pan-fried, the segments of eel were arranged on our plates, as they traditionally are in Denmark, in a circular fashion, touching end-to-end, ringing the rim.  In the middle, a hearty spoonful of creamy potatoes, and on the side, a bowl of fresh lemons.  The eel was unbelievably clean, the meat fatty and tender.

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13. VERMICELLI CRAB
(Mellben Seafood [Tao Payoh]; Singapore, Singapore)

What I remember most is not sitting in the hot, humid night; the damp pavement of the open-air market steaming in the light rain.  Rather, I remember this whole crab, simmering in its own broth, lusty and rich with its own roe.  We disassembled it mercilessly, divvied the parts and the broth among bowls of glass noodles, and happily made a mess of it. A hat tip to my friend Angela May for the recommendation.

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12. BAK KUT TEH
(Founders Bak Kut Teh; Singapore, Singapore)

Two pork ribs, shaggy with meat, in a bowl of broth.  That’s all this was.  Bak kut teh – Hokkienese for “meat, bone, tea;” in Chinese, rou gu cha (肉骨茶) – is a restorative meal found all over Singapore. Founded by a pig farmer, Chua Chwee Whatt, Founders Bak Kut Teh focuses on the the flavor that the pork imparts to the broth, which is enriched with herbs and spices (most notably, white pepper).  Immensely flavorful and comforting, the best thing about this broth is that, at Founders Bak Kut Teh, when your bowl goes empty, the server comes around with another pot and ladle and fills you back up.

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11. PORCINI AND CHANTERELLES
Foie gras and egg yolk.
(Ganbara; San Sebastian, Spain)

There were revellons in 2012 (this dish appeared among my favorite dishes of 2012; see no. 10), and there were porcini and chanterelles in 2016. The mushrooms changed, as they do when you’re dealing with finicky phenomena, but everything else about this dish was exactly the same: generous slices of seared foie gras and a velvety egg yolk, all of it seasoned with a dash of sea salt.  If there’s one reason to schedule your trip to San Sebastian during mushroom season, this is it.

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10. BLACK TRUFFLE AND BEEF BROTH
Brown butter, Danish mushrooms and chestnuts.
(Marchal; Copenhagen, Denmark)

The cocotte was so molten-hot that we couldn’t touch it for quite some time. So my friends and I resumed conversation, while the incredible aroma of meat and earth spread over our table.  When I finally did attempt the soup, I fell headlong into its deepness, an unfathomable richness of flavor that words cannot accomplish.

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9. SALTED ANCHOVIES
Pan con tomate.
(Asador Etxebarri; Axtondo, Spain)

[This dish also appeared on my list of favorite dishes of 2012.]

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8. TURBOT PANÉ
Caviar and beurre blanc.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

Who does fish pané any more?  Mark Lundgaard Nielsen does.  And he does it brilliantly.  This turbot, laminated with a golden-brown bread crust, arrived on creamy beurre blanc studded with caviar.  It was as flawless as it was delicious.

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7. BOAR
Madeira cream sauce and Italian peach.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

One doesn’t think of boar as a particularly elegant meat. But at Kong Hans Kælder, Mark Lundgaard Nielsen made it so. Tearing out the heavy curtains that begin lowering around that time of the year, smothering what warmth lingers in the early autumn, he served the young beast with a light cream sauce of Madeira and a wedge of late-harvest peach.

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6. SOLE
Pan-roasted with vinegar glaze.
(Ibai; San Sebastian, Spain)

[This dish also appeared on my list of favorite dishes of 2012.]

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5. SLIPSOLE
Grilled in seaweed butter.
(The Sportsman; Seasalter, The United Kingdom)

[This dish also appeared on my list of favorite dishes of 2014.]

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4. PRAWNS OF PALAMÓS
(Asador Etxebarri; Axtondo, Spain)

Two bundles of silk wrapped in crêpe paper, spooning in a bowl.  I’ve had these prawns before, and I was eager to have them again.  They had been barely cooked – gently warmed.  And served only with a wet napkin.  They were perfect.

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3. POCHAS
(Ibai; San Sebastian, Spain)

A good stock, and a touch of olive oil: a humble bowl of creamy, stewed beans holds its own, hovering near the top of this list.  If it’s possible to capture the endearing gruffness and warmth of the Basque in one spoonful, I found it here.

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2. EGG YOLK
White truffles and roasted peppers.
(Asador Etxebarri; Axtondo, Spain)

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1. LOBSTER Á LA NAGE
Chervil.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

The name says it all: tender, young lobster swimming in a bit of its own, creamy broth. I had dozens of dishes spread across five meals at Kong Hans Kælder in 2016, most of which would top the very best of what others have to offer.  And this lobster à la nage crowned them all.  It was as simple as it was elegant, and for a moment, it provided a quiet retreat as I ate alone in silence in that candlelit cellar in Copenhagen.  Tusind tak, Mark Lundgaard Nielsen.

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* As I have annotated in the past: “…although I created this annual post [twelve] years ago with the title ‘best of…,’ in the years since, I have come to dislike the misleading nature of it (for a more in-depth discussion why, read here). I do not claim, of course, that these are the 25 best dishes from the year [2016], for I have not eaten all of the food prepared in all of the restaurants around the world.  Even if I were, by some gastronomic miracle, to have done so, and survived, who am I to pronounce what is the “best?” Rather, these are the best dishes that I had in [2016], in my opinion.  That is why I have deliberately avoided using the word ‘best’ to describe the food mentioned in this post, preferring, instead, to refer to them as ‘my favorite’ dishes.  I realize this is a rather pedantic point of clarification, but one that is important to me.”  So, this year, I have changed the title of the post to “favorite dishes of 2016…”.

Photos: Egg yolk with roasted peppers and white truffles at Asador Etxebarri in Axtondo, Spain; pigeon de mesquer at Clown Bar in Paris, France; Andreas Bagh shaves an obscene amount of white truffles over a potato purée at Marchal in Copenhagen, Denmark; the bloody chuleta at Asador Etxebarri in Axtondo, Spain; the anchovy toast at Gjusta in Venice, California; pepper crab at Jumbo in Singapore; sautéed brains with brown butter and celeriac at St. John Bread & Wine in London, The United Kingdom; the bak kut teh, and side dishes at Founders Bak Kut Teh in Singapore; the whole sole in vinegar glaze at Ibai in San Sebastian, Spain; turbot pané at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; and prawns of Palamós at Asador Etxebarri in Axtondo, Spain.

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What is happening in pastryland?

In 2015, I described a slow-down and a top-off, as the energy and excitement that I first noticed propelling dessert-making into a new era half a decade ago began to level.  And as that unbridled sprint into the unknown, which had charted new and exciting territory, suddenly slowed, the language and form of pastry in this new era seemed to start codifying.  In 2016, pastryland reevaluated and realigned itself, and for the first time, started dividing into a new set of tracks, packs, and camps.

At least, that is my observation.

Let me explain.

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First, let me say that I am no expert here. The only credential I present is the alarming pace and enthusiasm with which I consume pastries.  As in past years, I saw and ate a lot of them all over the world in 2016.  So, to the extent that this allows me to comment, I offer the following as anecdote, not science.

I recognize that my gallery of sweets is self-selecting, determined by the types of establishments I choose and prefer to visit.  And it is in these circles that I’ve noticed trending and clustering.

Instead of diversifying, desserts and their makers are succumbing to stereotypes.  Three, in particular, take shape. Let me caricaturize them for you.

There are the modernists, who reinterpret and deconstruct.  They fancy themselves clever, and are prone to fetishizing technique. Their creativity and natural flair for style is often overshadowed by their inability to edit, as their lunar landscapes tend to crowd with too many ideas, few of which seem to ever involve flavor, balance, or coherence.

There are the naturalists, who are almost hippie, if not also hip in their minimalism. They do strange things with nuts. They prefer their acids fermented and their grains crunchy. And they’ll reach for vegetables before fruits, roasting them, juicing them, or turning them into ice cream. At its best, this asceticism can be exciting; at its worst, it’s downright comical.

And then there are the fundamentalists, a small but focused group that I am thrilled to find reemerging in kitchens across our globe.  Unlike many modernists, true fundamentalists focus on technique in order to yield the best result, rather than to show off how much they know.  And for this reason, I tend to derive the most pleasure from these kinds of pastry kitchens – as you’ll see, this year’s list of my favorite desserts is dominated by icons of classic technique. But if quality is the fundamentalist aim, sometimes, zealotry is its downfall. Rigidity and idealism kill creativity. On the other hand, if the technique is good enough, you’ll rarely need it.

However broad or crass these generalizations seem, they are true and applicable to what I’ve witnessed at the end of my meals recently. Of course, wherever craft meets artistry, borders blur. I would argue some of the best food comes out of the overlap, where the best of two or more pools bleed together.  Nos. 1 and 3 on this year’s list are excellent examples of this; the former born of the estuary between modernism and fundamentalism, and the latter an expression of naturalism fortified by fundamentalism.

Only time will tell whether these lines soften, harden, or disappear (or whether I even drew them accurately).  They say that everything is cyclical.  Indeed, history repeats (especially when history is forgotten).  And I see the wheel turning in pastryland: the freneticism and creativity that birthed the modernists and naturalists have slowed, and the basic, fundamental tenets of cooking are resurging.  I say bravo.

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Since my list of favorite desserts below focuses on the restaurant pastry kitchen, it neither considers nor represents the vast majority of pastries I had in 2016.  As in the past, I found some gems in cafés, bakeries, and sweet shops worth mentioning.  I pause to do so now.

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If time were a pie chart, my biggest slice would be found in coffee shops.  I spend a lot of time in coffee shops, and I am constantly disapointed by how slim and sad the selection of food is at most.  So I’m always thrilled when I find something good.

The scones at Boot Café in Paris are particularly good.  They toast them to order – daringly dark on the crust – and serve them with jam and crème fraîche.  The morning pastries at the corner café of 108 in Copenhagen are also bronzed and beautiful. I wrote about them here.

In Stockholm, I found a particularly pretty kardemummabulle (cardamom bun) at Kafé Esaias.  It was very tasty too; strong on the cardamom, but not too spicy. And there was a lovely sourdough and black currant sticky bun – surprisingly soft, surprisingly moist – at Fuglen in Oslo, Norway.

And I found phenomenal croissants and baked goods at Lune Croissanterie , a coffee shop and bakery located in a cavernous warehouse in the Fitzroy neighborhood of Melbourne, Australia. The croissant filled with pandan frangipane and covered in crisp, large flakes of toasted coconut, in particular, was a stand-out.

At home in Kansas City, where I ride the coffee shop circuit religiously, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the increased options lately.  I know I can get a decent danish at Black Dog Coffeehouse in Lenexa. It’s owned by the same family that owns Ibis Bakery next door, where the danishes (and much more) are baked.

Once in a blue moon, a group of Kansas City creatives – Felicia Koloc (owner of Maker Goods), Kate Morgan, Rob Knecht, and Olivia Tedford – will pop-up at area coffee shops with their waffle iron.  Operating under the name Wafel, they make delicious wafflettes with whimsical names, like “Pineapple Princess” – topped with ricotta, pineapple-peach compote, honey, and basil – or “Chupe,” a teff flour waffle with cherries and Kyoto brew.  This is just a fun, side project for them, all of whom have non-culinary, full-time jobs.  I haven’t seen them in months.  Please come back.

The cheese biscuits at both Heirloom in Brookside, and PT’s Coffee in the Crossroads district of downtown Kansas City are both terrific in their own way.  They’re not sweet, but they deserve a spot here.

And in Lawrence, Kansas, about 40 minutes away, Taylor Petrehn is milling some of his own flour, sheeting his own dough, and baking some of the best viennoiserie I’ve had in the country. His brother Reagan takes a studied approach to coffee-sourcing and making.  I wrote about their bakery and coffee shop 1900 Barker last year.  I continue to applaud their good work.

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My love affair with pie continues.

There’s always good pie at Music To Your Mouth, an annual event I attend and photograph at Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina.  I first had Bill Smith’s Atlantic Beach Pie there five years ago.  And I was happy to find him making it again for us in 2016.  The crust is made of crushed Saltine crackers, and the filling is a curd of lemon and lime. There’s whipped cream, and a dash of sea salt.  You’ll find the recipe here, and many more of Smith’s recipes from his restaurant Crook’s Corner in his cookbook, “Seasoned in the South“.

At a Synergy Series dinner at Spoon & Stable in Minneapolis, I was lucky to sneak a slice of April Bloomfield’s banoffee pie – sliced bananas layered with caramelized condensed milk and whipped cream.  I’ve had it before at Bloomfield’s Spotted Pig in New York, but you can also make it at home for yourself.  Here’s the recipe.

And I returned to Rye in Leawood, Kansas again and again for Megan Garrelts’s pies.  They’re all fantastic; especially her pumpkin and cream pies.   I ate a lot of them in 2016.

Ice cream, too, continued to be a big part of my life and joy.

I really liked the ice cream I had at Izzy’s in Minneapolis, and at Milkjam Creamery too, where the flavors were a little whacky (like “Saigon Nights” – Vietnamese coffee and Hennessy), but very good.

I had a lovely scoop of vanilla ice cream out of the cute little truck parked in the courtyard at Windsor Castle; all of the milk from royal cows.

And I had excellent soft serve in Australia. There was a twirl of black truffle soft serve topped with truffle honey and shaved black truffle at Devon on Danks in the Waterloo neighborhood of Sydney.  And there was pandan and sea salt soft serve – two separate flavors in a creamy spiral – at Aqua S in downtown Sydney.  Despite its unnatural coloring, it was delicious.

[An aside: the rise in soft serve machines in restaurants is troubling. I might applaud these restaurants for their attempt at efficiency if it weren’t for the fact that the vast majority of soft serve I’ve had in restaurants has been middling: often icy, and reliant upon toppings for personality.  This mediocrity tempts me to dismiss the trend, instead, as laziness.]

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I was introduced to quite a few traditional, Scandinavian pastries in 2016.

I’ve had svele before (in fact, a version of it was among my favorite desserts of 2014). They’re Norwegian pancakes topped with jam, apple sauce, or sour cream.  In 2016, my Norwegian friends in Bergen took me to the top of the Fløyen, a mountain perch overlooking the city, for vafler and the view.  These large, soft waffles in a clover leaf shape are spread with jam and/or topped with slices of brunost (brown cheese, more commonly known to Americans as gjetost, which is actually the goat milk version of brunost), folded over, and eaten like a giant taco.

My friends in Bergen also introduced me to a host of Norwegian yuletide pastries at the latest Friends of Lysverket dinner in December.  You’ll find them all described in this previous post.

In Copenhagen, my friend Andreas Bagh invited me to the Hôtel d’Angleterre for æbleskiver and gløgg, a cozy pair that traditionally keep Danes warm in the outdoor Christmas markets.  They were excellent.

And in Jutland, my friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen’s family hosted a three-day Christmas feast, during which I again indulged in Torben Nielsen’s homemade risalamande.  This traditional, Danish rice pudding was among my favorite desserts in 2015. It continues to rank high in my heart.

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Finding fewer desserts that excited me, in 2015 I trimmed what had traditionally been a list of my 25 favorite desserts down to 15.  Despite visiting just as many restaurants as in previous years, I found even fewer desserts in 2016 meriting mention.  So, focusing only on what truly impressed and delighted me last year, I’ve decided to cut the list even shorter.

Without more ado, I present my 10 favorite desserts from 2016.

[The title of each dish below is hyperlinked to a photo of that dish.  In some cases, I’ve written about the dish in a previous blog post, which is hyperlinked from either the chef or restaurant name that appears below the title.]

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10. ECCLES CAKE
Lancashire cheese.
(St. John Bread & Wine; London, The United Kingdom)

Like most things at St. John Bread & Wine, the eccles cake is a simple proposition executed exceptionally well.  This Victorian “cake” – more bun than bread, filled with currants – is sturdy and sweet, the cheese is sharp and striking; together, a dynamic duo.

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9. BABA AU RHUM
Blueberry and vanilla ice cream.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

I hadn’t had a good, boozy baba in a while.  And Mark Lundgaard Nielsen served me a great one at Kong Hans Kælder.  He stained his with blueberry, doused it with rum, and crowned it with a generous turn of custardy vanilla ice cream.  That is my kind of dessert.

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8. BANANA SOUFFLÉ
Vanilla ice cream.
(Bar Rivoli at the Ritz; London, The United Kingdom)

 

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7. MILLE-FEUILLE
(Au Cheval; Chicago, Illinois)

You just don’t expect something so classic, so good at a diner.  But Au Cheval is no ordinary diner, and its version of the mille-feuille is no ordinary mille-feulle.  A half a foot high, if not more, this gorgeous tower of fluff and flakes disappears quickly. That’s because it’s mostly made of air.  At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m staring at the empty plate afterward, the site of a delicious crime, the only evidence of which remains is a halo of crumbs.

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6. MILK ICE CREAM
Smoked caramel and cocoa nibs.
(Saison; San Francisco, California)

Besting all the rest in 2015, the milk ice cream at Saison reappears here as one of my favorite desserts in 2016. Like much of Joshua Skenes’s food at Saison, simplicity is carried on the shoulders of quality.  And this dessert is an excellent example of that.

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5. STRAWBERRY FLAMBÉE
French toast, vanilla ice cream.
(Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)

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4. RHUBARB SOUFFLÉ
(The Sportsman; Seasalter, The United Kingdom)

Like his Bramley apple soufflé, which topped my list of favorite desserts in 2014, Stephen Harris’s rhubarb soufflé captured the juiciness and crisp acidity of fruit and the warmth of the sun, magically suspending all of it in a fluffy cloud.  On that late-summer afternoon, with the fresh, seaside breeze blowing through the window propped open with a rock, it was perfect.

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3. EGG YOLK SOAKED IN SALTED LICORICE
With yoghurt meringue.
(Smyth; Chicago, Illinois)

John and Karen Shields have produced some of my favorite dishes in the past, including my favorite dessert of 2011.  After a four-year absence, they’re back in the kitchen.  They’ve opened the Loyalist, a casual pub, and Smyth, a high-end restaurant that earned a Michelin star within months of opening in Chicago’s West Loop.  A balance of sweet, salty, and tangy, John Shields’s egg yolk, cured in salted licorice syrup and nested in a bank of fluffy yogurt meringue, was one of the best desserts I had in 2016.

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2. BLACK TRUFFLE ST-HONORÉ
With a mille-feuille base, chiboust filling,
hazelnut profiteroles, whipped cream.
(Sixpenny; Sydney, Australia)

This jaw-dropping masterpiece was presented to our table whole before being sliced.  Everything about it was perfect: the mille-feuille flakey and golden, the chiboust creamy and light, and the sugar glass on the profiteroles shatterific.  And all of it was subtly perfumed with a layer of chopped Australian black truffles (habitually among the best I’ve had).  Thank you, Sixpenny.

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1. STRAWBERRY
Chantilly, licorice, green apple-white chocolate, and vinegar granita.
(le Cinq; Paris, France)

Given the lackluster way with which my meal had been unfolding, I was ready to dismiss Christian LeSquer’s “Strawberry” as just another ornament in this three Michelin-starred palace.  But short of saving the meal, this dessert made me sit up with excitement.  There are few things more intoxicating to me than the fragrance of berries, and LeSquer presented a whole field of them, concentrated into this ruby-jeweled dessert redolent with the smell and sweetness of strawberries. Creamy white chocolate gave it some body, vinegar kept it lean.  It was magnificent.

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Photos: Kardummumabulle and coffee at Kafé Esaias in Stockholm, Sweden; ice cream and macarons, an afternoon at Ladurée in Sydney, Australia; the magnificent window display at the Hopetoun Tea Rooms in Melbourne, Australia; Boot Café in Paris, France; morning pastry at 108 Café in Copenhagen, Denmark; Bill Smith of Crook’s Corner and his Atlantic Beach Pie at Music To Your Mouth in Palmetto Bluff, South Carolina; April Bloomfield’s banoffee pie at the Synergy Series at Spoon & Stable in Minneapolis, Minnesota; æbleskiver and gløgg at the Hôtel d’Angleterre; Annette Tveit makes krumkake, a traditional Norwegian Christmas pastry at Friends of Lysverket No. 12 at Lysverket in Bergen, Norway; the mille-feuille at Au Cheval in Chicago, Illinois; baba au rhum at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; milk ice cream with smoked caramel and cocoa nibs at Saison in San Francisco, California; egg yolk soaked in salted licorice at Smyth in Chicago, Illinois; and the black truffle St-Honoré at Sixpenny in Sydney, Australia.

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In the past, I’ve used this final, year-end blog post to marvel at just how well I’ve eaten in the preceding 12 months. Over the years, that emphasis has grown dull and unnecessary.  By now, those who read this blog know that, when it comes to eating, I’m getting along all right.

Explaining my process for evaluating meals and dissecting my food preferences, too, have wearied from repetition. If you’re interested, all of that is well-documented here, here, and here.

And my annual observations about the restaurant industry are increasingly misplaced in this post. My growing cricitism of food media, thoughts on various genres and trends in cooking, and other commentary at large have been appearing, with more frequency, as “ruminations.” Moving forward, I refer you to them.

This year, I’m slimming down and returning to the reason I launched this laudatory exercise: to memorialize the best meals I have had.

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Having found few meals that truly impressed, but five restaurants that had impressed repeatedly, in 2015, I departed from my usual practice of listing my 10 favorite meals. Instead, I applauded those few for being fine and faithful.

In 2016, however, there returned a critical mass of qualifiers.  And, in order to reach the target 10, unfortunately, I was forced to leave some very, very good meals out.

Among them were a number of memorable meals I had with friends and family.  Allow me to tell you about a few of them.

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A pair of birthday dinners in Copenhagen, both cooked by some of the same people, were unforgettable. I’ll tell you about one of them downstream, where you’ll find it among my ten best meals of the year.  The other one was just as special and memorable, spent in the cozy company of dear friends at home.

My friend Mark Lundgaard Nielsen hosted the dinner at his penthouse apartment. With our breaths hanging in the air, and the stars twinkling overhead, we gathered around the glow of his rooftop pizza oven. As the blistered crusts came out of the fire, Mark slathered them with créme fraîche and osetra caviar, and we ate the pizzas, still steaming, with Champagne as crisp as that cold night. Nadia Mathiasen, a journalist, cookbook author, and accomplished cook made a few, traditional Thai dishes of her mother’s native land. And Andreas Bagh baked a chocolate birthday cake that was served along with a Danish birthday song that ended, traditionally, with as many “oo-ahs” as the years now attached to my life.  Peter Pepke poured wines all night, and we were joined by our friends Søren and Solveig (the latter, an old college friend, flew all the way from Seattle just to celebrate the day with me).  May I live to celebrate another birthday as sweet and special.

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In January, my friends Christopher and Annette Haatuft hosted a dinner at their home in Bergen, Norway to introduce a few of us foreigners to raspballer, a Norwegian potato dumpling, traditionally eaten on Thursday nights with boiled salted lamb, Swede (rutabaga) mash, and bacon.

In October, my friends Will King and Julie Jenssen invited me over for dinner.  They cooked, we ate.  There was lobster and bleak roe, duck and foie gras, and a big bowl of risotto blanketed with freshly shaved white truffles.

And in December, I had a string of Scandinavian Christmas dinners that were, individually and collectively, unforgettable.  I learned about Norwegian yuletide traditions at Friends of Lysverket no. 12, and about the Danish julefrokost with the Nielsens over a three-day Christmas weekend marathon of feasting in Jutland. I wrote about all of these dinners in an earlier post.

To my friends: thank you for these delicious memories.  They are dear to me.

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In 2016, I ate so well in high-end restaurants that it left no room at the very top for some of the simpler, more casual experiences that have managed to break the ranks in the past.

I had incredible meals in Singapore. Most of them were one-dish wonders, a few of which you’ll find among my favorite dishes from 2016.  The same applies to a string of very good, late-night visits to Ganbara in San Sebastian, Spain.

In Australia, I had a couple of very good meals in the Chippendale neighborhood of Sydney: one at Automata, and another at Ester.  It would be a shame to overlook them.

And in Venice, California, I loved, loved, loved Gjusta. It’s part bakery, part delicatessen, part coffee shop, part restaurant, and all of it is wonderful.  It may be the most exciting restaurant I’ve visited in the United States in quite some time.

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Given the selectivity with which I chose to eat last year, the restaurants that gave me my favorite meals of 2016 comprise an unusually small and special circle of places.  Most of them have been mentioned here before. In fact, I’ve visited six of the following nine restaurants (yes, one restaurant appears twice on the list this year; the first time this has happened) more than once, ranging from twice to over 20 times. And five of them have been ranked for my favorite meals in years past. That restaurants like these perform at a consistently high level is not only admirable, demonstrating the type of dedication to craft and quality that endures and transcends, but makes obvious why I choose to return to them.

This year, I make my disclaimer brief and straightforward: I paid for half of the meals below: nos. 1, 3, 5, 7, and 10.  The remaining meals were either gifted to me, or included in photographic work for the restaurant.  While I demand this transparency of myself and others, I only hope that it enhances rather than detracts from the sincerity of my opinions.

For the ninth year, I present 10 extraordinary meals. [Clicking on the names of the restaurants listed below will take you to an album of photos from that meal.]

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10. SIXPENNY
(Sydney, Australia)

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I showed up at Sixpenny knowing practically nothing about it, having gone blindly at the urging of my friend Jonathan Alphandery. So, it was a pleasant surprise to find a beautiful, simple, and delicious meal unfolding before me.  Focused on flavor and solid technique, Sixpenny offered the gravitas of fine dining without all the hysteria. There was a twirl of buttery pasta with Australian black truffles, perennially among the best black truffles I have. There was a strip of duck and some witlof, both beautifully cooked.  And, at the end, a stately St-Honoré that was among my favorite desserts of 2016.  My lunch at Sixpenny was not only my favorite meal from my trip to Australia, but among my very favorites from 2016.

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9. MARCHAL
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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I wrote of Marchal: “Strip away the opulence of it all – the stacks of gold-rimmed Bernardaud china … and the setting of a grandame hotel – and you’re left with impeccable technique and the comfort of Old World simplicity…”  In a culinary age when luxury is often sadly equated with excess, at this lunch in October, head chef Andreas Bagh demonstrated that luxury is, instead, found in the brief and simple pleasures of good cooking. This meal presented three dishes of exceptional quality and care. Nothing misplaced or wanting, short but complete, it was my favorite of three meals I had at Marchal in 2016, and one of my favorite meals of the year.  In an earlier post that I wrote about dining in Copenhagen, I said of Bagh: “He is young, ambitious, earnest, and almost blindingly dedicated to his craft.  I look forward to watching him reach.  And so should you.”

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8. SAISON
(San Francisco, California)

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Saison has made my list of favorite meals every year that I have eaten there: no. 8 in 2011; no. 1 in 2013; no. 4 in 2014; and among the five I listed in 2015.  After a period of transition and exploration, Saison seemed to settle back into a steadier and more familiar course at this September dinner. Back were many of my favorite dishes from menus past. The few unfamiliar dishes were beautiful expressions of Joshua Skenes’s quest to capture nature at its finest: marigold blossoms lightly fried, suspending them in an unnaturally delicate state for your ephemeral pleasure; the sun distilled into a flavorful ratatouille of grilled summer vegetables; and a nicely edited selection of hairy pig parts, cured and grilled.  There are only a handful of restaurants that have earned my trust implicitly.  Saison is high among them.

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7. CLOWN BAR
(Paris, France)

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The praise has been universal. And, judging by my lunch at this bistro on the side street Amelot in the 11eme, I heartily join in it.  In fact, the commendations I received for Clown Bar were so strong and trustworthy that my friend and I folded our menus and let chef Sota Atsumi cook for us. What came out of his closet-sized kitchen was extraordinary: juicy peaches with milky burrata, a burnished pithivier of duck and foie gras; succulent lobster on the half shell, and a rosy pigeon with golden-brown potatoes.  Atsumi is moving the ball forward and the bar up for bistro cooking.  I am eager to return for more.*

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6. SKENES RANCH
(Sonoma County, California)

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Sabering Krug at sunset on a hill overlooking the vineyards of Sonoma; a pound of caviar smoked in kelp; grapes sweating on the hearth; bison chop the size of my leg, with its own marrow; and a cloud of milk ice cream in a marble chalice.  Skenes Ranch remains under a veil of mystery that I am not authorized to lift.  Suffice it to say that very little can go wrong and a lot can go right at a dinner for three cooked by Joshua Skenes and two of his cooks, and attended by three staff members and a sommelier.  I hope I get to tell you more about it in the future.

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5. THE SPORTSMAN
(Seasalter, The United Kingdom)

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Like Saison, The Sportsman has appeared on this list every year in which I’ve visited this seaside pub on the coast of Kent: no. 1 in 2008; no. 5 in 2011; and no. 8 in 2014.  Stephen Harris’s simple coastal cooking repeatedly sends dishes to my list of year-end favorites too, like the slipsole roasted in seaweed butter that has been among my favorite dishes of 2014 and 2016, or his soufflés, which have repeatedly ranked as well.  My latest lunch found me at Harris’s table on a sunny, late-summer day.  The window next to us was propped open with a rock, keeping a stream of cool, seaside air circulating across our table. The oysters, the focaccia, the fish, and the lamb pré salé – I’ve had them all before, and I happily return to have them again and again, because they are so very, very good.

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4. KONG HANS KÆLDER
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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If a meal is more than that which arrives on the plate, then the cast assembled for this dinner surely rivaled the splendor it sent to my table. The second of six meals I had at Kong Hans Kælder in 2016, this dinner in March was part of a twin-pack of birthday dinners cooked for me, in part, by my friends chef Mark Lundgaard Nielsen and his then-assistant head chef Andreas Bagh. Sitting beside me was my longtime friend Solveig, who had flown halfway around the globe to join me. And attending us was the ever-faithful Peter Pepke and his wonderful team of servers. But let these friendships not diminish the flawlessness of the meal before us: giant scallops in salt crust, the tender muscles still bound to their shells; turbot pané on a field of caviar; foie gras under a sheet of cocoa; quail stuffed with walnuts and morels; Finnish beef with its own marrow; and many others in between and after.

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3. IBAI
(San Sebastian, Spain)

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I was turned away the first time I attempted to eat at Ibai. Despite the unexpected rejection and the resulting hesitance to attempt re-entry ever again, a bizarre and miraculous set of circumstances found me at table in that underground restaurant shortly thereafter. It turned out to be one of my favorite meals in 2012. Although the hospitality in 2016 could not have been more different – my friend and I were greeted and treated graciously throughout – little else has changed in that underground restaurant in San Sebastian: the butter-yellow walls; the simple, tavern look; and, most importantly, the food. The menu offered the same roster of humble ingredients I had the first time, ennobled through Ibai’s simple, but immensely flavorful Basque style of cooking.

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2. KONG HANS KÆLDER
(Copenhagen, Denmark)

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In this cellar, right now, a perfect storm thunders with an embarrassment of riches.  Talent, quality, and service of the highest order you will find here under the direction of chef Mark Lundgaard Nielsen and the man of the house Peter Pepke. The fifth of six meals I had at Kong Hans Kælder in 2016, and the eighth in two years, this dinner presented – almost all in one go – some of the most memorable dishes of my year: wild boar with peaches in madeira cream; tiny lobsters à la nage with chervil; roasted teal with foie gras and blackberries; a fist of monkfish on creamed sweet corn; and a blueberry and rum-soaked baba.  In 2015, I wrote of this restaurant: “Starless for now, I’m positive that it will not be starless for long.” Delphic I am not, but I was right.  Kong Hans Kælder regained its Michelin star in 2016, and I am sure Nielsen’s constellation will not end there.

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1. ASADOR EXTEBARRI
(Axtondo, Spain)

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With chef Victor Arguizoniz sending kisses from the grill, the food alone would have made this leisurely, five-hour lunch worthy of my highest praise (it dominated my list of favorite dishes of 2016). Add to it the romance of a remote farmhouse, the redeeming smile of an autumn sun, and a front-row seat to a beautiful conversation between cloud and mountain, and what you have is a love story.  This was my second time to Asador Etxebarri, and it is the second time this restaurant gave me the best meal of my year. Breathtaking, delicious, perfect: Go.

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Every year, I update my bucket list of restaurants and places I’d like to visit.  Having galloped through an unbelievable number of wishes in recent years, this year’s list is considerably shorter:

BUCKET LIST

I crossed Singapore and Australia off my list last year.  Now, I turn my efforts to visiting Russia (St. Petersburg), India, Colombia, Peru, Scotland, and Thailand.  And out of the fifty United States, only Alaska remains unvisited; I need to go. I welcome dining recommendations in all of these places.

In France, I’d most like to visit Alexandre Couillon’s La Marine in Noirmoutier; Olivier Rollinger’s les Maisons de Bricourt in Cancale; and Régis Marcon’s self-named Régis & Jacques Marcon in Saint-Bonnet-le-Froid.

In neighboring Sweden, I bring forward Daniel Berlin, located near Malmö, and add Esperanto in Stockholm.

In Spain, Azurmendi in Bizkaia, and Elkano in Gipuzkoa.

Fewer and fewer restaurants in the United States excite and attract me. Here are the ones that glint and beckon.

I skipped Charleston in 2016. So, this year, I hope to get to Sean Brock’s reopened and recharged McCrady’s.

In New Orleans: Donald Link’s Pêche Seafood Grill, Justin Devillier’s La Petite Grocery, and Alon Shaya’s eponymous Shaya.

I’d like to get back to Washington, D.C.: Jeremiah Langhorne’s The Dabney and Erik Bruner-Yang’s Maketto top my list there.

And I need to get to Portland, Oregon.  I haven’t been since 1999.  Please send recommendations.

Closer to home, I’m overdue for a roadtrip down I-70 to St. Louis and up I-29 to Omaha.

There are fewer pleasures than returning to restaurants where I’ve found pleasure before.

In the United States, I’m still trying to find a way back to Lachlan MacKinnon-Patterson’s Frasca Food + Wine in Boulder, Colorado (my last and only meal there was in December of 2008).  There has been a chef change at atera since my last visit, and I would like to see what Ronny Emborg is cooking there. Scott Anderson’s elements in Princeton, New Jersey has closed and reopened since I last saw it; I should go back.  And I didn’t make it to Blaine Wetzel’s Willows Inn in 2016; I hope to add Lummi Island to my travels this year as well.

Abroad, I have a standing date with The Sportsman in Whistable, The United Kingdom; Asador Etxebarri in Axtondo, Spain; Ibai in San Sebastian, Spain; and Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark.  There remain an infinite number of places to explore in Japan, but I think fondly of returning to Ishikawa and Matsukawa, both in Tokyo, and Ifuki in Kyoto.  And I’ve been looking for the right occasion to take me back to Louis XV, now reopen after a long renovation; it’s at the Hôtel de Paris in Monte-Carlo.

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* Ryan Sutton at Eater offered a closer look at Clown Bar in October of 2016.

Photos: Spanish mackerel at Sixpenny in Sydney, Australia; Skenes Ranch in Sonoma County, California; my friends Solveig and Peter Pepke in the glow of the pizza oven, Copenhagen, Denmark; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen and Andreas Bagh at table in Copenhagen, Denmark; Will King shaving white truffles over risotto, Copenhagen, Denmark; Sandia Chang drizzling golden syrup over raspballer, Bergen, Norway; above the kitchen at Automata in Sydney, Australia; roasted monkfish on creamed sweet corn at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; kokotxas in pil-pil at Ibai in San Sebastian, Spain; pasta with black truffles at Sixpenny in Sydney, Australia; wild mushrooms with chestnut agnolotti at Marchal in Copenhagen, Denmark; fraises du bois at Saison in San Francisco, California; the bar at Clown Bar in Paris, France; a salad of herbs at Skenes Ranch in Sonoma County, California; cream of vegetable soup at The Sportsman in Seasalter, The United Kingdom; salt dough-baked scallop at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; clams and rice at Ibai in San Sebastian, Spain; a box of chocolates and mignardises at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, Denmark; Asador Etxebarri in Axtondo, Spain.

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In the decades since I last visited my neighboring state to the south, I have heard increasing praise for Arkansas’s upper-left corner.  Home to three Fortune 500 companies – Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt (a trucking company), and, most notably, the Wal-Mart empire – NWA (the local shorthand for Northwest Arkansas) is the fastest growing area of that state.  These companies have attracted workers from all over the quad-state region and beyond, doubling the NWA population between 1990 and 2010.

Due to a ban on the sale of alcohol, many who worked in Benton County (Wal-Mart is headquartered in Bentonville, which is located in Benton County) chose to live outside the county and commute from nearby towns like Springdale, or Fayetteville, which is about 30 minutes south.  Able to issue liquor licenses, these towns offered more “amenities.” But, in 2012, after significant lobbying, the alcohol ban was finally lifted.  And that changed everything. No longer in a dry county, Bentonville witnessed a boom in new businesses, especially in the hospitality industry. Restaurants, bars, cafés, hotels, and museums have sprung up within the last half decade, making the once-sleepy town not only the attractive and sensible place locals have always wanted to live, but a shiny new destination for long weekenders as well.      

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My friends Andy and Kimly have contributed to NWA’s recent growth.  They moved there nearly two years ago so that Andy could take up a teaching position at the University of Arkansas, located in Fayetteville.  Over the past couple of years, during their trips up to Kansas City, they convinced me to make the three-and-a-half-hour drive – a straight shot south on Highway 71 – to visit them.

I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

With a high proportion of college students, and a rise in new wealth, the area has created an unexpectedly vibrant oasis for Millennial culture amidst the otherwise quiet and pastoral Ozarks.  Indeed, the hipster runs deep in NWA.  Fayetteville, especially, is a hipster sanctuary, where one can observe this finely groomed species flourishing with remarkable density in its new-found habitat. Here, you’ll find all the creature comforts of hipster life: maker goods, third wave coffee, microbrew, yoga studios, and, with a little foraging, even local, gluten-free, carb-free, sugar-free, and fat-free flora.

Take, for example, Puritan Coffee Bar, located on Dickson Street, the town’s main drag.  Serving both coffee and beer, it attracts a pan-Millennial audience. In fact, until a cadre of frat boys showed up – all in t-shirts and flip-flops, a uniform that has not only proven to be universal among this species, but timeless as well – the scene was dominated by hipsters. There were the bearded and tattooed kind – some of the man-bun variety, and some of the closely related lumberjack family – as well as quite a few from the clean-cut, Christian clan (the two girls next to me were having Bible study).  And in one corner, there was a pretty pack of metrosexual hipsters doting on themselves; immaculate, curated, glowing.  On that Friday afternoon, I relished observing their inter-tribal communication, which seemed to be conducted mostly through translation apps like Instagram and Snapchat, their electronic missives (astonishingly) replacing language entirely, and, indeed, even functioning as proxy mating calls.

Clearly, it’s been a while since I’ve been on a college campus, or had close and regular contact with college students. So, admittedly, I am woefully out of touch with the rising generation.  And, clearly, I’m also being unnecessarily sarcastic here.  Hopefully you can see past it to the takeaway: trickle-down trends have reached NWA.

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Indeed, there is, perhaps, no better litmus right now of cultural relevancy than coffee.  And NWA lights up rather intensely on the scale.

Arsaga’s sells and serves its coffee at four locations in Fayetteville.  Two are walk-up kiosks at libraries.  The other two locations offer surprisingly robust menus; they’re cafés curiously akin to Australian coffee shops. Arsaga’s at The Depot, for example, serves sandwiches, crêpes, and wine.  At Church & Center, where we had breakfast on the small, covered patio that Arsaga’s shares with a breathtakingly hipster mobile phone accessory store (at least that’s what it appeared to be), the menu featured toast with different toppings, like almond butter and bananas, or pears and goat cheese, or avocado mash.  I quite liked it.

The original Onyx Coffee Lab, along with its roastery, is in Springdale. Onyx serves its beans at three area “labs,” in addition to selling wholesale beyond.  Onyx tops almost everyone’s list for NWA, partly because it’s an early exemplar in this region, pushing for fare trade and education. And it does serve good coffee. But I suspect it also owes a fair amount of its success to savvy marketing as well. Self-aware, Onyx has taken to the interwebs with highly hipstagrammable spaces. When Onyx took over an old Arsaga’s space in Fayetteville in 2013, it refaced the shop with reclaimed wood and subway tile, making it an attractive hangout for college students.  And with its newest lab, Onyx has all but sucked the air out of Bentonville with a capacious, industrial space flooded with natural light and dominated by a tiled bar lined with shiny machines. It’s a hipster’s paradise.  (Sprudge reported on this new location.)

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Bentonville is small.  The town square looks like a Hollywood set straight from Norman Rockwell’s America.

With its candy-striped awning, Sam Walton’s original “5&10” anchors one end of the square. Lined with linoleum tiles and bins full of candy and knick-knacks, the five-and-dime is a kitschy throwback. I’m old enough to remember check-out boys and girls with button-downs and bowties, and you’ll still find them here, mostly to direct people through a doorway into the Wal-Mart Museum in the back. The small maze of rooms, which includes Walton’s office – a time capsule from a far less attractive era of carpet and wood – offers a self-guided tour that spits you out in Spark Café Soda Fountain next door. Among the few flavors in the case – all from the local brand Yarnell’s – you’ll always find butter pecan, Walton’s favorite, and “Spark,” which will be hard to miss for its alarming shade of blue marbled with an equally arresting shade of traffic sign-yellow, Wal-Mart’s company colors (I was told it’s dyed vanilla ice cream). In true Wal-Mart style, my single (but generous) scoop cake cone was the “always low price” of $.99.

But lest you think I be blithe about Bentonville, Sam Walton, or the empire he built there, I’m not.  Large volume, low prices: that’s how this quiet town became home to the wealthiest man in the United States.  Even posthumously, Walton’s wealth, divided among his heirs, ranks them among the wealthiest individuals in America, each of them billionaires many times over.  And, collectively, the Walton family remains atop Forbes’s list of wealthiest American families, by a margin of tens of billions of dollars.  That’s impressive.

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“This is basically it,” Kimly said as we surveyed the town square. Due to an unseasonably warm spell, it was particularly busy that weekend.  Everything worth seeing in Bentonville is within walking distance, she said.

That’s pretty much true.

A block over from the Walton’s 5&10 is that shiny, new Onyx Coffee Lab I mentioned.  Next door to the coffee shop is Pressroom, one of a few concepts in the Ropeswing Hospitality Group.  Pressroom bills itself as an “espresso café,” but feels much more like a restaurant.  The few things we ordered from the brunch menu were terrific, especially the egg and brioche breakfast sandwich, which let out a runnel of yolk when Andy cut into it.  The hush puppies were good too, glistening with a surprisingly tart, honey-lemon glaze. I’d go back.

Two more Ropeswing businesses are on the next block, at the intersection of A and 2nd Streets.  You wouldn’t know it by its steepled, brick exterior, but the old Presbyterian church on that corner houses a restaurant and bar.  Both are exceedingly handsome spaces, especially Undercroft, the cocktail lounge in the basement (it’s open until 0200).  Whatever the financial outlay, Ropeswing appears to have spent its money well.

Appropriately named The Preacher’s Son, the restaurant is in the sanctuary.  Its menu offered a brand of American cooking that has become ubiquitous nowadays: an omnivorous and locavoric approach to hearty Americana, here with Southern affectations: calendula-braised chicken with cornbread, a saucy club of pork shank on potato mash, roasted squash risotto, and carrot gnocchi.  I especially liked the crab “fritter,” which was more like a crab soufflé in a skillet.  Like everything else we had at The Preacher’s Son, it shied from neither flavor nor fat.

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21c is a chain of boutique hotels that focuses on contemporary art.  Founded in Louisville, Kentucky, the company uses art to help jump-start local economies by rehabilitating existing structures and using them as museums.*  It has replicated this model in about a half-dozen, third-tier cities across America, including Bentonville.

If rarity creates currency, then on the Saturday that we walked into The Hive, the restaurant inside the Bentonville 21c Museum Hotel, had made prizes out of penguins. From what I understand, these giant, hollow, plastic, lime-green birds serve as both moveable art and mascots for the hotel. Guests are encouraged to claim stray penguins for their stay.  We eyed them covetously, and by the end of brunch, had managed to commandeer two of them for our table.

None of us had the courage to order chef Matthew McClure’s burger, which we had the opportunity to inspect as it passed our table on the way to another: the thick beef patty had been paved with an equally thick layer of pimento cheese.  It looked like a serious commitment. We explored, instead, the rest of McClure’s Southern-leaning dishes.  There was a fluffy frittata in a skillet with chorizo and goat cheese; eggs Benedict with tasso ham; and crispy, buttermilk-fried chicken on a biscuit, served with grits. All of it was very good, and helps explain why McClure has received such regional acclaim.  I’ll have to return for dinner in the future.

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Some of you may know architect Moshe Safdie for his colossal Marina Bay Sands, which features a jaw-dropping, 2.5 acre “SkyPark” – with pools, restaurants, and amenities – hovering at 600-plus feet above ground, cantilevered over three hotel towers.  This extraterrestrial-looking monstrosity dominates the Singapore skyline.  If you don’t know Marina Bay Sands, closer to home, some of you might know Safdie for his design of the Kauffman Performing Arts Center in Kansas City.

Safdie also designed Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, a project funded by the Walton family. If you’re familiar with his work, you’ll recognize his right-angle approach to undulating curves.  Completed and opened in November, 2011, the museum is a network of galleries that spans a natural spring pond nestled in the Ozark hills. Beyond seeing my friends, and exploring NWA, this was the centerpiece of my visit.

As the museum’s name suggests, its collection is exclusively American, ranging from Colonial to present times. The curators seemed to have favored width over depth, as the collection covers a broad range of subjects and periods, but none very extensively. Their cherry-picking, however, presents some true gems – an original Gilbert Stuart of George Washington; a full-length portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbell; a few pieces by my favorite American painter, John Singer Sargent; and a disturbingly life-like, 3-dimensional sculpture and self-portrait of Evan Penny, which uses the artist’s own hair.

But, despite all the art it houses, I think the most compelling masterpiece at Crystal Bridges is the museum itself.  Much like the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark (I wrote about this museum in an earlier post), Crystal Bridges deftly carves out scenes from the surrounding landscape and frames them for you. It’s beautifully done.

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My favorite part of our visit to Crystal Bridges was outside.

From the museum radiates a web of woodland trails that weaves into the surrounding hills (one of them takes you back to Bentonville’s town square).  On these trails, you’ll find the Bachman-Wilson House, an original Frank Lloyd Wright design that was rescued from its flooded site in New Jersey and relocated to Crystal Bridges.  It’s worth a look. (You can make an appointment to take a self-guided tour of the 700 sq. ft. space.)

You’ll also find one of James Turell’s SkySpaces here. Entitled The Way of Light, Turrell’s installation is housed in a squat, stone structure with a circular aperture in the domed ceiling. Spanning the 45 minutes of sunrise and sunset, an LED lighting system changes the color of the interior dome, altering the way you perceive the sky through the aperture. Not a cloud in sight, we caught the perfect sunset. As the day drew to a close, the sky appeared every color of the spectrum between orange and deep purple, and even grey.  It was awesome.  Don’t miss it.

As the sun retired into the night, we swapped the glow of Turrell’s LED installation for another’s.  On our way out, we paused briefly to bathe in the light of Leo Villareal’s Buckyball, which I had seen in Madison Square Park in 2013. It now greets and bids visitors farewell at the museum’s entrance.  Like NWA, it shines as a rather unexpected beacon of modernity against the unhurried pace of its surroundings.

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Here are the places I ate and drank.  Click on the names of the coffee shops and restaurants for the photos:

Arsaga’s
Onyx Coffee Labs
Pressroom
Puritan
The Hive at 21c
The Preacher’s Son

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* I recently stayed at the Hewing Hotel in Minneapolis, which is part of the Aparium hotel group.  Like 21c, Aparium also rehabilitates old buildings in gentrifying neighborhoods of second or third-tier American cities.

** At the beginning of my trip, I learned that a razorback is feral pig that either escaped from domestication, or is descended from domesticated pigs.  According to the University of Arkansas, these wild hogs – its mascot – answer to the call “sooie” (rhymes with the French king “Louis”), which the school has adopted as its game-day war cry: “Woo pig sooie!”

“What is the long-term effect of too much information? One of the effects is the need to be first, not even to be true anymore.”

This was Denzel Washington’s pointed reposte when a sidewalk journalist tried to bait him on the topic of fake news.

Sloppy journalism isn’t a speciality of politics. It plagues every industry. How many times have chefs vented to me in private about some grievance they’ve suffered at the hands of food media: poor fact checking (or no fact checking); jumping the gun on embargoed, time-sensitive information; coercive threats; pay-for-play; biased coverage?

It happens all the time.  And we, collectively, let it happen.

Drawing close the curtains on social media, I have retreated into a quieter world recently, trying to consume as omnivorously as possible, while clicking as selectively as possible.  It’s hard.

Financially rewarded for sensationalist headlines – traffic translates to advertising dollars – websites and publications are encouraged to bait consumers.  I refuse to fall victim to it.

As attention spans thin, so does information. And as information thins, so do attention spans.  It’s a vicious cycle that reduces consumers to Pavlovian triggers on a keyboard.  We’ve become adrenaline junkies, addicted to hype.

What’s our solution?

Revolution.

We need to resist and reject sensationalist fluff – stop clicking on it, stop sharing it.

We need to slow down and educate ourselves.  Education is our biggest challenge to overcoming media deficiencies, primarily because we’ve grown increasingly dependent on media for information.  I’ve written about this before.

Thankfully, there are many sources of information, you included.

The best way to learn is to do.

Eat.  Eat as much as you can afford, and do it without regret.  I have never regretted a meal, however disappointing or, in many cases, tragic.  I have always counted every experience as one more dot that I can add to a growing field of coordinates that help me map the dining landscape for myself.  More importantly, it a gives me a clearer picture of who I am as a consumer, allowing me to explore my own sensibilities, preferences, and dislikes.  This is invaluable information that no one else owns, and makes me a more thoughtful, knowledgeable, and confident consumer.

For information about the tables you can’t afford to reach, seek out the experts.  Just remember: those who speak the loudest usually know the least.

Approach large websites and publications with higher scrutiny. Not only are they heavily reliant upon advertising revenue, but some of them are simply echo chambers that amplify the reality we create. Editors and scouts increasingly rely on us, the consumers, for information.  They don’t have the resources to adequately canvass the growing market.  So they glean information off our social media accounts – without crediting or paying us – repackage it (some do a more honorable job than others), and sell it back to us, only for us to regurgitate it on social media for their profit.  (This is why I’ve put a personal moratorium on giving away anything for free: information, photos, etc.  And I urge others to do the same.)

Be discriminating.  Separate fact from opinion.  Distinguish advertising from enthusiasm.  Seek out the voices of firsthand experience, ones that can speak articulately and with disinterest about it.  I’ll save you some time: you’re unlikely to find them while  scrolling through a photostream or slideshow, or in any article that includes the word “best” in the title. I’ll admit, those channels are entertaining and require very little commitment. But they’re usually low on substance too, offering little more than shiny, glittery things devoid of context.

Most of the people I know in the restaurant industry would admit – even if not publicly, at least privately – that the industry’s purported indices of quality are deeply flawed.  Awards, stars, lists, and many critics: if not biased, inconsistent, insular, uninformed, out of touch, self-serving, or smell faintly of corruption, are, at the very least sensationalist.  Their only defense is that the realm over which they hold sway is an expanse of subjectivity, which the loudmouths eagerly rush to fill with their opinions.  And even worse, we hand them the megaphones with which they rule the echo chamber.

Even Michelin, which I have long-regarded as the most reliable standard of quality among the “guides,” has ruined its credibility with me in recent years, diluting the value and prestige of its stars with a populist approach to marketing.  I used to look to their constellations for guidance. Now, I fear veering off course because of them.

So, where to?

Although they seemed to have waned in popularity, online food fora like eGullet, Mouthfuls, and even Chowhound have provided a fairly comprehensive steam of information for years.  You’ll have to sift through a lot of noise and some needless drama, and there are a lot of blowhards online who love to bully and hear themselves write. But, the robust, community interaction these sites offer ensures a reasonable amount of accountability among users. It may take you a while to feel out the other users, but I think you’ll quickly distinguish the bad actors from the voices that should matter most.

Not surprisingly, chefs and cooks are among the most knowledgeable and honest sources of restaurant information I know (despite also being among the most susceptible to media hype in my experience).  I regularly turn to them for advice.

Not all long-format writing is good writing. But long-format writing requires effort. It requires patience of everyone involved. And this commitment forces us to slow down, increases our ability to be thorough and thoughtful, and discourages us from distraction.  Thankfully, I’m seeing a come-back in long-form writing. I’ve noticed editors asking for more in-depth pieces and devoting more space to them.  I applaud this.

Would the bloggers in the house please stand up?  At the very best, they are among the most thoughtful, detailed, and knowledgeable sources of information on the restaurant industry I know.  Sadly, most of my favorite blogging colleagues have abandoned their websites in favor of reaching wider audiences on other platforms.  Although some of them, like me, have parlayed their position into more lucrative work, I think most of us are primarily motivated by passion and amusement rather than profit.  A few of us are still writing when we can. Although my blog has been neglected in these past few years of heavy travel, it remains the love of my life.  You’ll continue to find my thoughts and opinions – advertisement-free – shared at this URL as often as I am able.

As I said earlier, one of the best sources of information is you.  So I’m tapping into the incredible hive mind that hangs around this blog and ask: Who do you trust? Who do you read?  Who’s putting out good work?  Please comment below. 

The cost of quality is time.  And we desperately need to invest.  If, as I believe, people deserve the government they have, so too, people deserve the media they have.  It’s time for a revolution.  Start voting with your clicks – withhold them from the fluff and reward those that choose to invest along with us.  We can’t afford not to return to a slower, more meaningful way of interacting.

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The British restaurant critic may be one of the few species that deserved to board Noah’s ark. Equipped with endless wit and flare for hyperbole, they have gifted the world with some of the best food writing I have ever read.*

However, their reports provide little evidence of discriminating taste, and rarely, if ever, a serious analysis of the food they eat.  So they don’t really function as critics – at least not in the way this American thinks of criticism. Rather, most British restaurant writers are highly skilled arsonists, celebrated for their barn-burning pyrotechnics that often reduce their subjects to smoldering ruins.

I’ll admit, the teardowns (for which they are most known) seem cruel. But their targets often seem deserving of public shaming – at least, that’s the way these writers paint the picture.  And their deftly deployed arsenal of sarcasm and bathroom humor usually includes a hearty dose of charming self-deprecation that saves them from an unredeemable ledge.

To mitigate my own guilt for indulging in their bombast, I file most British restaurant writing under the category “humor”.

Jay Rayner is not among the British restaurant critics I read or follow regularly.**  But this past weekend, in The Guardian, the British paper for which he writes, Rayner issued a report from the tables of le Cinq at the Four Seasons in Paris that caught my attention.  If you’ve been on social media in the past 24 hours, you’ve surely seen it.

I have a sad relationship with le Cinq.

A dozen years ago, it was one of the first Michelin three-starred restaurants I had ever visited (in fact, it may have been my very first).  I’ll save you from suffering through my blog post about that lunch in the summer of 2005 – the writing is truly awful and embarrassing – so I’ll just tell you: I was disappointed.  But I was a kid, and highly inexperienced with fine dining standards (especially Michelin standards, which, at the time, had not yet arrived on American shores). So, unsure of my assessment, I was both surprised and reassured in my disappointment when the Michelin Guide demoted le Cinq to two stars a few months later.  A culinary pall having been cast over Avenue George V, chef Philippe Legendre, left quietly.+

Three years later, Legendre’s successor, Eric Briffard, had achieved a critical mass of praises.  Encouraged, I returned to le Cinq in December of 2008.  Looking back, I made the mistake of ordering the tasting menu, and Briffard made the mistake of serving impenetrable abalone, among other uninteresting things.

Based on that one dinner, I was unsurprised that Briffard never regained the star that Legendre lost.

Then came Christian Le Squer.

I first encountered Le Squer on that same 2008 trip to Paris. In stark contrast to the dim and generally forgettable dinner I had at le Cinq, the lunch I had at the three Michelin-starred Pavillon Ledoyen, where Le Squer was cooking, burst with whimsy and excitement.  I can remember almost every single dish – the zebra-striped “blanc de turbot;” the fortress of spaghetti filled with ham and black truffles; a fist of roasted ris de veaux, burnished and beautiful; and peachy strata of citrus sorbets interleaved with sheets of caramelized sugar.  It ranked among my favorite meals of 2008.

I would get to eat Le Squer’s food again in 2011, in the most unexpected place.  He was repping the Swiss coffee company Nespresso at SIRHA, the ginormous food service convention hosted biennially in Lyon, France in conjunction with the Coupe du Monde and Bocuse d’Or.  I was invited to Nespresso’s VIP suite for lunch, where Le Squer prepared a multi-course meal using the company’s coffee in every dish. That a Michelin three-starred chef would endorse a commercial product, which I viewed as glorified instant coffee, was both astounding and troubling.  So, I arrived at the Nespresso suite a skeptic. But Le Squer impressed.

So, twice pleased by Le Squer and twice disappointed at le Cinq, I naturally welcomed the news of Le Squer’s decampment from Ledoyen and arrival at the Four Seasons a few years later, in October of 2014.

For the next year, I watched hopefully from afar, and was unsurprised when Michelin announced that Le Squer finally recovered le Cinq’s third star in early 2016.  Encouraged and reassured once again, I decided to return to Avenue George V.

Sadly, my third time at le Cinq, in August of 2016, was not a charm.  In fact, Rayner’s recent report echoes my own experience.  Service was slapdash and showed signs of cluelessness, or worse, indifference, all of which was magnified by being seated in front of a service station, which delivered the confusion and commotion to me in surround sound.

Most disappointing, however, is that all of the joy that I had found at Ledoyen and the creativity and playfulness I met at SIHRA was missing from Le Squer’s food at le Cinq.  As Rayner described, the food ranged from the Seussical (the use of spherification was odd) to the drab (yes, the onion gratinée did taste like French onion soup turned into glue and mixed with ash).  But I also agree with Rayner that the pastry kitchen at le Cinq outperformed the rest. If my diner had one, brief but shining moment of redemption, it came at the end: the strawberry dessert was my favorite dessert of 2016.

In my own, post-game analysis, I’ve thought about all the factors that might have contributed to my disappointment.

Was it because I ordered the tasting menu?

I’ve read beaucoup de history.  And if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that history repeats, especially when history is forgotten.  Perhaps I fell victim to my own short-term memory.    In fact, it was partly my disappointment over Briffard’s tasting menu, followed quickly by a wonderful, à la carte experience at Le Squer’s Ledoyen in 2008 that first made me seriously consider advice from trusted veterans of les trois étoiles, who had counseled me to avoid tasting menus at high-end restaurants in Paris.  Unlike the top restaurants in America, where the tasting menu is considered a playground for chefs and adventurous diners, and the à la carte menu offered as a safe harbor for conservative diners who prefer to control their own level of adventure, the opposite seems true in Paris. There, tasting menus seemed pitched for tourists who want a tour and synopsis all in one go, whereas the serious diners are more willing to commit to larger plates, which provide chefs ample space in which to adequately explore a subject or theme. I know, this sounds dangerously reductionist.  At best, it’s a generalization. And maybe it’s entirely inaccurate.  But in my limited experiences at three Michelin-starred restaurants in Paris, my à la carte meals have been my favorite: l’Ambroisie; le Bristol and later, at its reincarnation as Épicure; and Pavillon Ledoyen.  And to flesh out a statement of regret that I dropped with too little context above: the dishes celebrated most by those who urged me to visit le Cinq under Briffard were Briffard’s large-format dishes, like a much-touted tourte, which were offered á la carte (or by special order).

So, why did I order the tasting menu at my latest meal at le Cinq (which rang in at 310€, inclusive)?

After a short study of the menu, I discovered that most of the dishes that interested me on the à la carte menu were also on the tasting menu.  In my experience, this is rare. There is usually little overlap between the tasting and á la carte menus at restaurants like these.  So, out of sheer practicality, I ordered the tasting menu for exactly the same reasons tourists do: to get a tour and synopsis all in one go.

But Rayner ordered à la carte at le Cinq and was disappointed.

Then there’s Elizabeth Auerbach, who ordered the lunch tasting menu and enthusiastically awarded the restaurant 98 points (presumably out of 100).  Auerbach writes the blog Elizabeth on Food, and offers perhaps the most coherent, respected, and believable opinion among British food writers.

Auerbach, Rayner, and I all visited after le Cinq was re-awarded a third star in 2016.  So there’s no argument to be made here that Le Squer’s performance might have slackened once the incentive of earning the third star was removed.   [I note: I spied LeSquer peeking out of the kitchen towards the end of my dinner, reassuring me that the chef was present.]

However, Auerbach’s meal included a couple of dishes that I recognize from my meal at Ledoyen in 2008: Le Squer’s signature spaghetti dish with ham and black truffles, and that blushing stack of pamplemousse I had loved so much. But she also had the onion gratinée and loved the onion spheres, which Rayner and I both found unappealing.  She also had the mullet dish that I had. I agree with her that it was flavorful, and required an understanding and appreciation for the heavy flavor of mullet.  But it was far from revelatory.

So, what does all of this tell us?

Very little.  Dining is subjective.  As far as I’m concerned, all of these opinions – Rayner’s, Auerbach’s, and mine – hold only anecdotal value.  This is, perhaps, the biggest problem with British restaurant criticism (and restaurant bloggers): reviews are often issued after only one visit, as they were in all of our cases here.  And what little context I provided from previous meals at le Cinq are taken from three snapshots over the course of a decade, representing three different chefs.  That’s hardly context.

Ultimately, it was Rayner’s impetus for visiting le Cinq that spurred me to write this post: to examine a growing dissatisfaction with the value of dining out.  Needless to say, this is a recurring consideration for anyone who visits restaurants regularly, especially at the high end.  To rephrase Rayner for my own purposes here: even if dining is subjective, and even if restaurants can’t be expected to perform on all cylinders all of the time, is $400+ too much of a gamble?

I suspect I know Rayner’s verdict with regard to le Cinq.  And I can’t say that my own experiences would have me render a different one.  In his review, Rayner referred to le Cinq as the “scene of a crime.”  For me, it has become an ongoing tragedy that hopes for salvation.

Here are photos from my meals at le Cinq in 2005, 2008, and 2016.  Hold your nose in the first two albums; the photography stinks.

~

* If you want particularly brilliant examples of their work, I encourage you to find a copy of Giles Coren’s review of Il Divo, and any piece of writing by the late, great A.A. Gill (like his endearing ode to Chez l’Ami Louis entitled “Tour de Gall“).  They will make you cringe with delight.

** This as a compliment. Despite his bullish outbursts, I think Rayner is actually one of the more keen food writers in the U.K.  Bombast aside, he actually gets around to talking about the food.  And, despite a needlessly rude encounter I had with him nearly a decade ago (a petty grievance, really), I’ve been reassured by a few people we know in common that he’s not actually as cranky as he may seem.

+ Following Legendre’s departure, I heard back-channel chatter that his Michelin demotion resulted from accidentally poisoning an inspector with bad mushrooms – or something like that. I admit that I’m probably not repeating this rumor correctly. But that’s the problem with back-channel chatter – the details are murky, and, as in this case, unconfirmed.

Photo: A mise-en-bouche of roasted peppers and tomato at le Cinq in August, 2016.

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It always seems to end before it begins.

For five years now, I’ve had the pleasure of recording and reporting from one of the most magical corners of the culinary world during one of the most magical seasons of the year.  It is an annual gathering of extraordinary talent and goodwill that has also become one of the most anticipated culinary events among spectators, and one of the most coveted invitations among chefs.

The many personal observations and sentiments about the Twelve Days of Christmas that I’ve shared along the way, especially those that I recorded at the end of 2014, still apply today.  I know they are inadequate, partly because the scope and wonder of it all defy words, but mostly because improving upon them exceeds my talent as a writer. So, dispensing with unnecessary flourishes, I bring forward all past marvel and deep-felt thanks to my colleagues, friends, and family at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  Your goals are admirable, your mission noble, and your standards ever higher.

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Today, as we arrive at the Epiphany, the true end to the Twelve Days of Christmas, I draw close another very special set of a dozen days.  This year’s twelfth night marks my 60th and hosting chef Christopher Kostow’s 108th dinner of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.

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December at The Restaurant at Meadowood is a nonstop blur of activity, excitement, and wonder. If you blink, you will surely miss something.

No matter how hard I pay attention to what’s going on in the kitchen during the day, every night, unexpected things still magically appear out of nowhere.

Nathaniel Dorn, too, is always up to something in the front of the house.  He is both general manager and the principle architect of awesome at the restaurant.  He makes things happen, like twinkling lights, cozy corners, and snow, every night of this year’s run of dinners.

After five years of having an all-access pass, every day at The Twelve Days of Christmas is still full of surprises, even for me.

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As head chef, Christopher Kostow gets the credit (and the burden) every day at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  But, on the last night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, when all of the guest chefs have cleared the stage, Kostow hands the show over to his cooks, who write the final menu.

The Restaurant at Meadowood’s kitchen is comprised of a diverse group.

These talented and hard-working men and women come from the Philippines, Trinidad, Québec, Brazil, and all over the United States – Nevada, Oregon, Georgia, and California to name a few. Many of them have worked in kitchens across the world.  More significantly, their culinary curiosity know no borders.

This was reflected in the melting pot of flavors presented on the last night.

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I’ll share a few highlights for me from this twelfth night:

I particularly liked Fréderic Comeau-Boisvert’s canapé – pâté of foie gras sandwiched between shortbread biscuits, rolled with dried rose petals.  They were beautiful and delicious.

Cook Ali Matteis presented two notable dishes.  The first was a bowl of crab with thin slices of matsutake mushrooms.  It was elegant and simple.  She also presented a stunning dessert that played with the texture of pear and sunchoke, blurring the line between them.  They made a smart couple, and Matteis balanced the starchiness of both well with both sweetness and acidity.  I loved it.

I also really liked Nick Sobiek’s plate of lamb tongue with porcini and potato purée.  It was classic and comforting, a flavorful mid-meal pause.

Guests drink very well during the Twelve Days of Christmas.  But on this last night, the wine team, headed by Micah Clark, pull out some particularly weighty and aged bottles.  The curated wine list from this last night included Harlan Estate’s “The Maiden” (2012), as well as a pour of 1986 Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon, and an imperial of 1978 Robert Mondavi Cabernet Sauvignon.

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Per annual tradition, Christopher Kostow concluded this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas in the dining room with a word of gratitude to the guests and to his team – every member vacated their station and crowded into the dining room for one, final farewell and round of applause.

Below, you’ll find the menu from the twelfth and final night of the Twelve Days of Christmas, featuring dishes created by the cooks at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  To see all of the photos from this final dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés

Foie Gras
Roses.
(Frederic Comeau-Boisvert)

Taro-Fried Garden Vegetables
(Juliana Thorpe)

Koji-Cured Scarlet Turnips
(Nick Sobiek)

Cured Aji
Dragon’s Tongue
(Michael Izzard & Daniel Kim)

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First Course 
Caviar
Charred onions, buttermilk, yeast rolls.
(Frederic Comeau-Boisvert)

Second Course
Crab
Matsutake.
(Ali Matteis)

Third Course 
Black Cod
Spot prawn roe butter, cabbage.
(Michael Izzard)

Fourth Course 
Lamb Tongue
Porcini, potato purée.
(Nick Sobiek)

Fifth Course 
Beef Broth
With our Sonora wheat shio koji.
(Michael Izzard and Daniel Kim)

Sixth Course
Wagyu Beef
Black truffle, oyster.
(Daniel Kim)

Seventh Course
Cremeux de Citeaux
Black apple, white truffle.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Eighth Course
Sunchoke-Pear
Cardamaro, caramel.
(Ali Matteis)

Mignardises
Pumpkin Nougat
(Juliana Thorpe)

Winter Citrus Pâté de Fruit
(Ihzyan Muhd)

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Napa Valley Reserve
Sauvignon Blanc
Napa Valley, 2015

Domaine Guy Amiot et Fils
“Les Caillerets”
Chassagne Montrachet 1er Cru
2014

Williams Selyem
Pinot Noir
Westside Road Neighbors
Russian River Valley, 2015

Joseph Phelps Vineyards
Cabernet Sauvignon
Backus Vineyard, Napa Valley, 1986

Harlan Estate
“The Maiden”
Napa Valley, 2012

Robert Mondavi
Cabernet Sauvignon
Napa Valley, 1978

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood. Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2017

Mark Lundgaard Nielsen (Kong Hans Kælder; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Manish Mehrotra (Indian Accents; New Dehli, India; New York, New York; London, U.K.)
Jeremiah Stone & Fabián von Hauske Valtierra (Contra & Wildair; New York, New York)
Jeremy Fox (Rustic Canyon & Tallula’s; Santa Monica, California)
Ben Sukle (birch & Oberlin; Providence, Rhode Island)
Sean Brock (McCrady’s, McCrady’s Tavern, Husk, & Minero; Charleston, South Carolina)
Yoshiaki Takazawa (Takazawa; Tokyo, Japan)
Thomas Keller (The French Laundry; Yountville, California)
Eric Werner (Hartwood; Tulum, Mexico)
Jock Zonfrillo (Orana; Adelaide, Australia)
Alexandre Couillon (La Marine; Noirmoutier, France)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

–

Photos: It’s snowing!  The view from the dining room during the Twelve Days of Christmas; Christopher Kostow plating; Daniel Martin surprised guests by walking through the dining room during dinner in a full ski outfit and skis slung over his shoulders; buttery black cod coated in prawn butter; lamb tongue with porcini and potato on the pass; Kostow thanking guests and presenting his entire kitchen and staff at the end of the twelfth night; the curated wine list; the fully-signed board in the kitchen at the end of the twelfth night; one, final team photo.

~

Chefs: I challenge you to remove one (and for some of you, three) items from each dish.

Simplify.

–

It has been over a dozen years since I started recording and reporting here.  Yet, despite my dwindling updates, I have not lost enthusiasm or eagerness for it. What little time I manage to devote to writing my blog remains exciting and important to me, because above all, it represents an incredible education.

Since leaving the law firm at the top of 2011, and more significantly, leaving my anonymity behind shortly thereafter, I began writing from a different perspective.  With an explosion of blogs and food media that began flooding the internet restaurant-related minutiae, the need for detailed reports like mine diminished. So, I broadened the scope of this blog to do more of what I love doing: connecting the many reference points I had gathered over the years, and championing those who are producing something of quality and substance.

Sadly, I can’t say I’ve been very regular about it. For the past few years, I’ve deferred much of my reflecting and sharing to the end the year, when I scramble to collect my thoughts and preserve some of what I have been too busy to file in the preceding 12 months.* And this task has only become more challenging as my calendar has grown more and more crowded each year.

Of course this is a good thing.  It means those blurred lines that I described in 2013 have sharpened.  Blissfully shrugging off the ambiguities (and the one-dimensional pigeon hole) of “food blogging,” I have moved into a truer and more fulfilling role as a photographer.  Documenting the world with a camera has been an essential part of my life now for more than two decades.  Before I had an adequate grasp of writing, or an understanding of the restaurant industry, I was framing the world around me through a lens. Now, in my adult life, I am blessed to be able to do this professionally.

2017 took me to far corners of our globe.  Logging over 120,00 miles, I visited 8 countries on 4 continents, as well as cities across the United States.  Much of it was to photograph restaurants, food, and chefs, both professionally and for personal pleasure.  But much of it was for other things that interest me – art, history, and culture.  When I’m not eating or writing about food, these are the things that occupy my time and thoughts.

So, before I turn to anthologizing my year in eating, as I have done for a decade or more, I’d like to share a bit of where I went, what I experienced, and what I learned last year.  Of course, if you’re not interested in these things, I invite you to skip to the bottom of this post, where I log all of the restaurants I visited in 2017.

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I was having dinner at Kong Hans Kælder in Copenhagen, a house to which I have grown familiar over the past few years, when I mentioned to Peter Pepke, the manager and wine director, that I was heading to Africa.  Peter had grown up in southern Africa, and had gone to school in Zimbabwe, one of the countries on my itinerary.  He told me that, coincidentally, Tobias Nilsson, one of the sommeliers at the restaurant, who I also knew, was moving to South Africa within the month. A Danish family had purchased an estate in wine country, outside of Cape Town, and he was moving there to manage the property and cultivate the vineyards for wine production. Tobias told me that the estate had plenty of guest rooms, and invited me to visit him.  Thrilled to have found a friend in Africa, I gave him my dates of travel, and we planned on seeing each other a few months later.

–

In my freshman year of college, I chose, as one of my two, compulsory writing seminars, “Modern South African History.”  Two unexpectedly wonderful things happened in that class. First, I met Mike Tetelman, then a young, PhD candidate for African studies at my university.  I credit Tetelman with teaching me how to write, and, more importantly, inspiring me to want to be a better writer. Secondly, Tetelman assigned one of the most transformative books of my life, written by a man who had been imprisoned for 18 years on a faraway island for fighting racial injustice.  Although this autobiography had been decades in the making, much of it happened within my own, recent memory.  It was only a few years before I read the book that its author Nelson Mandela had been set free by then-President of South Africa F.W. de Klerk.  I remember watching evening news reports about the two men negotiating the end of apartheid. And, as a high school student, I remember when Mandela and de Klerk were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together in 1993 for their bipartisan reforms, and when Mandela was elected the first black president of South Africa a year later.  My own coming of age coincided with that of a great nation and people.

A year after I took the class with Tetelman, the prison on the faraway island closed, ending its 400-year history as a place of banishment and imprisonment.

It is with all of this personal history that my trip to South Africa last year fulfilled twenty years of anticipation.  On Robben Island, I visited the tiny cell – smaller than the kennels in which the prison guard dogs were kept – where Nelson Mandela started writing his “Long Walk To Freedom.” I saw the prison courtyard, where he hid the manuscript behind a vine tree. And I got a tour of the prison by a former, political prisoner on the island, who described the horrors and injustice that he and his fellow inmates endured, sockless and shoeless, for years. If you haven’t read Mandela’s autobiography, read it now. It is one of the most powerful stories of the human will for justice you will ever experience.

–

–

Wildepaardejacht is a stunning estate nestled at the foothills of the craggy mountains of Paarl, a wine district about an hour’s drive from Cape Town.  Established in 1688 by Dutch settlers, the gabled manse occupies a unique position in the area.  It offers a breathtaking survey of its surroundings – sprawling vineyards and orchards fenced in by rocky rises.  And yet, it is entirely invisible to the outside world.  You can’t see the beautiful, white structure from any road, not even the one that leads you right to its gates.

Kirsten Madsen welcomed me to her home.  She and her husband had purchased the estate some years ago, and had been alternating between spending time in their homeland of Denmark, and in the wintry months, escaping to the sunnier, summery cape of South Africa.

She showed me to my quarters, a generous suite of beautifully wood-paneled rooms, including a bathroom with a heavy, bulletproof door.  When I asked about the door, Kirsten told me that the prior occupant of the house had been none other than F.W. de Klerk, the former president of South Africa. The Madsens had purchased Wildepaardejacht from de Klerk and his (second) wife Elita. The bathroom had been the president’s safe room in case of an attack.  The panic button inside the bathroom was still active, and I was cautioned not to mistake it for the light switch, lest I set off a string of alarms and send the guards running.

Perhaps my friend Tobias had told me that the estate he was now managing was the former residence of de Klerk.  In fact, I’m sure he had. But in the weeks leading up to my trip, we had both been overwhelmed with work and travel, and our communication was spotty and short.  Somehow, this extraordinary fact escaped me.

Imagine my astonishment.

Just two days before, I had been in the prison cell of de Klerk’s successor. And now, I would be staying in de Klerk’s house and home.

The Madsens left de Klerk’s suite largely untouched.  Simple and spare, his bedroom was dominated by a pair of handsome wardrobes and a large bed, over which a small, framed map of South Africa hung.  There was a chair, two nightstands, and de Klerk’s valet stand.  Otherwise, there was nothing to distract you from the view outside.  Three, large windows framed the surrounding property, offering a 180-degree view of the manicured estate, and the mountains beyond.

Here, at Wildepaardejacht, de Klerk hosted heads of state, including Margaret Thatcher. And the dining room table, where my breakfast was set out every morning, is where much of the de Klerk-Mandela negotiations were conducted.

Rarely have I been so intimately close to history.  And if it were not for the dedication and care of faithful stewards, like the Madsens, these encounters would not be possible.

–

–

Using Wildepaardejacht (which roughly translates to “wild horse hunt” in Dutch) as home base, Tobias and I took day trips around wine country in a gorgeous, Volkswagen van from the 1960s.

We drove over to Franschhoek, originally a French settlement as its name suggests. We had lunch perched on those hills, at a quaint auberge called La Petite Ferme.  Afterwards, Tobias deftly negotiated the narrow curves of the Franschhoek pass that snaked upwards and beyond the mountains, for a spectacular view of the valley below.

On Paarl Rock, the second largest rock in the world after Uluru (or Ayers Rock) in Australia, we leaned into breathtaking winds that nearly swept us off our feet.

One morning, we relished the commercialized downtown of Stellenbosch, where Tobias, especially, had access to many supplies and creature comforts that were unavailable to him in the smaller town of Paarl near him.  Home to one of South Africa’s largest universities, Stellenbosch was a scene of youth and activity, a welcomed contrast to the sea of despair and disparity that still dominates South Africa’s countryside today.

And we paused at the gates of Drakenstein Correctional Centre to see the famous statue of Nelson Mandela with his fist raised high. This was the last place he was imprisoned, after being transferred from Robben Island. And it was from these gates that he finally walked free, just a few miles down the road from the home of the president who he would succeed. Because Drakenstein is still an operating prison today, we were unable to enter.

–

–

Zimbabwe has its own currency, which is supposed to be on par (that is, dollar-for-dollar) with the U.S. Dollar. However, it has no confidence, and therefore, is worthless outside of Zimbabwe.  So, the country uses U.S. currency (this is one of two countries I visited last year that operates almost entirely on U.S. currency).

When I landed in Zimbabwe, I was prepared. I had 200 U.S. Dollars in $10 bills (because I was told that locals will not accept bills higher than $20). I spent $50 on my visa at the border. Shortly after I passed through immigration, a young German couple, who had been on my flight, was stuck behind. They did not know that Zimbabwe immigration did not accept credit cards.  And they had no U.S. currency.  One of them was allowed to pass through to the arrivals hall to get cash out of a cash machine. But the cash machine was empty. So, they were unable to enter Zimbabwe.

–

–

–

Following the months of dry season, the Zambezi River’s level drops significantly.  In fact, during these months – the winter months in the northern hemisphere – by the time the river reaches the Zambia-Zimbabwe border, where it pours over a cliff in an expansive fall that stretches a mile wide, the Zambezi dwindles to just 10% of its capacity in high season.

The famous British explorer David Livingstone, searching for the source of the Nile River, first arrived here in 1855, and named this magnificent, natural phenomenon – the largest falling sheet of water in the world – after his queen.

Victoria Falls pours into a long, narrow crack in the earth – which happens to mark the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe.  So it is not possible to view the waterfall from the bottom. It can only be viewed from the top of the gorge.  I think most would agree that the best view of the falls is from the Zimbabwe side, where roped trails in Victoria National Park bring you within feet of the edge. From this side, you have a full-frontal view of the falls across the narrow gorge – about 500 feet across.  You’re so close to the falls that the mist rising from the gorge – which can be seen miles away – drenches everything near it, turning the park trail into a lush rainforest. (Some say the best view is from the air; helicopter rides are available.)

But, during low season, when I visited, you can also get a rare view of the falls from the Zambia side.  When the Zambezi is at its lowest levels, it is possible to take a boat downstream to Livingstone Island, a rocky outcropping that perches at the edge of the falls.  From there, you can jump in a small pool of water that eddies at the ledge. Appropriately named “Devil’s Pool,” this unique spot, just a few feet away from roaring currents that sweep by and pummel 300-some feet to the bottom, allows the daring to swim right up to the lip for a spectacular view, both across and down the gorge.  Despite being a fraidy cat when it comes to heights, I did just that.

If you are not a confident swimmer, I will warn you that you cannot touch the bottom of Devil’s Pool.  You will need to swim, or cling to rocks while making your way around the rim to the edge of the falls. If you can tread water, then the current in the pool, which isn’t forceful enough to take you over, will carry you to the edge without much effort.

–

–

Construction on the royal crematorium – an elaborate pavilion in which Bhumibol Adulyadej, the ninth Rama of the Chakri Dynasty, would be cremated – was near completion when I arrived in Bangkok in September (he was subsequently cremated on 29 October, 2017). One of the longest reigning monarchs in world history, this king was so beloved by his Thai people that they conferred upon him the sobriquet “The Great.”  Despite having been dead for nearly a year, his image remained enshrined everywhere – in taxis, on billboards, buildings, street signs, and temples.  In keeping with the royal tradition of observing a year of mourning, his son and successor Maha Vajiralongkorn Bodindradebayavarangkun, styled Rama X, deferred his enthronement and coronation (and, as of January of 2018, the new king remains uncrowned).

–

Sadly, I didn’t see much while in Bangkok.  The heat, humidity, and the horrific traffic  discouraged me from exploring beyond my neighborhood, which, like most neighborhoods in Asian metropolises, is larger and more populated than many American and European cities. Other than a few destination dinners that forced me afield (I’ll get to these in my subsequent posts), I stayed near my hotel in the heart of the city, where I had walking access to plenty of shops and restaurants.

Although I spent a week in Bangkok – my true aim on this trip was Cambodia.  From Bangkok, a short, one-hour flight put me in Siem Reap.

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–

Cambodia also runs on U.S. currency. But unlike Zimbabweans, Cambodians are far more particular about their cash – they will reject a bill for the slightest tear, crease, or flaw. Cambodian cash machines and merchants alike dispense crisp, clean bills that look as if they just rolled off the press at the U.S. mint.  How this is possible, I do not know.

Whereas the Zimbabwe Dollar is supposed to be on par with the U.S. Dollar, that is not the case with the Cambodian Real, which is comparatively debased.  While neither country uses American coinage, because the Zimbabwe Dollar is on par with the U.S. Dollar, and because the Zimbabwe economy is more robust than the Cambodian economy, Zimbabweans have an easier solution: everything in Zimbabwe is rounded out to whole-dollar amounts. Although the cost of living in Zimbabwe is cheaper than in the U.S., American (or European) tourists might not see much of a price break in the areas they’re most likely to visit.  My meals at the Victoria Falls Hotel, for example, were commensurate with the price of a meal at a nice restaurant in the United States.

By comparison, goods and services in Cambodia – even in touristy areas – are far cheaper. For the sake of convenience, most services are bartered in whole-dollar amounts (tuk tuk rides, for example). However, if you pay for goods in U.S. Dollars, change will be returned in Cambodian Riel (at the time I was in Siem Reap, the exchange rate was 10,000 Riel to one U.S. Dollar).  So, when I paid for a $0.65 espresso with a George Washington Dollar was given back 3,500 Real in change, dispensed in seven, crisp bills of 500 Reals.

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How the Khmer thrived in the thick and soupy lowlands of present-day Siem Reap I do not know. Unaccustomed, and not particularly friendly to heat or humidity to begin with, I found the steamy jungle unbearable. During the day, I relished and relied on open-air tuk-tuk rides to cool me off between destinations.

Angkor is the largest religious complex in the world.  Built nearly a millennium ago by Khmer kings, it is comprised of scores of temples and monuments.  Spread over 400 acres, this ancient city was, at the height of the Khmer empire, home to a million people – the largest, known pre-industrial city in the world.  Now, it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Cambodia’s most visited landmark (Angkor Wat, the main temple, is depicted on the Cambodian national flag; and the overgrown temples of Ta Prohm are probably far better known for being the backdrop of the movie Tomb Raider).

I was surprised by the level of access that visitors have here.  With few exceptions, you can walk through the temples – even in parts where collapse, if not already arrived, appeared imminent.  And, in many cases, you can climb up the perilously steep sides.  For both safety and preservation, I doubt these generous allowances will continue for long.

Even so, efforts to restore the temples are ongoing.  I saw a number of sites where the enormous blocks of rubble were being sorted and reconstructed. It was also apparent that many of the temples were still being used as places of worship – predominantly Buddhist.

–

Vestiges of French colonialism are palpable in Siem Reap, especially in some of the older quarters of the city.  My hotel, The Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor, is an excellent example of this. Built in the French colonial style of the early 20th century (it dates to 1937), this stately structure sits on a street named after French president Charles de Gaulle.  Culturally and culinarily too, the French left their imprint, confluent with the Thai and Chinese.  These influences are evident in a walk through the city’s old market, where you’ll find everything from turtles, frogs, and giant, roach-like water bugs (I’ve been told that, when cooked, their papery skeleton bursts with a creamy interior akin to watery, licorice-flavored, scrambled eggs) to Chinese sausages, curry, baguettes, and coffee.

–

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There were far too many other destinations in 2017 to include here.

Some of them I’ve already written about on this blog – my trips last year to Paris, Noirmoutier, New York, and Arkansas, for example. And my month in Napa (California) was well-documented in a series of posts about the Twelve Days of Christmas; it’s become an annual highlight.

Others you can learn about in my writings elsewhere. My annual trip to South Carolina to photograph Music To Your Mouth was the subject of this personal essay that I wrote for Palmetto Bluff. And an extended trip to Mexico City with Adam Goldberg (Publisher) and Daniela Velasco (Creative Director) for their sister publications Drift (vol. 6) and Ambrosia (vol. 4), for which I serve as an editor at large, is well documented in the latest issue of each. In them, you’ll find an interview I did with Enrique Olvera, chef of Pujol, as well as an article I wrote and photographed about the pre-Hispanic chinampas of the Mexico City basin.

Sadly, I only made it to Scandinavia once in 2017. After traveling there more than a dozen times over the past three years for the immensely educational Friends of Lysverket series, my friend Christopher Haatuft decided to end the collaborative project to focus on opening a second restaurant.  But this didn’t stop me from going back to visit my friends in Norway (I was in both Oslo and Bergen, crossing the country on the breathtaking rail line that connects the two), or my friends in nearby Denmark.  In Denmark, I was mostly in Copenhagen (in part to photograph for Format, a new restaurant at the Hotel Sankt Annae).  But I also escaped the capital for brief trips to Odense and to Århus, the country’s second largest city, to visit the ARoS Kunstmuseum, famously crowned with Olafur Eliasson’s colorful halo entitled “Your Rainbow Panorama.”

Domestically, I was all over the map: Los Angeles, Boston, Houston, Chicago, Tampa, Seattle, Charleston, and San Francisco, where I photographed for a number of restaurants, including Quince and Saison.  I returned to photograph Gourmet Fest for a second year.  It’s a Relais & Châteaux event hosted by l’Auberge Carmel in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.  I also returned for a second year to photograph the Synergy Series, a quarterly charity dinner hosted by Gavin Kaysen at his restaurant Spoon & Stable in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Kaysen just informed me that the Synergy Series will continue in 2018 for a third season.  I look forward to it.

–

–

Per annual tradition, before I turn to consider the highlights of my year in eating, I pause to account all of the restaurants I visited in 2017.  Here is that list.

JANUARY

AEP Thai (Kansas City, Missouri)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Café Europa – Union Hill (Kansas City, Missouri)
Kin Lin (Kansas City, Missouri)
Ponak’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Q39 (Kansas City, Missouri)
Speak Sandwiches (Kansas City, Missouri)

FEBRUARY

Arsaga’s (Fayetteville, Arkansas)
Hive at 21C (Bentonville, Arkansas)
Jarocho (Kansas City, Kansas)
Preacher’s Son (Bentonville, Arkansas)
Pressroom (Bentonville, Arkansas)
Shio Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Speak Sandwiches (Kansas City, Missouri)
Stock Hill (Kansas City, Missouri)
Ye Olde Union Oyster House (Boston, Massachusetts)

MARCH

Canlis (Seattle, Washington)
Corvino Supper Club (Kansas City, Missouri)
Heirloom (Kansas City, Missouri)
Howard’s Grocery (Kansas City, Missouri)
Poppy (Seattle, Washington)
Portia’s Café (Kansas City, Missouri)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Spices Asian (Kansas City, Missouri)
Urban Café (Kansas City, Missouri)
West Bottoms Kitchen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Willows Inn (Lummi Island, Washington)

APRIL

3 Arts Café (Chicago, Illinois)
Arsicault (San Francisco, California)
Bad Hunter (Chicago, Illinois)
Bellecour (Wayzata, Minnesota)
Bo Ling’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Deli Board (San Francisco, California)
Genessee Royale Bistro (Kansas City, Missouri)
Great China (Berkeley, California)
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout (Kansas City, Missouri)
Kin Lin (Kansas City, Missouri)
Mario’s in Westport (Kansas City, Missouri)
Marla (San Francisco, California)
McClain’s Bakery (Kansas City, Missouri)
Michael Smith (Kansas City, Missouri)
Quince (San Francisco, California)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Single Thread (Healdsburg, California)
Speak Sandwiches (Kansas City, Missouri)
Smyth (Chicago, Illinois)
Sun Street Bakery (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Town Topic (Kansas City, Missouri)
Voltaire (Kansas City, Missouri)
Young Joni (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

MAY

Asia Market Thai Lao (Houston, Texas)
Better Luck Tomorrow (Houston, Texas)
Blackbird (Chicago, Illinois)
Blacksmith (Houston, Texas)
Bluestem (Kansas City, Missouri)
Breakers Café (Stinson Beach, California)
Café Robey (Chicago, Illinois)
Cellar Door Provisions (Chicago, Illinois)
Champa Garden (Redding, California)
Columbus Park Ramen (Kansas City, Missouri)
Corvino Tasting Room (Kansas City, Missouri)
Cotogna (San Francisco, California)
Dot Coffee (Houston, Texas)
Hamano (San Francisco, California)
Himalaya (Houston, Texas)
Joe’s Kansas City (Kansas City, Kansas)
Kata Robata (Houston, Texas)
LC’s Bar-B-Q (Kansas City, Missouri)
Little Sheep Mongolian Hot Pot (San Francisco, California)
Morningstar (Houston, Texas) (2x)
Pho Binh (Houston, Texas)
Pit Room, The (Houston, Texas)
Roister (Chicago, Illinois)
Rye (Leawood, Kansas)
Thien Thanh (Houston, Texas)
Won Fun 2 Fun (Chicago, Illinois)

JUNE

Al’s Place (San Francisco, California)
Bellecour (Wayzata, Minnesota)
Blue Koi (Leawood, Kansas)
Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California) (3x)
Comedor Jacinta (Mexico City, Mexico)
Contramar (Mexico City, Mexico)
Dad’s Luncheonette (Half Moon Bay, California)
Duarte’s Tavern (Pescadero, California)
Eno Loncheria (Mexico City, Mexico) (2x)
el Farolito (Mexico City, Mexico)
Fonda Mayora (Mexico City, Mexico)
Lalo (Mexico City, Mexico)
Maximo Bistrot (Mexico City, Mexico)
Oja de Agua (Mexico City, Mexico)
Pujol (Mexico City, Mexico)
Quintonil (Mexico City, Mexico)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Slanted Door, The (San Francisco, California)
Sushikyo (Mexico City, Mexico)
Z&Y (San Francisco, California)
Zuni Café (San Francisco, California) (2x)

JULY

Alma Hotel (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bellecour (Wayzata, Minneosta) (2x)
el Camino Real (Kansas City, Kansas)
Grand Café (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

AUGUST

108 (Copenhagen, Denmark)
108 Corner (Copenhagen, Denmark)
á l’Aise (Oslo, Norway)
Apollo Bar (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Atelier September (Copenhagen, Denmark) (2x)
Barr (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Bekkjarvik Gjestgiveri (Bekkjarvik, Norway)
Bistro Bohème (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Blings (Oslo, Norway)
la Cabra (Århus, Denmark)
Café Don Pippo (Bergen, Norway) (2x)
Charter Oak, the (St. Helena, California)
Chez Panisse Café (Berkeley, California)
Format (Copenhagen, Denmark)
Fuglen (Oslo, Norway)
Gastromé (Århus, Denmark)
Gott’s Roadside (St. Helena, California)
Kaffemisjonen (Bergen, Norway) (2x)
Kolonialen Bislett (Oslo, Norway)
Kong Hans Kælder (Copenhagen, Denmark) (2x)
Lysverket (Bergen, Norway) (2x)
Nico (San Francisco, California)
Sortebro Kro (Odense, Denmark)

SEPTEMBER

510 Lounge (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Al’s Breakfast (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bakery at the Plaza Athenée (Bangkok, Thailand) (2x)
Bellecour (Wayzata, Minnesota)
Blackbird (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Bo.Lan (Bangkok Thailand)
B.S. Taqueria (Los Angeles, California)
Ça Va (Kansas City, Missouri)
Carniceria San Antonio (Kansas City, Missouri)
Cuisine Wat Damnak (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
Destroyer (Culver City, California)
Dialogue (Santa Monica, California)
Din Tai Fung at Century Embassy (Bangkok, Thailand)
Eathai at Century Embassy (Bangkok, Thailand)
Gaggan (Bangkok, Thailand)
Gjusta (Venice, California)
Hmong Village (St. Paul, Minnesota)
Maisen at Century Embassy (Bangkok, Thailand)
Malis (Siem Reap, Cambodia) (2x)
Marum (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
Myung in Dumplings (Los Angeles, California)
Nahm (Bangkok, Thailand)
Rohatt Café (Siem Reap, Cambodia)
Sari Sari at Grand Central Market (Los Angeles, California)
Somboon Seafood at Century Embassy (Bangkok, Thailand)
Supanniga Tasting Room (Bangkok, Thailand)
Uncle Joe’s Ham & Eggs (Los Angeles, California)
White Castle (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
World Street Kitchen (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Young Joni (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

OCTOBER

l’Ambroisie (Paris, France)
Chez l’Ami Jean (Paris, France)
Clown Bar, The (Paris, France)
Brasserie Grandcœur (Paris, France)
le Dauphin (Paris, France)
Desnoyez (Paris, France)
Fire Fish at the V&A Waterfront (Cape Town, South Africa)
la Fontaine de Bellevie (Paris, France) (2x)
Grill, The (New York, New York)
Hemlock (New York, New York)
Lidia’s (Kansas City, Missouri)
Made Nice (New York New York)
Maison Moizeau (Noirmoutier, France)
la Marine (Noirmoutier, France)
Noble Rice (Tampa, Florida)
du Pain et des Idées (Paris, France)
el Pollo Rey (Kansas City, Kansas)
Per Se (New York, New York)
Penny’s (Minneapolis, Minnesota)
Stanley’s Terrace at Victoria Falls Hotel (Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe) (3x)
Wildair (New York, New York)
Wolfgang Puck at Hotel Bel-Air (Bel-Air, California)

NOVEMBER

Bean in Love (Paarl, South Africa)
Belota (Paarl, South Africa)
Blue Crane & Butterfly (Stellenbosch, South Africa)
Café Europa at Union Hill (Kansas City, Missouri)
Carniceria San Antonio (Charleston, South Carolina)
Cattle Baron (Paarl, South Africa)
EJ’s Urban Eatery (Kansas City, Missouri)
Giulio’s Café (Cape Town, South Africa)
Heirloom (Kansas City, Missouri)
Henrietta’s at Dewberry Hotel (Charleston, South Carolina)
Jason’s Bakery (Cape Town, South Africa)
Kuriba at V&A Waterfront (Cape Town, South Africa)
McCrady’s (Charleston, South Carolina)
McCrady’s Tavern (Charleston, South Carolina)
Minero (Charleston, South Carolina)
Noop (Paarl, South Africa)
la Petite Ferme (Franschhoek, South Africa)
Rodney Scott’s BBQ (Charleston, South Carolina)
Rye (Kansas City, Missouri) (2x)
Sahara (Kansas City, Missouri)
Shortmarket Club (Cape Town, South Africa)
Willoughby & Co. at V&A Waterfront (Cape Town, South Africa)

DECEMBER

Boulette’s Larder (San Francisco, California)
Charter Oak, The (St. Helena, California) (4x)
Cotogna (San Francisco, California)
Cowgirl Creamery at Ferry Building Marketplace (San Francisco, California)
Gott’s Roadside (St. Helena, California) (5x)
In Situ (San Francisco, California)
Kin Khao (San Francisco, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California)
Restaurant at Meadowood, The (St. Helena, California) (The Twelve Days of Christmas: Lundgaard Nielsen, Mehrotra, Stone & von Hauske, Fox, Sukle, Brock, Takazawa, Keller, Werner, Zonfrillo, Couillon, and Kostow)
Saison (San Francisco, California)
Tosca Café (San Francisco, California)
Z&Y (San Francisco, California)
Zuni Café (San Francisco, California)

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* Here is a catalog of my year-end posts:

2011: suitcase party…
2012: foreign and domestic…
2013: blurred lines…
2014: leapfrogging… 
2015: fairytale…
2016: hemispheres and horizons… 

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Photos: Lilies in the moat that surrounds Angkor Wat in Angkor, Cambodia; the breathtaking view from Cape Point, South Africa; pool with the mountains of Paarl rising in the background, dusk at Wildepaardejacht in Paarl, South Africa; Tobias Nilsson and a beautiful VW van at Fraschhoek Pass, South Africa; the bar at the Royal Livingstone in Livingstone, Zambia; butter-yellow staircases at the Victoria Falls Hotel in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe; Victoria Falls from Victoria Falls National Park, Zimbabwe; Zambezi tram in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe; an enormous portrait of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej in Bangkok, Thailand; mopeds, cars, and buses in Bangkok, Thailand; the expansive pool at the Raffles Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Siem Reap, Cambodia; turtles, frogs, fish, bamboo shoots and more at the Old Siem Reap Market in Siem Reap, Cambodia; ruins at the temple of Ta Prohm in Angkor, Cambodia; a Buddhist monk at Angkor Wat in Angkor, Thailand; Allen Fieldhouse, home of the University of Kansas Jayhawks in Lawrence, Kansas; “El Ángel” on the Pasea de la Reforma in Mexico City, Mexico; “Your Rainbow Panorama” at the ARoS Kunstmusem in Århus, Denmark; a colony of penguins on Boulder Beach in Simon Town, South Africa; the wharf at Bekkjarvik, Norway; Cape Point, South Africa.