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foreign and domestic…
~ Last year, I quit the firm and lept into a brave new world. Landing, unexpectedly, in an amazing suitcase party, I traveled, photographed, and ate around the globe, visiting nearly a dozen...
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12 days: partridge in a pear tree (anderson)
~ On the first day of the Twelve Days of Christmas at the Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Scott Anderson from the restaurant elements in Princeton, New Jersey. Our day started...
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12 days: turtle doves (shields)…
~ On the second day of the Twelve Days of Christmas at the Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me two turtle doves, one named John, the other, Karen. Husband and wife, John and Karen...
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12 days: french hens (foss)…
~ On the third of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Phillip Foss of the restaurant ELideas in Chicago. When Phillip Foss left Chicago to come...
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12 days: colly birds (brioza and krasinski)…
~ On the fourth of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski of State Bird Provisions in San Francisco, the second...
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12 days: golden rings (franey)…
~ On the fifth of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Jason Franey of the storied restaurant Canlis in Seattle. Kostow and Franey first met in...
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12 days: geese a laying…
~ On the sixth of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me one of my favorite chefs in the country right now, Matthias Merges. Formerly the chef de...
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12 days: swans a-swimming (onodera)…
~ On the seventh of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Morihiro Onodera. Earlier this year, when Kostow sent me the finalized list of guest...
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12 days: maids a-milking (syhabout)…
~ On the eighth of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me James Syhabout, chef of the one Michelin-starred restaurant commis in Oakland, California....
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12 days: ladies dancing (anderer)…
~ On the eighth of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Nick Anderer, the chef at Danny Meyers’s restaurant Maialino in the Gramercy Park Hotel in...
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12 days: lords a-leaping (toutain)…
~ On the tenth of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me David Toutain, the french chef who made l’Agapé Substance in Paris famous in a very short...
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12 days: pipers piping (anderson and habiger)…
~ On the eleventh of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me Erik Anderson and Josh Habiger, the duo who took Nashville, and the country by storm...
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12 days: drummers drumming (kostow)…
~ On the last of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Christopher Kostow gave to me his kitchen. For the final act in this twelve-part series of dinners in St. Helena, Kostow...
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rumination 27: tyranny of the masses…
In the February, 2013 issue of Vanity Fair, Corby Kummer issued a long-winded, cynical, and, in my opinion, rather narrow-minded, criticism of tasting menus (“Tyranny – It’s What’s for Dinner“). Here...
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travel: addendum…
~ My December dining report is more of an addendum than a postscript to the preceding eleven months (which, together, I summarized and surveyed on this blog in an earlier post). Warning: it is...
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review: rainbow of moles… (yu ne nisa)
~ Forty-eight hours is not enough time to see, much less eat Oaxaca. Considered one of the two “kitchens of Mexico” (the other being Puebla), Oaxaca is one, giant, walkable culinary encyclopedia,...
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best dishes of 2012…
~ Seven years ago, I surveyed all of the dishes I had eaten in that year and compiled a list of my favorites, more for my own record than for posterity. Since, it has become an annual tradition. 2012...
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best desserts of 2012…
~ Last year, I asked: “Is pastry having a ‘moment?’” The question was clearly rhetorical. And in the paragraphs that followed, I cited dozens of examples of why I thought it was so. In 2012, pastry...
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best of 2012: the restaurant edition…
~ The title of this blog post is misleading. Superlatives, like the word “best,” are dangerous. They’re almost always misused for profit. I have been critical of lists that claim authority over the...
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travel: a bunker, a photo shoot, and some sprouts…
~ As I enter March, a month perennially fraught with the anxieties of turning a year older, I find myself clinging to January and February a little tighter, wishing they had lasted a bit longer. But I...
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