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For the past five years, Christopher Kostow, chef of the three Michelin-starred The Restaurant at Meadowood has hosted an extraordinary series of dinners known as the “Twelve Days of Christmas.”  Every December, it brings a holiday wish list of the world’s best chefs to the restaurant, which is located on the breathtaking property of Meadowood Napa Valley, a Relais & Châteaux resort in St. Helena, California.

Last year, when Kostow invited me to attend the Twelve Days of Christmas (here’s a recap, with links to all twelve dinners), he told me that it would be his last year hosting the event.  I didn’t say much about his decision until the end of the series, when, impressed by the experience, I urged him to reconsider (I’m sure I was not alone in doing so).  I’m glad he did.

The chef alumni of this dinner series comprise an amazing collection of the most relevant and current names in kitchens across the world: Enrique Olvera, Mathias Dahlgren, John and Karen Shields, Sean Brock, Gabriel Rucker, David Toutain, and April Bloomfield are among the dozens of names that this event has brought to Napa Valley over the past five years.

I am happy to announce that this year, Kostow adds eleven more to the list.

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The Twelve Days of Christmas has not only become a showcase of food and wine, but, more importantly, it has become a platform for building awareness about the Napa Valley community that surrounds and supports Kostow and his restaurant.

In past years, part of the proceeds of the dinner series benefitted Share Our Strength, a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to eradicating childhood hunger.  However, this year, Kostow decided to move the cause closer to home.  Twenty percent of the dinner ticket proceeds of the 2013 Twelve Days of Christmas will benefit two Napa Valley organizations: the Holly Cranston Memorial Fund, an organization that assists local families whose special needs are not met by traditional sources of assistance; and NEWS (Napa Emergency Women’s Services), which provides a refuge for women and children suffering from domestic violence and/or sexual assault.

As well, this year’s eleven guest chefs will spend time getting to know the community and relationships that are important to Kostow.  The chefs will visit a Montessori school, where Kostow and the school are teaching students about sustainable agriculture by growing vegetables on land set aside by the school.  The guest chefs will be invited to hand-pick produce for their dinners from this garden.

Kostow’s community also includes the Culinary Institute of America, which will again host a special lecture series at its Greystone campus in St. Helena, where some of this year’s guest chefs will be invited to speak.

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This year’s Twelve Days of Christmas welcomes a diverse group of chefs to Napa Valley.  They come from every corner of America, as well as two other continents.  Familiar with all of them, some more than others (I have visited the restaurants of ten of the twelve chefs, and have eaten the food of eleven of them), I’m particularly excited about this year’s dinner series.  I look forward to spending more time with each of them, and experiencing more of their cooking in December, when I will, again, be attending and photographing all twelve dinners.

Each of the multi-course dinners will be the product of a collaboration among the guest chef, Kostow, and a guest vintner at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  In addition to the sixty-eight seats in the dining room, this year, Kostow will, again, make four seats at the chefs’s counter in the kitchen available.  For all pricing and reservation information about these dinners, please visit the The 2013 Twelve Days of Christmas page on the Restaurant at Meadowood’s website.

Without more, I am pleased to have the privilege of announcing the guest chefs, vintners, and schedule for the sixth annual Twelve Days of Christmas (I’ve hyperlinked the restaurant and vintner names to their websites).

Please save the dates.

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Friday, December 6

ANDY RICKER
pok pok
Portland, Oregon and Brooklyn, New York

Mike and Violet Grgich
Grgich Hills Estate

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Saturday, December 7

RODOLFO GUZMAN
Boragó
Santiago, Chile

Juan Mercado
Realm Cellars

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Tuesday, December 10

CARLO MIRARCHI
Roberta’s and blanca
Brooklyn, New York

Andrew and Adam Mariani
Scribe Winery

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Wednesday December 11

TIM CUSHMAN
o ya
Boston, Massachusetts

Stephen Martin and Dennis O’Neil
Checkerboard Vineyards

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Thursday December 12

ASHLEY CHRISTENSEN
Poole’s Downtown Diner
Raleigh, North Carolina

Freddy Constant
Constant, Diamond Valley Vineyard

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Friday, December 13

DAVID CHANG
momofuku
New York, New York
Sydney, Australia
Toronto, Canada

Larry Turley
Turley Winery

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Saturday, December 14

MATTHEW ACCARINO
SPQR
San Francisco, California

Tuck & Boo Beckstoffer
Beckstoffer Vineyards

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Tuesday, December 15

MARK LADNER & BROOKS HEADLEY
Del Posto
New York, New York

Glenn Salva
Antica Napa Valley, Antinori Family Estate

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Wednesday, December 18

RASMUS KOFOED
Geranium
Copenhagen, Denmark

Spring Mountain Vineyard

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Thursday, December 19

NICOLAUS BALLA & CORTNEY BURNS
Bar Tartine
San Francisco, California

Lily, Oliver, and John Berlin
El Molino Winery

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Friday, December 20

DAVID KINCH
Manresa
Los Gatos, California

May-Britt and Denis Malbec
Notre Vin, Malbec and Malbec Cellars

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Saturday, December 21

CHRISTOPHER KOSTOW
The Restaurant at Meadowood
St. Helena, California

H. William and Deborah Harlan
Harlan Estate

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Photos: John Shields and Christopher Kostow toasting at the Restaurant at Meadowood, St. Helena, California; Stuart Brioza of State Bird Provisions shows off the California State Bird, with Nicole Krasinski at the Restaurant at Meadowood, St. Helena, California; Matthias Merges of Yusho and Christopher Kostow at the garden at the Montessori of St. Helena, St. Helena, California.

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When I left my twenties, I went to Chicago to mark the passing of that decade, and to welcome the next. In the five years since, I’ve kept the tradition, choosing a different city with each new birthday.

In 2009, I celebrated in New York; in 2010, in Washington D.C.; and in 2011, Charleston.

Last year, due to a canceled event that I was supposed to attend in Chicago, which left me with pre-paid lodging and airfare to that city around the time of my birthday, I decided to cut my losses and return the Windy City to celebrate once more.

Beyond spending an unforgettable week with dear friends, that trip reminded me of just how much I love Chicago.

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If travel were dating, and cities were prospects, I’d admit to being a shameless playboy. With few exceptions, I’m always having a hot affair with whichever city I’m in at the moment. One week, I’m on the verge of abandoning everything for Copenhagen, the next week, I couldn’t imagine being happier anywhere other than San Francisco, or Santiago, or Oaxaca, or Carmel. And still, I remain convinced that I’ll live in New York one day. And Paris. And London. And Stockholm. Yeah, it’s a problem.

But Chicago…

This post is as much a love letter to Chicago as it is a summary of my latest trip there in March.

Chicago is the first city that made me want to leave home. As a child, I traveled there at least once a year to visit my cousins. I spent hot summers there running around in flammable terry cloth of unspeakable colors, eating ice cream out of trucks, and developing a lifelong love affair with cracker-crust pizzas at the circus-themed Barnaby’s (is that chain still around?).

My annual visits became more permanent when I moved to the north shore of Chicago for college. There, I recorded four happy and truly meaningful years of my life.

And when, in my second year of law school, I had the opportunity to work in a grown-up law firm, with a grown-up salary, I chose to return to Chicago, where I irresponsibly spent the lion’s share of my summer earnings in restaurants. And boy, did I have fun doing it.

In the years since, I’ve made Chicago a habit, more out of instinct than design. Outside of Kansas City (where I live now), it truly is my second city, my home away from home.

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Decades of fond memories – a disorganized mix of family, friends, classmates, restaurants, late night omelets and milkshakes at Clarke’s Diner, early morning runs along Lake Michigan, sticky summers, bone-chilling winters, Frango mints, happiness, sadness, love, and almost every shade of emotion in between – rush at me every time I hear the rickety clack of the El. There is no sound or comfort like it. I miss it. I crave it.

So, when my friends and I batted about possible destinations for my birthday trip this year, I didn’t dismiss Chicago as an option just because I had celebrated there the year before. In fact, as time ran out, and all of our schedules rapidly filled up, Chicago became an easy choice.

Since I was familiar with the city, there was very little planning involved.

And, more importantly, there are always plenty of restaurants to visit and revisit.

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My friends and I covered a lot of ground in the few days we were in Chicago.

In Wicker Park, we shared tacos and beer at Big Star. Since it’s located between O’Hare and the city, it has become a convenient meeting place for my friends and me when we first land.

Nearby, off a different spoke of the Six Corners in the same neighborhood, we had brunch at Trencherman, Pat and Mike Sheerin’s new restaurant in Shawn McClain’s former Spring space. They’ve done a nice job of revising the interior. Among the dishes we had, I especially loved the kale salad, tossed with fluffy, torn pieces of carrot-quinoa bread.

In Logan Square, I returned to Matthias Merges’s yusho, for a quiet, Monday-night dinner. The fish collar here remains a favorite, served with nori wrappers and condiments.

At The Aviary in the West Loop, I caught up with two college friends, whom I hadn’t seen since their wedding. That was eight years ago. They’re expecting their second child, now. I didn’t know that when I made the reservation. Thankfully, The Aviary’s non-alcoholic cocktails are just as great as the fully loaded ones.

And, a few blocks away on West Randolph Street – now, Chicago’s restaurant row au courant – a few of us gathered at Maude’s Liquor Bar for drinks before dinner one night. We started downstairs in the bar, and migrated upstairs, where we found a guitar and accordion duet covering oldies but goodies.

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I rarely eat breakfast. But in Chicago, I almost always eat breakfast.

Dave Beran, the chef at Next, is, apparently, a method cook. In preparation for the vegan menu at Next, he switched to a vegan diet as soon as he returned from Europe in early February. So, he recommended Flying Saucer – a restaurant in Humboldt Park that’s as quirky as its name suggests – for its vegan breakfast options. The restaurant is owned and operated by a small Kiwi, who, that morning, was wearing jeggings, glasses the size of bread plates, and a ski cap. The only one taking orders, he was admirably efficient. Beran had a vegan breakfast burrito, stuffed with beans and vegetables. Out of curiosity, I ordered the vegan pancakes. Beran described the cakes as tasting like blueberries. I thought they tasted more like yellow box cake. Either way, they were fluffy and light, and mysteriously good.

Another morning, a few of the cooks from Curtis Duffy’s Grace met me at Lou Mitchell’s, an old-school diner in the West Loop (the label on the maple syrup bottle declares it “A Chicago Institution Since 1923″), where everything’s served with a hearty side of sass. Lou Mitchell’s is known for its hot donut holes, which are offered to customers as they wait for tables. We didn’t get any donut holes that morning (though I saw a whole wicker basket full of them at the front door). But we did get a wedge of orange and two prunes to start our meal (our waitress warned us about the pits, thankfully), and a little Dixie cup of vanilla soft serve afterwards (which we were encouraged to dress with some of the restaurant’s hand-chopped orange marmalade to create a “creamsicle”).

The food at Lou Mitchell’s is good enough. But it’s not the main attraction at this diner. One doesn’t simply go to Lou Mitchell’s for waffles (mine was crusted with bits of pecans and bacon) and pancakes, steak and eggs, coffee and orange juice. One goes to Lou Mitchell’s for a slice of Chicago tartare: a raw, chopped mix of the city’s heart. Here, you’ll find off-duty cops eating next to hungover college students eating next to an immigrant family of five eating next to two blowhard businessmen eating next to a blogger and three cooks, all being yelled at by cranky waitresses, any one of whom won’t think twice about guilt-tripping you for switching sections (that would be us). Yes, enjoy your donut holes and prunes, but go for the sass.

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A big group of us descended upon Giuseppe Tentori’s GT Fish & Oyster in the River North for lunch one day. I especially loved the Caesar salad, which replaced croutons with fried oysters. I can also recommend the buttery lobster rolls, and the platters of assorted crustacea, bivalves, and shellfish, spliced on ice, to share.

Back in the West Loop, I had lunch with my friend Mango In The Sun at Publican Quality Meats, a butcher-eatery with a short but delicious menu. Everything we had was great, especially a frisée salad with faro and pecans, and a buttery green garlic soup with large-format brioche croutons. Cosmo Goss, the charcuterier here, sent out an assortment of cured meats for us to try, and then took us downstairs to tour his butchery, where sausages hung from the rafters, and blocks of meat aged on shelves. It’s an amazing operation.

And in the South Loop, I was introduced to Eleven City Diner, a modern Jewish deli-diner. On the menu, there’s pastrami, and smoked salmon, and chopped liver too. We had all of that, with half a cantaloupe on the side for scooping. To finish, we barreled through a gigantic wedge of red velvet cake and a boatload of ice cream lined between a split banana (with whipped cream with cherries on top, of course). The pastrami might have been a bit dry, but I really liked the feel of this place. I’ll be back.

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Mango In The Sun had never been to alinea. Having worked with Grant Achatz as the director of events for the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation, for which Achatz has served as a coach, she really wanted to go. She offered to secure the reservation if our friend Viet Pham, who also came along to celebrate my birthday, and I agreed to go with her.

I had been to alinea thrice before – first in 2005, again in 2007, and lastly, in 2010. Although I have always admired and respected Achatz’s talent and seemingly endless appetite for innovation (and still do), I didn’t care for my first two meals at alinea. And I was pretty vocal about it (and, I’ll note, somewhat alone in my criticism).

I thought the experience was too much of a show, focused more on technique and dazzle than deliciousness, or, quite frankly, the diner. And, as a matter of preference, his food skewed too sweet for me.

At my meal in 2010, however, I noticed changes that made alinea more likable. Pared down to sixteen courses from two dozen (or more), the menu felt tighter, strained of excessive frills and distractions. More significantly, I noticed (and this might have just been me being me) a maturity and a self-awareness to the experience – references to the past that justified the present – that made it more weighty and worthy. You can read more about that meal in a previous post.

So, I was anxious to get back to alinea for a fourth time. I agreed to go, and so did Viet.

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Some might not think it fair of me to write about my latest meal at alinea, in part because my friends and I were shown favors beyond the norm, and perhaps more so because we were refused a bill. Chef Achatz even intercepted our server on his way to run a token tab for a tip at our insistence.

But, I think it is fair of me to write about this meal. Briefly, this is why (I really need to devote a longer post to this topic): I have notified you that this meal was not representative of a normal meal at alinea. More importantly, notwithstanding the fact that I believe I can remain honest and objective about my experience, I have disclosed to you factors that might compromise my ability to do so. Knowing that, you are free to assign or deduct from my opinion as much worth as you deem appropriate. If you are still unsatisfied with this reasoning, then treat the following as an account of what can happen at alinea, as opposed to what will or does happen at alinea on a daily basis. Or, don’t read it at all.

All of that being said, here is what I thought of our meal: I had more fun at this dinner than any of my previous dinners at alinea. Part of this was certainly due to the company – I ate with two good friends full of humor and hijinks. But the lion’s share of the fun I credit to Achatz, who personalized the experience for us.

In his restless quest to redefine the culinary proscenium, Achatz orchestrated for us a grand show in three acts, which unfolded across three different tables in three different parts of the restaurant.

With lights off, candles lit, a table set, and rows of cooks squinting over their stations, there, in the silence of Achatz’s kitchen, the curtain went up on our dinner. A tin of caviar alighted, and with it a retinue of trimmings. Vodka, iced, was poured. And cloud-like potato blinis arrived, literally on a two-minute rotation, fresh from a griddle seemingly dedicated solely to our cause. If they weren’t buttery enough, a silver terrine of drawn butter begged: come, take a swim. I ate as many as I could.

Then, we were moved upstairs, where a skyscraper city of seafood awaited us – nearly a dozen different bites, some cold, some warm, and one that required us to perform a little table-top cooking. Thereafter, a half dozen more courses followed.

We ended our meal at yet another table, one last stage upon which Achatz, his then-chef de cuisine Matthew Chasseur (who just left alinea this week), and then-sous chef, Mike Bagale (who is replacing Chasseur as the new chef de cuisine) delivered a sweet finale in silence: dessert (watch the video).

From top to bottom, the food was consistently and flawlessly executed. And, although I can’t say that I loved everything, on balance, the food was more delicious (and seemed less sweet) than I’ve known it to be. My favorite dishes included a crispy shrimp head impaled on the rim of a glass, “bleeding” a tomatoe-y pinçage. I also loved the duck course, which presented that fowl in eight different preparations. From tongue to heart, wing to liver, each part of the duck was so flavorful and well-cooked that the sixty condiments that accompanied the meat were more of a distraction than a complement.

And, of course, I loved the candlelit caviar service that started it all: classy, showy, and timeless.

If dining is theatre, Grant Achatz is an impresario. This meal proved it to be so. Thanks for the high-pitched giggles, chef.

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On the merits of cooking and creativity alone, “The Hunt” was, perhaps, the most impressive of the four meals I’ve now had at the Next (Paris 1906; elBulli; and Kyoto are the other three). Yet, the restaurant’s first run – Paris, 1906 – and the restaurant’s fourth menu – elBulli – remain rivals as my favorite. Those two meals both capitalized upon the most compelling aspect of Next’s potential as a restaurant: the ability to not only transport diners to a different place, but also a different time.

But Next: “The Hunt” was delicious and satisfying in ways that the others were not. (Disclaimer: this meal was a gift from Beran and the restaurant. My friends and were not allowed to pay.)

Able to define the perimeters of this menu with more creative license than with previous menus, chef Dave Beran explored the hunt, from the primal – squab served with its own blood – to the playful – caramelized maple syrup lollies rolled on an ice trough (watch the video here). The Hunt menu also focused a lot on the concept of preservation – one of my favorite courses was a plate of roasted carrots that had been cellared for months, buried in sawdust to prevent both dehydration and spoilage (sawdust has about the same amount of water content as raw carrots).

From what I have witnessed, and from conversations that I’ve had with Beran, whom I have befriended over the past year, I can tell you that every menu at Next is the product of a lot of research, thought, and care. It is for this reason, primarily, coupled with the restaurant’s consistency and precision, that Next has quickly become my most frequent destination in Chicago.

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I ended this birthday trip with two, quiet meals with Mango In The Sun.

I had eaten at Café Spiaggia years ago, but I had never eaten at Spiaggia. So, I finally went.

The pastas were the highlight. I had a row of velvety agnolotti filled with ricotta di bufala and Pecorino Toscano, over which chef Sarah Grueneberg generously shaved black truffles. There was also a wonderful bowl of squid ink tagliolini – each strand taut, but tender – in broth of olive oil-cured tomatoes, garnished with mint, breadcrumbs and nuggets of lobster. The fact that Lady Gaga came to celebrate her birthday the same night was just the icing on the cake.

And, finally, I had dinner at graham elliot.

I will not hide from you my friendship with Graham Elliot Bowles, whom I first met when he was executive chef of the now-closed Avenues at The Peninsula Hotel. Neither will I keep from you the fact that he graciously took care of my dinner, denying my offer to pay for it. But, having disclaimed all of that, I will tell you that my latest meal at graham elliot was very good. In fact, it was the best meal I’ve had there yet.

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Having been witness to so many seminal moments of my life and having tracked so many of my milestones, Chicago has, strangely, become the fathom by which I measure myself. More than in any other city – my hometown of Kansas City included – in Chicago, I see my reflection strung in a series of snapshots from the past to the present. It is the city of my childhood, my adolescence, and my adulthood.

The fact that Chicago also has a lively restaurant scene is just a wonderful coincidence. So, I shall return, and return, and return, to record many more meals, moments, and minutes there.

Here is a list of the restaurants that I visited on this latest trip to Chicago. Each entry is hyperlinked to the photos from that meal.

alinea (Lincoln Park)
Aviary, The (West Loop)
Big Star (Wicker Park)
Eleven City Diner (South Loop)
Flying Saucer (Humboldt Park)
graham elliot (River North)
GT Fish & Oyster (River North)
Lou Mitchell’s (West Loop)
Next: The Hunt (West Loop)
Publican Quality Meats (West Loop)
Spiaggia (Gold Coast)
Trencherman (Wicker Park)
yusho (Logan Square)

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Photos: Two squabs ready for the press at Next: The Hunt, Chicago, Illinois; the Water Tower on North Michigan Avenue, Chicago, Illinois; “Cloud Gate” at Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois; a guitarist and accordionist play a duet cover of “Earth Angel” at Maude’s Liquor Bar, Chicago, Illinois; oysters on the half shell at GT Fish & Oyster, Chicago, Illinois; beef dry-aging on the shelves at Publican Quality Meats in Chicago, Illinois; caviar service in the kitchen at alinea in Chicago, Illinois; Monica Bhambhani and Viet Pham surveying our table of desserts at alinea, Chicago, Illinois; Jason Carlen, wine director at Spiaggia, presents two bottles of wine at Spiaggia, Chicago, Illinois; and pickled vegetables at Yusho in Chicago, Illinois.

I have been, heretofore, open but not terribly vocal about my opinion of this list.  And that’s because I am loathe to bring it any more attention than it already receives.  My issues with the list are long and varied.  But I’ll spare you a detailed accounting of my complaints, partly because I feel insufficiently qualified to criticize this list,* but mostly because it is not the subject I wish to explore in this post.  However, by the very nature of this address, some of my complaints about this list will naturally follow.

I would like to think that most people who read the “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list are smart enough to know that it is neither an objective nor authoritative source for determining the world’s best restaurants.  No one, however qualified, could make that list.**

At best, these are the fifty trendiest (or most-publicized) restaurants in the world, as determined by a rather insular group of voters that includes chefs and restaurateurs (many of whom work in restaurants that appear on the list), food journalists, and bloggers (some of whom are not shy about announcing their position as a “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” voter to chefs and restaurateurs upon their arrival). And let’s not forget the sponsor of this list is San Pellegrino & Acqua Panna, a company that has much to gain on the tables and in the tumblers of the high-end restaurants that this list seems to favor.

And yet, this list drives so much business to the restaurants that it features that you’d think it were the gospel guide to dining.

I know that restaurants are businesses.  And businesses need to make money.  So, from a bottom-line standpoint, I get it.  To put it bluntly, getting your restaurant on this list puts asses in seats (mind the pun).

But here is what upsets me about about the whole thing (and what prompted me to write this post): In a conversation about the upcoming announcement, a chef admitted to me that his primary motivation for wanting to appear on the “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list wasn’t to gain more business, or even to accumulate more publicity for himself. Instead, he hoped that his restaurant would make it onto the list as a morale boost for his staff.

Well, I don’t know what world we’re living in when cooks weigh the worth of their work by silly rankings like this one.

Have they been led astray by the press, which, without much vetting, sensationalize rankings like this one, passing them along, as if in a spirited game of telephone, until their importance becomes grossly inflated?

Or, maybe they’re aspiring after the success achieved by the chefs they admire, some of whom clamber up these media-driven ladders with such fervor and frenzy that it’s both comical and pathetic. Because of lists like this one, I see a growing number of chefs and restaurateurs becoming professional politicians, devoting more of their time to campaigning for their cause than cooking in their kitchens.  And this troubles me.

You chefs and restaurateurs – all of you, both the ones on the list and the ones who aspire to be on the list: good for you for exploiting San Pellegrino, because San Pellegrino is exploiting you.  But make no mistake: by supporting this list (or any other ranking like it), you are ensuring your own expiration.  For, what goes up, must come down.  The legitimacy you lend to this list will make the weight of your irrelevancy that much greater when you fall off the list, as you inevitably will.

But haul in your dollars now. If you can travel, campaign, and keep your house in order, who am I to throw stones?  Good business is good business.

I am more concerned with the rising generation of cooks, who would be fooled and foiled by the promise of glamor and fame.  Theirs may not be good business one day.

To all you cooks out there: don’t mind the list.  Not this one, or any one. It’s all just fluff.  Focus, instead, on being the best cook you can be.  I assure you, in the long run, that kind of personal investment will bring you far more respect and fulfillment than any ranking or star.  I offer this advice, of course, not as a chef, or someone who has walked (or ever will walk) in your shoes.  Rather, I offer it as one whose opinion of you is just as important – a diner, whose happiness you’re trying to elicit, whose trust you’re trying to earn, and whose dollar you’re trying to win.  And we are many, those of us who can think and eat for ourselves. We don’t need lists or rankings to tell us whether food is good or bad (and now, with the internet, we don’t even need lists or rankings to tell us where to find good food).  We are not lemmings.  We’re informed individuals, sophisticated enough to notice your precision and taste your passion. Don’t try to fool us with your rankings and stars.  It’s insulting.  If your food is good, we’ll know it, and we’ll tell others about it.

Whose opinion matters to you?  Whose respect do you wish to gain?  Whose favor do you seek?  If you’re in it for something more than just money or fame, who do you want eating in your restaurant?

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* I am sure there are many who have a far more comprehensive basis by which to judge the worthiness of this list than I.  But, for the sake of transparency, from the 2013 San Pellegrino “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list, I have, as of today, April 29, 2013, eaten at seven of the top ten restaurants on the list (Noma, El Cellar de Can Roca, Mugaritz, Osteria Francescana, Per Se, Alinea and Eleven Madison Park).  I have been to twenty-seven of the top fifty on the list (The Fat Duck, l’Arpege, l’Astrance, le Bernardin, Oud Sluis, Aqua, Mirazur, Daniel, Schloss Schauenstein, Asador Extebarri, De Librije, Pujol, Momofuku Ssam Bar, Biko, Quique Dacosta, Hof van Cleve, The French Laundry, Il Canto, Manresa, and Geranium).  And I have eaten at forty-one of the top one-hundred restaurants on the list (Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Guy Savoy, Viajante, Coi, Septime, Sant Pau, Masa, Jean-Georges, Martin Berasategui, Lung King Heen, Hibiscus, La Vie, Chez Panisse, and Restaurant Relae). Of these forty-one restaurants I have visited, I have eaten at fourteen of them more than once.  I have eaten Matthias Dahlgren’s food at his former restaurant, Bon Lloc, but not at his current, eponymous restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden, which appears at number 41 on the list.  And I have also eaten Joel Robuchon’s food, in Las Vegas at The Mansion, in New York at the former l’Atelier de Joel Robuchon at The Four Seasons, and in Monte-Carlo at Joel Robuchon at the Metropôle, but I have not eaten at l’Atelier Saint-Germain de Joel Robuchon in Paris, which ranks 12th on the list.  And, I have eaten twice at the now-closed elBulli, which topped the “World’s 50 Best Restaurants” list for five of the past eleven years.

** Lists and rankings aren’t harmful, per se.  It’s what chefs, the media, and the general public do with them that make them misleading.

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I’m not going to be shy: I’m very good with geography.  I always have been.  (I also have an unusually good sense of direction. My family calls me the walking GPS.)

But, whereas I once associated places with landmarks, or friends, or museums, or colleges, I now mentally map out the world with food and restaurants.

If you say Ann Arbor, I think of the many sandwiches I had at Zingerman’s as a law student.  If someone mentions Modena, Massimo Bottura’s three Michelin-starred Osteria Francescana comes to mind.  If you bring up Seasalter, I think of Stephen Harris’s wonderful, vinegary skate wing at his 17th-Century gastropub, The Sportsman.  And, if Carmel were to come up in conversation, I’d think of two restaurants: Marinus at Bernardus Lodge in the valley and Aubergine at l’Auberge Carmel by the sea.

But, until I revisited Carmel a few weeks ago (I had been there once as a child, when Clint Eastwood was still the city’s mayor), there was very little that I could attach to that tiny seaside town otherwise.

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Justin Cogley, chef of Aubergine, and John Shields, formerly of TownHouse, had been batting around the idea of mounting a collaboration dinner. The two had worked together at Charlie Trotter’s in Chicago years ago. After two years of talking about it, they finally made it happen last month in Carmel.

Cogley and Shields invited Matthias Merges (now chef of Yusho and Billy Sunday in Chicago), under whom both had cooked at Trotter’s.  Cogley also invited Scott Anderson (chef of Elements in Princeton, New Jersey), James Syhabout (chef of commis and Hawker Fare in Oakland, California), and George Mendes (chef of Aldea in New York City).  And, because I knew all of these guest chefs well, Cogley (who, alone, I had not met until this trip) asked me to photograph this event.*

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The approach to Monterey (MRY) airport is breathtaking. Our plane descended slowly over velvety green hills dotted with million-dollar ranches.  In the distance, a dramatic and beautiful coastline awaited, lined with golf courses, mansions, and more. This is a playground to the haves.

L’Auberge Carmel, a white castle-like structure with a generous courtyard in the center, was built in 1929.  Originally, the building was inhabited by a community of artists, who occupied its twenty apartments.  Now, those apartments have been converted into spacious suites (outfitted with heated bathroom floors and wireless internet) that comprise this small, intimate Relais & Châteaux property.

The restaurant, Aubergine, is on the hotel’s ground floor.  It’s a surprisingly small dining room, seating just over twenty covers.  Cogley came to this restaurant in January of 2011 from RIA at the Elysian Hotel in Chicago, where he had helped open that restaurant as the executive sous chef.**

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Under the banner of “Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine” – the name Cogley gave to this inaugural event at l’Auberge Carmel – Cogley organized an incredible, three-day itinerary that not only showed us the abundant, natural resources of the Monterey Bay Peninsula, but also begged us to reconsider and discover them anew.

David Fink, one of the owners of the l’Auberge Carmel, took us on a hike through the stunning Point Lobos State Reserve.  Of it, landscape artist Francis McComas had once said, it is “the greatest meeting of land and water in the world.”  And, it has been considered by many to be the “crown jewel” of the California State park system.

Five hundred fifty-four acres of the park are above sea level.  Another seven hundred fifty acres of submerged land were added in 1960, making it the first underwater reserve in the country.

Parts of it looked prehistoric – a rocky shoreline that, in some areas, receded to a faraway treeline, counting the strata of time as it went.  But most of it was a mountainous terrain of green and bark, with a thick pad of pine needles underfoot, glittering with confetti of broken abalone shells that point to its past inhabitants (mostly Chinese) of whalers and fishermen.  Here and there, the thick of green ended abruptly at hundred-foot cliffs that dropped into a frothy surf that sprayed and crashed along the jagged baseline below.  Seals and sea otters and large birds of prey converged at this continental horizon, where century-old cypresses, with their terraced, bonsai look, gripped the edge of earth with their roots.  The air was crisp and fresh, the land was lush and tender, and the sea was wild and clear.  If you want to know what the world was like before man came into it, go to Point Lobos.  It is stunning.

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Trevor Fay, one of the partners who owns the Monterey Abalone Co., told us that, at one time, the waters around Monterey Bay were teaming with abalone.  Overfishing reduced the population to an unsustainable amount.  They’ve been scrambling to recover ever since. It’s a story we’ve heard the world over, from the buffalo of the prairie plains, to the tuna of the oceans deep.

At his company’s hatchery in Moss Landing, Fay showed us tubs of temperature-specific sea water, piped directly from the deep waters miles offshore, filtering through plastic trays lined with a rainbow of seaweeds.  Clinging to the seaweed were thousands of tiny abalone, seedlings barely a year old.  Here, they would stay until they were mature enough to be moved to cages kept in live seawater.

The breed of abalone that the Monterey Abalone Co. farms grows at the rate of about an inch per year.  So, it takes the abalone roughly four years to reach market size – about 3.5 inches in length.  Coupled with this slow growth, a high attrition rate accounts for the high prices that these mollusks fetch (around $20 per pound).

From the hatchery, we caravanned to Wharf No. 2, which juts out from Monterey into the bay.  We dropped down a ladder to a network of planks – suspended just above the water – beneath the wharf.  He raised one of the dozens of cages from the cold, aquamarine waters to show us the abalone inside, each the size of an adult hand.  These were marketable specimens, fat and meaty.

The cages are raised once a week and picked through for predators (crabs, etc.) and dead abalone.  The abalone are also fed during these weekly cleanings.  All around us was the rustling of kelp, as workers hacked at the long, papery strips with their machetes, and stuffed them into the cages, food for the abalone.

Because the bay’s water is cycled out in surges every twelve hours, taking with it biofoul and other detritus, this is an ideal place for farming abalone. The water is fresh and clean at all times.  There wasn’t a whiff or hint of fishiness under that wharf, only the breezy scent of the sea.  It’s no wonder I’ve seen these farmed abalone on the menus at The French Laundry and Manresa.

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On Fan Shell Beach, just yards from the Pebble Beach Golf Course, the chefs waded among the tidal pools, mesmerized by the clear waters and abundant wildlife therein.  They discovered bullwhip.  It looked like an overgrown beet root with a tail twenty feet long.  Fay told us that it is a type of kelp.  The small end of the tail anchors to rocks on the seabed, and the large bulb at the other the end bobs near the surface of the water.  The ones we saw washed ashore were small, he said.  They grow as long as fifty feet.  Fay said that, when diving in rough waters, the bobbing bulbs will lift small rocks on the ocean floor, causing them to click and clack in percussive rhythm.

We found a half-eaten seal, beached, a victim of the shark-infested waters.

And we found carpets of edible flora, which the chefs enthusiastically pointed out to me.

All around us was nature; wild, untouched, pristine.

Scott Anderson and his sous chef, Mike Ryan, were so fond of Fan Shell Beach, that they returned the next day, taking me along with them.  While they hunted among the craggy shoreline, I relished leaning against the seaside gale that beat at us.  I enjoyed its sharp slap across my face.  The air was so fresh, so crisp, so clean.  I couldn’t breathe enough of it.

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Carmel-By-The-Sea is a small, walkable village that rolls down a gentle slope to the ocean.

L’Auberge Carmel is a quick, five-minute walk from the water. I took advantage of its proximity daily, enjoying long, morning strolls along the wide-mouthed lagoon that looks north to the lacey, emerald shores of Pebble Beach.

In the mornings, I found campers zipped up in their cocoons next to the sea wall.  I watched couples fade, hand-in-hand into the hazy distance, a mist of sea and sand driven ashore from beyond. And I watched dogs romp in the sand with their owners.

In the afternoon, little kids flirted with the water’s edge and tugged at kites high in the air.

And all day long, surfers bobbed on the horizon.

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When we weren’t touring the peninsula, and when the chefs weren’t cooking, we were eating.

At Cantinetta Luca, an Italian restaurant owned under the same umbrella that includes l’Auberge Carmel, we had an impressive spread of housemade charcuterie.  And from the adjacent Salumeria Luca, I had a delicious, cold porchetta sandwich with Provolone and thinly shaved red onions (it’s called the “Toscano”).

Cogley took us to Restaurant 1833 in Monterey for dinner one night.  The restaurant is a rambling collection of rooms, most of which have been added on to the landmark adobe structure at the restaurant’s heart (built in 1833, the storied Stokes adobe is said to be haunted). The menu offers a mishmash of Americana (cheddar-bacon biscuits, New York strip steak, macaroni and cheese, pork chop with grits) and Italiana (pizzas, gnocchi, charred octopus).  The restaurant was packed, the cooking was solid.

And, back at the hotel, Cogley hosted a dinner for all of the guest chefs and me at Aubergine, where he introduced us to his coastal cooking.  It’s simple, thoughtful, and delicate.  I was impressed.

We had a meaty knot of scallop served on its shell, dressed simply with some citrus and ringed by a fluffy boa of seaweed.  Cogley served us tender nuggets of abalone from Fay’s Monterey farm with a light, warm broth and umeboshi. There were thin slices of duck breasts that had been aged for thirty days, accompanied by vanilla-infused dates.  And at the end, pastry chef Ron Mendoza sent out a series of sweets, which included a dessert of candy cap mushrooms, Bourbon, and pine.

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My friends Chuck (0f Chuckeats), Lesley Kao, and Tomo (of Tomostyle), and I hadn’t seen each other in far too long.  So, sharing a table with them at the Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine dinner at Aubergine was a particularly sweet reunion.

By this, the third, day of our trip, the chefs had amassed a small treasure of coastal flora from the Monterey Bay peninsula to use in their dishes.

Anderson and his sous chef, Mike Ryan, who had collected a particularly large quantity of vegetation, recreated the rocky coastline of Monterey in a plate of tuna and herbs.

Shields took local juniper clippings and infused its woodsy scent into a meringue that he used in a dessert with celery, sorrel, and white chocolate.

And Merges garnished a buttery block of Miyazaki strip loin – I haven’t figured out how a cow composed of more fat than meat can stand up - with hijiki and mussels (and an assortment of his now-famous fried skins).

My two favorite dishes came from George Mendes.  His olive oil-poached bacalhau (salt cod), which I’ve had before, was a knock-out – indescribably silky, and full of flavor.  Bridging the gap between the Monterey Bay Peninsula and Southern Europe – two of the world’s seven true Mediterranean climates –  he sauced the fish with black olive yeast broth, and garnished the plate with foraged samphire, and dried tomatoes.

Mendes’s other dish was a revised asordo, a traditional Portuguese bread soup. Thick and chunky, and layered with flavor, the soup arrived with local spot prawns and sea grapes.  I especially loved the little croutons sprinkled throughout, giving each bite a playful crunch.

The dinner flowed surprisingly well, especially given that the chefs didn’t really coordinate their dishes with each other.  The terroir of the Monterey Bay Peninsula coast towed a convincing line through the dinner, from the canapés that were passed in the courtyard, to the desserts at the end.

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Cogley and his crew didn’t sleep that night.  After closing down the restaurant, they began prepping for our send-off breakfast.

By the time I arrived at the beach the next morning, Cogley and his team had set up camp.  There was an amazing spread of breakfast pastries, chiles rellenos, fresh fruits, juices, and coffee awaiting us.

The sharp morning sunlight filtered softly through the hazy smoke of the campfire as Cogley and his cooks knelt in the sand frying sausages, potatoes, and eggs in skillets over the open fire.  All of this was served up, hot, on cedar planks, with a generous shaving of black truffles.

Mendoza, the pastry chef, uncovered a Dutch oven of bread pudding.  The top was golden-brown and crispy, just how I like it, and the filling underneath was thick and custard-like, pocketed with nuggets of pleasantly tart, caramelized apples.   Mendoza had used some of Shields’s juniper-infused cream in this batch.  It was terrific. I went back from seconds and thirds.

I couldn’t imagine a more thoughtful or picturesque ending to an already beautiful week in Carmel.  With the sun on our faces, the smell of breakfast in the air, and the surf at our back, we didn’t want to leave.

As the chefs headed back to the hotel to catch their shuttles for the airport, I urged Cogley to remount this event next year.  This – the discovery, rediscovery, and exploration of land and sea – has become the mission of modern-day cooking.  Events like this one – small, intimate, and focused – give chefs the opportunity to spend time at the origin of their ingredients, taste a new terroir, and to cross-pollinate.  This is important.  And I thank Cogley for recognizing its importance and doing something about it.

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After breakfast, Tomo, Cogley, and I took a joy ride south along California’s famous Highway 1 towards Big Sur.  We stopped at the Big Sur Bakery for coffee and then turned back, stopping every few miles along the way to snap some shots.  The vistas were stunning.

As I packed up my things at the hotel, Cogley ran up the street to fetch me one, last porchetta sandwich for the road.  I hope that wasn’t my last one.

A few weeks ago, Justin Cogley was named among the latest class of Food + Wine Magazine’s Best New Chefs.  He is, to me, a truly worthy and deserving candidate of that recognition. And I congratulate him for it.  I look forward to hearing great things from Carmel-By-The-Sea, and hope to return soon.

If you haven’t been, go.

Here are the restaurants I visited on this trip. Each is hyperlinked to the corresponding photo set on my Flickr account:

1833 (Monterey)
Aubergine (Carmel-By-The-Sea)
Aubergine – Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine Dinner (Carmel-By-The Sea)
Aubergine – Beach Breakfast (Carmel-By-The-Sea)
Cantinetta Luca (Carmel-By-The-Sea)
Salumeria Luca (Carmel-By-The-Sea)

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A big thanks to Justin Cogley and the entire staff at l’Auberge Carmel and Aubergine for sharing their corner of the world with me so generously, and with as much style and class.  The hospitality I received was truly undeserved – Cogley even sleuthed out my favorite type of music and cut an album for me. It was waiting for me in my room when I arrived at the hotel.

* Shields, Anderson, Mendes, and Merges have come, at my invitation, to Kansas City to cook at dinners hosted by Debbie Gold at The American Restaurant (Shields, Anderson, and Mendes all cooked at the same dinner in 2011; Merges came a year later).  I also spent a good deal of time with Anderson, Merges, Shields, and Syhabout in the kitchen at the Restaurant at Meadowood, where they were guests of chef Christopher Kostow at last year’s Twelve Days of Christmas dinner series (Mendes cooked at the Twelve Days of Christmas series the year before).  And, as recently as a couple of weeks before this trip to Carmel, I attended a collaboration dinner hosted by Mendes at his restaurant in New York City, where he cooked alongside Shields and Anderson.

** RIA surprised many when it was awarded two Michelin stars in the guide’s Chicago debut edition in 2011.  RIA closed in the second half of 2012.

Photos: The rocky coast of the Point Lobos State Reserve, Carmel, California; l’Auberge Carmel at night, Carmel-By-The-Sea, California; John Shields, Scott Anderson, and Mike Ryan at the l’Auberge Carmel, Carmel-By-The-Sea, Carmel; the chefs looking out over Point Lobos State Reserve, Carmel, California; a worker cuts kelp with a machete to stuff into abalone cages under Wharf No. 2 in Monterey, California; John Shields and James Syhabout at Fan Shell Beach, Pebble Beach, California; the sun comes out at the beach in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California; abalone at Aubergine in Carmel, California; John Shields and Justin Cogley plating at Aubergine in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California; sausages in the skillet on the beach at Carmel-By-The-Sea, California; Justin Cogley looking out over Big Sur, California.

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You know those restaurants you’ve been meaning to visit for ten years?  I have long lists of them.  And none is longer or harder to maintain than my New York list.

New York City is a high-volume situation.  The sheer number of restaurants that open (and close) there each year, makes it one of the hardest markets with which to keep pace.  Despite the fact that I have begun complaining about the culinary stagnation there – has anything truly groundbreaking appeared on New York’s restaurant scene in the last half-decade? – to its credit, I never hurt for options in that city.

Every trip to New York requires me to balance the comfort I take in returning to the reliable against the hope I keep for discovering something new, something better, something different.  But, in the past couple of years, that hope has been dashed repeatedly on the glossy pages of overhype.  Disenchanted and disappointed, I recently decided to reprioritize my roster.  I shelved the new draftees and started working down the bench.  And you know what?  I ate very well.

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I had never been to Fatty Crab.  So I finally went.  I ordered the restaurant’s namesake “chili crab,” of the dungeness variety.  It arrived hacked in half and dunked in a bowl of creamy sauce with scallions and thick slices of Pullman toast for sopping (next time, I’ll opt for rice instead).  It was a messy project, and not an inexpensive one either (the market price for that crab was somewhere near $45 that day).  But it was good.  Work quickly, those legs grow cold faster than you think.

I had never been to Wallsé either.  So I went there too.  The goulash was warm and thick, sweet with paprika.  The sweetbreads were fat and creamy, served with dark greens, gently wilted.  The weiner schnitzel was tender and thin, its breading light and happy under a slice of lemon.  And true to the menu’s description, the apple strudel was crisp, banded in flakey layers of pastry.  It was served with cinnamon ice cream.

All of this, and more, my friends (Wizard of Roz and Mr. RBI) and I ate with a smile under the gaze of the Austrian-born chef Kurt Gutenbrunner.  His portrait loomed large in the room, an impressive posture rendered by an impressive artist.*  He appeared in person, towards the end of our dinner, to shake some hands and to chat with regulars in the candlelight glow.  It was a lovely evening.

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Frank DeCarlo’s Bacaro on the Lower East Side has been a fixture on my New York list ever since I read an article about the chef and restaurant by Mark Bittman in the New York Times years ago.  I had been intrigued by Bittman’s description of DeCarlo’s cooking, which is inspired by the spice route that prospered Venice half a millennium ago.

So, when I stumbled across Bacaro while rummaging for restaurants that offered their regular menu (and not some overpriced prix fixe with silly aphrodisiacal claims) on Valentine’s night, I decided it was time to go.

The majority of the restaurant is located underground in a rambling cellar with many nooks and corners.  If you listen carefully, you can hear the winged lion of St. Mark roar: it looks as medieval as you want Venice to be.  Lit almost solely by the flicker of votive candles, it might have been a romantic setting if the couples around us hadn’t been practically eating with us. It was a cozy fit.

The food was simple and well-made.  My friend Mango and I had a bundle of tender green beans draped with white anchovies; some razor clams, which arrived sizzling in a shallow tub of butter; and a bowl of spaghetti con vongole, which was more vongole than spaghetti, and more tomatoey than not.

Bittman’s article had featured a recipe that DeCarlo (who also owns Peasant) claimed to originate from the era of the Visigoths, nearly ten centuries old.  A victorious battle for the Visigoths against an invading tribe of barbarians had left a field of dead horses. As legend has it, the horses were butchered and the meat was preserved in red wine.  The practice was passed down until the spice trade added to the marinade a mix of sweet spices (cloves, orange, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc.).  You will find the recipe here, and a version of it at Bacaro.  Of course, DeCarlo uses beef, not horse.  The slices of meat, noticeably infused with the sweet marinade, were served with a simply dressed tuft of greens.

We skipped dessert and headed uptown to Park Avenue Café Winter.  Richard Leach has been on my bucket list for years.  And he remains safely undisturbed in his place.  My attempt to drop in for Leach’s desserts on Valentine’s night was a lost cause.  Arriving to S.R.O. in the bar, we turned around and left.  But, I’ll be back

Luckily, we found a table at nearby Bar Pleiades in the Surrey Hotel, where Noah Carroll, pastry chef of the adjoining Café Boulud, sent out a tall, Grand Marnier soufflé for two, and a couple of other desserts.  It was less of a consolation, and more of a prize.

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Domenico DeMarco opened Di Fara Pizza on the corner of 15th Street and Avenue J in Brooklyn in 1964.  For nearly fifty years, he has been the only person making pizzas there (so be prepared to wait for your pie).  If he’s not already an octogenarian, he’s pretty close to that achievement.

Despite the tremendous weight of evidence in favor of visiting this legendary pizzaiolo, I hadn’t.  I was foolish.

To the uninitiated, Di Fara may seem like a hot mess at first. There is no room for a line to form.  There is only a crowd.  If your observation skills fail you, rely on the many regulars in line for instructions.  Here they are, briefly: There are two, basic options at Di Fara: round or square.  (You can order by the slice, but you have to wait until DeMarco makes an extra pizza to be divided among smaller orders.)  You write your order down on the yellow legal pad that you’ll find on the far-side of the counter top.  DeMarco’s son crosses off the orders as they’re sliced and served.  If you want something to drink, you either bring it, or choose from one of the two refrigerated cases by the door.  If you can find a place to sit at one of the three folding tables that line the walls, you’re lucky.  If you don’t, then you settle up at the counter and take your food elsewhere.

While I prefer the square pie, I’d be irresponsible not to endorse both.  They are phenomenal.

The round pizza has a flat, slightly knobby rim, less blistered and more elastic. The toppings are sparse, yet perfectly measured – a stain of tart tomato sauce, some patches of bubbly, milky mozzarella, and fresh basil leaves that DeMarco snips over the top of the pizza just before he slices them.  It’s easily my favorite pizza Margherita.

The square pie starts off more like focaccia. DeMarco pats the thick, oily dough into a well-greased pan and bakes it naked.  As the dough bakes, he pulls it out of the oven several times (standing on boxes – were they full of beer or canned tomatoes? – to reach the upper oven).  Each time, he lifts the corners of the crust and bathes it with a generous pour of olive oil.  As the crust crisps, he adds the toppings – the same ones you’ll find on the round pie.  The result is a molten, meteor-like bottom that’s crunchy and oily, and a fluffy, cooked center.  It’s thick, but not heavy. It’s perfect, really.  Unlike Chicago deep-dish pizza, which is rarely cooked evenly or adequately – there’s that fat middle section where you can’t tell when the uncooked dough ends and the cheese begins – this is a thing of beauty.

If you haven’t been to Di Fara Pizza, grab some friends (so you can share a pizza or two), a good amount of patience (because you will wait), and some cash (they don’t take credit cards), and hop on the Q train to Avenue J (the restaurant is one block from the station). Go sooner rather than later.**

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I spent a day with Adam of A Life Worth Eating.

Our pizza crawl was cut short when we arrived at Paulie Gee’s in Greenpoint.  It was 3:00 p.m., and the sign on the door let us know that the pizzeria wouldn’t open until 6:00.  We kicked ourselves for our shoddy due diligence, and regretted not having indulged in one or two more slices at Di Fara, where we had just left, gifting the majority of our uneaten square pie to those around us.

Walking towards Williamsburg, we swung by Peter Pan Donut and Pastry Shop, located in a particularly Polish part of Brooklyn, for an afternoon donut.  A regular at the counter told us the best one is the whole-wheat donut – “it’s a sleeper hit,” he insisted.  There were none left.  But the two we had – one chocolate cake donut and one toasted coconut cake donut - were pretty great.

Arriving at Persons of Interest, a hipster barbershop in Williamsburg, Adam walked past the stylists and led me straight into a back room, where Dillon Edwards pulled some exceptionally good espresso for us.  Edwards’s one-man, one-room operation is called, simply, Parlor Coffee.

I had never been to the Essex Street Market.  So, Adam and I finished our day over tubes of cookies from Dorie Greenspan’s cubby-hole shop there, Beurre & Sel.  Some of the cookies I tried were unusually dry, or doughy.  But, I loved the  ”Classic Jammers,” a modified thumbprint cookie with berry jam and a streusel topping.  That one was terrific.

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Many have urged me to eat at the two Michelin-starred Soto.  So, finally, I went.

The quality of Sotohiro Kosugi’s seafood, including the sea urchin (for which he has become known), is solid.  But, I thought that some of his composed dishes, as pretty and imaginative as they were – including his famous “Uni Ika Sugomori Zukuri,” in which a small mound of sea urchin was wrapped, like a turban, with long, thick strips of squid, topped with a quail egg yolk, and decorated with strips of nori to mimic a spiny sea urchin shell -  were a bit impractical to eat, especially with chopsticks alone.

But, for the couple of hot dishes we had at the beginning of our “omakase” dinner, including a beautiful shiso agedashi, and the plaque of creamy chu-toro that came paved with avocado and caviar, I’d definitely go again.

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I couldn’t escape (or, more accurately: resist) returning to a few restaurants that I’ve visited before.

I had lunch at Café Boulud with my friend Adam.  We were served a terrific salad of shaved Brussels sprouts dressed with a mustardy vinaigrette and tossed with toasted pine nuts.  There was also a beautiful filet of cod painted with tamarind and doused with a warm, creamy mishmish curry broth.  And Alex Martinez, then-chef de cuisine (as of yesterday, he is the new chef of DBGB on the Bowery), sent us a row of fluffy, buttery rosemary biscuits to accompany a pretty, pink terrine of venison pocketed with creamy foie gras throughout.

At half-time, my friend Adam and I were invited into the kitchen for a surprise.  I was expecting ice cream, or a cocktail.  We arrived to something much better: two blond munchkins with juicy cheeks running around.  When we returned to our table, it was flooded with desserts.  We finished what we could and were rewarded with a round of petits fours – including some respectable mini-canelés – for our efforts.

My college roommate happened to be in New York and saw one of my tweets from the city.  So he texted me just in time to join me for lunch at Jonathan Benno‘s Lincoln Ristorante.  We hadn’t seen each other in two years, so we downloaded each others’ lives over strozzapreti, painted green with a bitter pesto made of rabe and punterelle, and velvety ribbons of buckwheat pappardelle in a lusty, veal ragu.  For unobtrusively good cooking, I recommend Lincoln.

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I didn’t feel like my first visit to Dovetail, a one Michelin-starred restaurant on the Upper West Side, was representative of chef John Fraser’s potential.  So, I decided to go back.

This time, I was not disappointed.  Our twelve courses, collectively, felt much more like a cohesive whole.  We started with a lovely salad of Fuji apples spiced with curry; which was followed by fluffy ricotta gnocchi in a stunning, red beet sauce; and then moved on to a rich fondue with crispy pommes gaufrettes and black truffles.  Our meal was anchored by a beautiful, dry-aged sirloin, which was presented whole, and then sliced and served with corned tongue on the side.  Pastry chef Michal Shelkowitz ended our meal with three desserts. My favorite one was a semifreddo of kaffir lime with candied kumquats and a chilled, citrus broth.

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George Mendes was hosting a collaboration dinner among friends at his restaurant aldea. He invited me to attend as his guest.

The other chefs that night I knew well: John Shields, formerly of TownHouse (he is now in negotiations for a space in Washington, D.C.), and Scott Anderson of Elements in Princeton, New Jersey.

Each chef presented two courses.  Among my favorites were Shields’s dried and grated beets, which he topped with a run of egg yolk, super-spicy wild onions, and horseradish oil.  I also loved Mendes’s block of suckling pig with a crackling crust, served with clams.

A week before, an old college friend, Weissman, whom I hadn’t seen in over a decade (it’s sad that I can say that now), contacted me out of the blue.  As a part of our reacquaintance, he joined me at this dinner.  Before he left the city the next morning, Weissman and I met up for breakfast at Sarabeth’s East on the Upper East Side. I had pumpkin pancakes.  And you know what?  They were pretty good.

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The primary purpose of this latest trip to New York was actually to photograph All-Clad Metalcrafter’s newly announced class of “Chef Ambassadors,” a group of chefs that will “play an integral role in product development and testing, creating recipes and promotional materials” for the cookware company.

Following the photoshoot, I was invited to a dinner hosted by All-Clad at Per Se.  The dinner was attended by representatives from the company, as well as the chef ambassadors and Thomas Keller.  Eli Kaimeh, the restaurant’s chef de cuisine, cooked for this private party.

During our dinner, Keller told us that, at one point in his career, he had made a tarte tatin every day for three years.  And every day, it came out differently. He never figured out how to get a consistent result.  But, the tarte tatin that he recently had at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant in Lyon inspired him to revisit this classic French pastry. (I have written about Bocuse’s version of the tarte tatin on this blog before.)  Upon returning to the U.S., he tasked his pastry chef, Elwyn Boyles, with perfecting the tarte.

And so, our dinner concluded with tarte tatin.  It arrived whole – a glossy, caramel wonder – on a silver platter.  It was paraded around our table and then returned to the kitchen.  The tarte reappeared, divided among us, with vanilla ice cream.  It needed nothing more.

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On my last day in New York, I gathered up all of the candies and pastries that I had collected over the week and made a breakfast out of them with Adam at his new apartment.

Afterwards, I met up with some friends at Aamanns of Copenhagen in TriBeCa for brunch.  The original restaurant is in Copenhagen.  This is its U.S. outpost.

We ordered the four-course brunch tasting menu ($42): four half-portion smørrebrød, two different types of cured herring, grilled pork paté, beef tartare, and a generous amount of cheese.  It was a lot of food.  The beet-cured hake smørrebrød was particularly good – the fish had taken on a waxy denseness, and a pretty, magenta color too.  I also loved the juniper berry-cured herring that was served with capers, onions, and a wedge of boiled egg. And the bread – Danish bread might be my ruin if I ever move to Denmark.  Buttered and toasted, the dense, dark bread was so good that I all but forgot about the cheese that came with it.

To complete our Scandinavian-inspired meal (and shamelessly using Gavin Kaysen‘s son Emile as our excuse), we piled into a cab and headed for the corner of 7th Avenue and Christopher Street on the west side.  At 89 Christopher Street is Sockerbit, a Swedish candy store.  The bins that line the walls there throw a shock of color against the otherwise white box of an interior.  They brim with candies of all shapes and sizes – some hard, some gummy, some wrapped, and some on sticks. I bought some salted licorice, hugged my friends good-bye, and hailed a cab for the airport.

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Part of what makes New York so exciting to me is its constantly stir of new and shiny opportunities.  I embrace it, and love the city for it.

But, consider peeling back the city’s glossy coat for once, as I have begun to do.  Past all the pomp and press of today, you will find the well-preserved patina of yesterday awaiting you.  The New York of five, ten, fifteen – even twenty years ago – is still as good as it ever was.  It’s mature, it’s dependable, and it’s delicious.  There’s no way it could have survived if it wasn’t.

Here are links to the photos of the food that I ate in New York:

Aamanns of Copenhagen (Manhattan)
aldea (Collaboration dinner with Shields and Anderson) (Manhattan)
bacaro (Manhattan)
Beurre & Sel (Manhattan)
Café Boulud (once, twice) (Manhattan)
Di Fara’s (Brooklyn)
dovetail (Manhattan)
Fatty Crab (Manhattan)
Lincoln Ristorante (Manhattan)
maialino (Manhattan)
per se (Manhattan)
Peter Pan Donut & Pastry Shop (Brooklyn)
Sarabeth’s East (Manhattan)
sockerbit (Manhattan)
soto (Manhattan)
wallsé (Manhattan)

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* The famous portrait of Kurt Gutenbrunner that hangs in its bar dining room is by the artist Julian Schnabel.

** While you’re waiting at Di Fara, find the picture and story of Mariam Amash hanging on the wall.  Read how she had 11 children, who begat her 120 grandchildren in the course of her 120-year life. She attributes her longevity to drinking a cup of olive oil every day and eating DeMarco’s pizza four times a week.

Photos: “Buckyball,” an art installation by Leo Villareal in Madison Square Park, New York City; the chili crab at Fatty Crab in New York City; a 16 oz. Grand Marnier soufflé at Bar Pleiades in New York City; Domenico DeMarco at Di Fara Pizza in Brooklyn; tubes of cookies from Beurre & Sel; “Uni Ika Sugomori Zukuri” at Soto in New York City; strozzapreti al pesto at Lincoln Ristorante in New York City; dry-aged sirloin at Dovetail in New York City; suckling pig with clams at aldea in New York City; tarte tatin at Per Se in New York City; candies, cookies, and coffee collected from my week of eating in New York City; Emile Kaysen at sockerbit in New York City.

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The last time I was in Copenhagen, I was eleven years-old.

In the years since, the city has waxed into a culinary constellation that now attracts gastronauts from faraway places.

Copenhagen’s rise as an eating destination was quick and hot, and unexpected. But its story was a good one: a naissance of exploration, celebration, and exploitation of natural resources among Danish chefs, who have begun to paint a compelling picture of their indigenous culture, one that is not familiar to most.

But I was skeptical. I always am when I see the press dart, like a school of fish, towards some shiny, new subject.

So, I avoided going to Copenhagen for years. In hindsight, I probably waited a bit too long – not because I missed the apex of the city’s gastronomic parabola (which, I think it has yet to reach), but because the city now brims with more options than I can adequately cover in one or two short trips.

Better late than never, right?

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As soon as the podium cleared at the Bocuse d’Or, the stadium emptied and the party moved to Lyon’s St. Exupéry airport, where hundreds, if not thousands, of attendees of SIRHA made their exit.*

I was among them. And so was Rasmus Kofoed, winner of the 2011 Bocuse d’Or and chef of Geranium. We were introduced to each other at the airport and shared the same flight to Copenhagen, where I spent a fast and furious forty-eight hours eating.

I visited four restaurants in two days: noma, relae, Geranium, and kadeau.

All of them were spectacular, for many different reasons. I shall endeavor to write about all of them in subsequent posts.

But, if I may summarize: it is an understanding of the quality and novelty of the ingredients at their disposal that makes the chefs and restaurants in Copenhagen particularly outstanding. Their philosophy and approach to cooking doesn’t differ from those in the better kitchens around the world. And neither are their techniques or their form of storytelling superior. Rather, it is the subject of their story – or, more significantly, their ownership and confidence in the subject of their story – that attracts me (and, I suspect, many others) to them. They are painting a picture that only chefs in their part of the world can paint. And they are doing so masterfully. When you see, smell, and taste their food in the context of the place and time in which it is presented, it makes sense. There, in the shadows, is a glimpse of a rough agrarian life (the exploration of fermentation among Danish chefs gives Shakespeare’s famous line, “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” a whole new meaning), the intrepid vikings, and the brutal but beautiful ice-cold sea. The aesthetics, the flavors, the textures, the colors – together, it forms an organic and believable experience. That is authenticity.

It is for the same reasons that the empty and meaningless mimicking of the Danes has repelled me from so many chefs and restaurants around the world. It happened to the Spaniards, it happened to the Japanese, and it is happening now to the Danish. You, in New York; and you, in California; and you, in France – you are not in Copenhagen. So why are you cooking as if you were? That is not organic and believable. That is silly.

And now that I’ve been to Copenhagen for a look at the original, it seems even sillier.

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My time in between meals was spent wandering the city’s streets and tracing its waterways. Copenhagen is a highly walkable city, if you can withstand the sharp, brittle air in the winter time. I relished it.

In Nyhavn, I found a rainbow row of houses, lined with bars and restaurants. I walked by it repeatedly just to see its kaleidoscope effect at different times during the short, winter day (the sun began to retire as early as 16h00).

On my last night in the city, I had my cab driver drop me off in the royal roundabout after dinner, where I heard Horatio whispering about a ghost. It was near midnight, and the cobblestones had been polished shiny by a light rain. I stood there in the quiet cold and watched the Danish guard pace between the palace gates. I let time slip by wantonly. I just didn’t want to leave.

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Copenhagen charmed me effortlessly with its timeless look, its unbelievably beautiful people, and its unique culinary perspective. I can see why so many foreign cooks have eagerly made a new home for themselves there. I’m tempted to join them. Perhaps I will, sooner rather than later. My business in Copenhagen is not finished. There is much more for me to explore there yet.

A few nights ago, I saw a shooting star. Little did I know that it was headed for Copenhagen. I woke up the next morning to the news that Geranium was awarded its second Michelin star, and kadeau was awarded its first star. The constellation grows, and the gastronauts will not desist. I couldn’t be happier for both houses.

Here are photos of the meals I ate in Copenhagen:

Geranium (Copenhagen)
kadeau (Copenhagen)
noma (Copenhagen)
relae (Copenhagen)

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* SIRHA is one of the world’s largest food and beverage fairs. It takes place at the Eurexpo in Lyon every other year, coinciding with the Coupe du Monde and the Bocuse d’Or competitions (the competitions are a part of SIRHA). Every other year, over a quarter million people attend SIRHA.

Photos: A row of colorful houses in the Nyhavn neighborhood of Copenhagen; the Danish royal palace at night, Copenhagen; a street scene in front of the restaurant Amalie in Copenhagen; a view of Christianshavn, Copenhagen.

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In January of 2011, I went to Lyon a spectator, expecting little more than a fun detour on a two-week break from life. It turned out to be the start of the most incredible adventure I’ve known yet.

It’s hard to believe, but one more day and one day more has turned into two years.

I returned to Lyon this past January not only with Team USA, but as a part of Team USA, to photograph the American candidate, Richard Rosendale, and his commis, Corey Siegel, at the 2013 Bocuse d’Or.

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I’ve never known Lyon to be anything but unbearably hot (in the summer) or painfully cold (in the winter). So I was surprised how mild the temperature was when I arrived at the Gare Perrache via the TGV from Paris.

In the last competition cycle, the American candidate, James Kent, and his commis, Tom Allan, had trained in the beautiful kitchen of the storied l’Abbaye de Collonges, one of Paul Bocuse’s many restaurants in Lyon. This time, Team USA (which included head coach Gavin Kaysen; assistant coach Gabriel Kreuther; Monica Bhambhani, director of events; Dan Scannell, one of Rosendale’s mentors; and Christopher Kocsis, an apprentice at The Greenbrier who flew over on his own dime to assist the team) rented a kitchen at Paul Bocuse’s culinary school, the Institut Paul Bocuse, in the outlying suburb of Ecully.

By the time they arrived in Lyon a week in advance of the Bocuse d’Or, Rosendale and Siegel had already completed all of their practice runs. So, they were able to devote their time in the bright and spacious corner kitchen (outfitted with multiple Molteni suites – all vintage, and all immaculate – and the only source of heat in the kitchen) at the Institut Paul Bocuse to wrangling last-minute logistics in preparation for the competition.

Considering the strict rules of the competition, the Bocuse d’Or, in many ways, is more about strategy and logistics than it is about cooking. The number of moving parts that Team USA had to coordinate was staggering.

Unlike many of the other competitors, some of whom drove their equipment to Lyon from neighboring countries, almost everything that Team USA needed for the competition had to be pre-packed and freighted overseas. Simply unpacking and taking inventory of every item that had been shipped from the United States took a couple of days. And then, there was produce to be received, ingredients to be organized, and a platter to be assembled and polished.

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Lunches during these pre-competition days were usually quick and simple – a makeshift sandwich buffet in the practice kitchen, for example, or an efficient three-course prix-fixe at F&B, the cleverly named student-run restaurant inside the culinary school. The meal I had there was a parade of French classics, like saucisson brioché, and roasted dorade with saffroned potatoes fondant and rouille. It was surprisingly good.

One day, I escaped into the city and met up with some friends for lunch at Le Bouchon des Filles, a tiny bouchon serving wine in thick-bottomed pots Lyonnais, and a three-course prix-fixe menu of comforting, local favorites like quenelles de brochet in a creamy bath of crayfish sauce, and steaming lengths of andouillette smothered in red gravy. As good as those main courses were, what I remember the most were the fried curls of intestines that they put out for us at the beginning of our meal. They looked like palmiers, and were just as buttery. I loved them.

No, the food in Lyon is not slimming.

And for that reason, I particularly welcomed the salads at Le Bouchon des Filles, which included a wonderful bowl of lentils topped with strips of gently salted fish, and another of diced beets with thinly sliced head cheese that had gone ruby-red in the mix. There was also a salad of mixed greens tossed with gougères (yes, the cheesy choux pastry puffs). All of these were served family-style.

One day, we skipped lunch altogether and went to Lyon’s famous chocolaterie, Bernachon, for sweets. I bought some orangettes (I’ve written about them before), chocolate-covered candied ginger, and a couple of “tablettes” of chocolate, including one studded with fat, boozy rum raisins.

Next door at Bernachon’s sit-down café, my friends indulged in ice cream while I revisited the “Kilimanjaro,” a sundae of vanilla ice cream and candied chestnuts capped, generously, with whipped cream, candied almonds, and curls of dark chocolate. It was just as I remembered it.

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While we were pretty efficient at lunchtime, dinners ran long. I am accustomed to sitting through lengthy meals. And most of the time – especially when in good company – I relish the unhurried pace. But, the slowness of restaurant service in Lyon is something altogether different. If it weren’t for the fact that there was wine and water to be sold and poured, on numerous occasions, I was sure that we had been abandoned.

By the end of my week in Lyon, I had resigned myself to the fact that dinner in this city was a four-hour commitment.

Team USA rode the Bocuse circuit of brasseries; dinner at a different one each night (most of them are named after compass points): le Nord, l’Ouest, l’Est, and le Sud. We also ate at l’Auberge du Fond Rose, the newest addition to Paul Bocuse’s Lyonnais empire. The menus at all of them are, more or less, the same – a host of familiar French classics with a few daily specials thrown in for variety. The cooking at all of them is reliably good, which explains their popularity.

I ordered a different main course every night. Among them was a fat fist of roasted sweetbreads, tender kidneys swimming in mustard sauce, and a steaming pot of choucroute garni, which I shared with a few others. But I always bookended my Bocuse brasserie meals with the same two dishes: a simple salad aux fines herbes to start, and baba au rhum to end. I love baba.

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Exhausted by the long dinners, the team members opted to spend a couple of quiet nights at the hotel.

I took the opportunity to slip away into the city with friends.

One night, Roland Passot, chef of the Michelin one-starred La Folie in San Francisco and a Lyonnais by birth, joined my friend Mango and me at Le Centre, Georges Blanc’s new steakhouse. The interior of this restaurant looked as as if Mickey Mouse had graffitied the bright red walls of a bougie wine bar with his happy, loopy scrawl (the font was identical to Walt Disney’s). We had sardine rillette (I’ve never seen this before), patted into a shiny sardine tin, and a super-tender and flavorful Australian Wagyu onglet with a boat of morels swimming in vin jaune sauce. That was a great piece of meat.

For dessert, we shared some cheese and a creamy café Liégeois (a sundae of coffee ice cream, coffee, and whipped cream).

Afterward, Passot drove us up to the Basilica of Notre Dame de Fourvière for a midnight lookout over the sparkling city.

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Christian Têtedoie, one of the M.O.F.s who paraded platters for the Bocuse d’Or that weekend, has a Michelin one-starred restaurant in Lyon. I had dinner there with Dave Beran, who had flown to Lyon with TeethBracelet to do some recon for the upcoming Bocuse d’Or menu at Next, where he is the executive chef.

From its perch high above the city, near the basilica, Restaurant Têtedoie offers an unobstructed, panoramic view of Lyon. We watched the ferris wheel down in the Place Bellecour blink and turn, blink and turn, blink and turn, until it blinked and turned no more. Our dinner, as usual, ran long and late.

By the time we finished our three-course dinner, there was only one other table left. But even at that late hour, the staff seemed to be in no hurry for us to leave, enticing us to stay a little longer with a round of cognac and armagnac on the house.

The menu at Têtedoie rambles a bit. In addition to an à la carte menu, there are four different tasting menus. The food here shows promising underpinnings of hearty, classical cooking – suckling pig, head to tail; whole lobster with calf’s head and roasted salsify; and rump of veal roasted over hay, carved table-side – done with some care. But, there is an attempt at modernization that gets in the way of what otherwise could be simple and delicious food. Plating was fussy and busy, and sometimes, a bit sloppy – they needed to be edited down. And a few dishes seemed to reach beyond the creative capacity of the kitchen – a gritty clam dish with quenelles of mushroom mousse comes to mind. It was cold and clammy (excuse the pun), and together, it made no sense whatsoever.

The cheese cart at Têtedoie, however, offered a nice selection beyond the usual suspects. And there was a lovely chestnut soufflé at the very end.

Otherwise, I say: go for the view.

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But one doesn’t go to Lyon (considered the capital of French gastronomy) for a taste of modernity. One goes there for fatty, saucy reminders of yesteryear.

And you’ll find it in places like Denise et Daniel, one of Lyon’s more well-known bouchons. Chef Daniel Boulud, one of the three board members of the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation (the other two are Thomas Keller and Jerome Bocuse) organized a team dinner for the American coaches and supporting crew here. It was my favorite meal in Lyon.

While the rain pattered outside, we feasted family-style, passing around oversized portions of regional dishes like a cold, creamy salad of shredded lamb trotter collagen (salade de clapeton d’agneau), and squares of breaded and fried tripe served with sauce gribiche (tablier de sapeur). There was salade Lyonnaise, much more lardon than frisée; fluffy quenelles au brochet, more fat than fish; and large crocks of duck liver mousse under a jiggly skin of cognac. Pithiviers stuffed with oxtail; pâté en croute with a wide avenue of foie gras running through its mosaic middle; glazed slices of pork belly; boudin noir; macaroni and cheese, a rich blonde with golden-brown highlights: we had them all, and more. And at the end, each of us got a roasted apple that was thickly coated with hot, buttery caramel at the table.

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As you probably know by now, Team USA did not make it to the podium this year. Richard Rosendale and Corey Siegel placed seventh, behind Sweden, Norway, Great Britain, Japan (bronze), Denmark (silver), and France (gold). So, the United States continues its quest for a statute at the Bocuse d’Or competition. (The highest placing U.S. competitors to date have been Hartmut Handke in 2003, and Timothy Hollingsworth in 2009. Both took sixth place.)

The internet is a rich resource. You will find almost everything you want to know about this year’s Bocuse d’Or online. But, I wish to add a few of my own thoughts about the competition here:

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This year, the committee changed some of the rules of the competition. I suspect that this was prompted by growing criticism that the Bocuse d’Or had become an antiquated exercise.

In the past, both the competition meat and fish were announced early in the cycle, giving competitors quite a long time to plan and practice their presentations. This year, the meat (beef) was announced early in the cycle, as it had been before. But the fish was not announced until November of last year – just two months before the Bocuse d’Or. This leveled the playing field, slightly, for the competitors who were unable to train full-time for the competition.

Also, in the past, competitors presented both meat and fish on grand platters that were paraded around the stadium before the food was portioned and plated individually for the judges. This year, candidates were instructed to plate the fish directly onto individual plates for service.  There would no longer be a fish platter.

The committee also announced that two of the garnishes for the fish plates had to be cooked from ingredients that the competitors would find in a “pop-up” marketplace the day before the competition.

While it was never verbalized, these new rules regarding the fish dish suggested to me that the Bocuse d’Or committee realized that the nature of the competition had changed, and that it needed to evolve the competition in order for it to remain relevant. More than before, competitors are cooking for cameras, and not just for the judges. It has become a spectator sport.

So, the new rules added an element of spontaneity, making the competition a more dynamic and exciting event to watch unfold – especially with the marketplace component (the marketplace also brought on additional sponsorship from produce vendors). Instead of waiting for candidates to assemble their pre-fab platters as in years past, we now actually get to see them work through a dish, from market to table.

But, the committee was smart to leave the meat platter untouched. It remains an opportunity for candidates to showcase their technical prowess and grandstand the crowds with their precision and style. The fish dish now gives candidates the added opportunity to prove to the judges (and audience) that they can actually cook. The ideal result, of course, is a more well-rounded winner.

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Yet, it surprised me that most of the fish dishes this year looked just as practiced and manipulated as in years past. Although the rules changed, the candidates’ approach, largely, did not.

In my opinion, this was a tremendous opportunity wasted.

But I can sympathize with the candidates. If you look at the presentations of the past winners, they are, more or less, the same in style and form. The platters are shiny and bright, and the food has been transformed into colorful, geometric figures. To deviate from this is a risk. Who would be a pioneer and wade into uncharted territory and dare to write a new, winning formula?

Noriyuki Hamada.

Not only did his presentations detour from the norm, but this year, the Japanese candidate’s meat and fish presentations also displayed a level of thinking and meaning that few others achieved.

Hamada’s meat platter came in the form of an open book, with the gutter bifurcating the surface and the food arranged on the two open pages. When he plated the food, he unfurled a rolled-up ribbon of radish onto the plates, as if unrolling a scroll. In that one instant, captured by the cameras and projected onto the monitors in the stadium for all to see, he bridged the gap between the East and West, a storyteller worthy of his international audience. The crowd went silent. It was brilliant.

Whereas all of the other candidates presented their fish on white china, Hamada presented his fish dish inside of a bento box. He also instructed the servers to face the judges when presenting the bento boxes. All of the other candidates had their plates served to the judges from behind. He also instructed the serves to bow to the judges after opening the bento boxes. There was something lovely and thoughtful about the sight of twelve, young culinary students bowing to a row of their elders. It was very Asian, and very different.

Noriyuki Hamada became the first Japanese candidate to stand on the podium in Lyon. I didn’t get to taste his food, of course. But, for opening a door to new possibilities for future candidates, I thought Hamada was very deserving of his award.

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The French meat platter was stunning. I can’t not write about it, even if just to mention its title “Versailles 2013,” stenciled to one side. That caption captured its grandeur and elegance wonderfully. It was a haute couture sketch of those famous palatial gardens of the Louises, with rows of perfectly trimmed hedges and pretty little fountains topped with egg shells.

All of this was gilded in gold (I can’t recall a candidate ever using a golden platter). The paleron was presented en croute, the beautiful tube of pastry stenciled on the outside with a flower pattern in gold. That same pattern was mimicked on a gorgeous dome of puff pastry – just as golden in color as that platter – that came galloping behind.

In this one presentation, Thibaut Ruggeri paid tribute to the two thrones of France: the crown in Versailles and the toque in Lyon. That dome of pastry was a reference to Paul Bocuse’s famous “Soupe aux Truffes Noirs ‘V.G.E.,’” which Bocuse created in 1978 for then-president of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing.

Thibaut Ruggeri became the seventh French candidate to win the Bocuse d’Or. Again, I didn’t taste his food. But based on his presentations alone, I wasn’t surprised. In fact, as soon as Ruggeri’s platter was presented, I turned to the members of the French press beside me and congratulated them. Just as I was certain that Kofoed would win in 2011 based on his presentations, I was certain that Ruggeri had bagged the golden Bocuse this year.

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Photographing the Bocuse d’Or is not as glamorous or easy as it may seem.

For the first half of each day of the two-day competition, members of the press are given access to the floor, where they can get close-up shots of the candidates in their competition boxes. This is, by far, the best part of photographing the competition.

But, when the judges are seated, the press is pushed back into a narrow corridor that runs the width of the stadium.

Once in the pit, there is no leaving (you can leave, but you won’t be able to get back in). Packed like sardines, we were smashed boob-to-back – no bathroom break, no food, no water – until the competition ended.

The international press corps is a ruthless lot. Everyone is out for themselves. There are no rules, and very little ethics. Photographers and cameramen will cut throats to get their glory shots. They will move your tripod, camera bag, or belongings when you’re not looking to steal your space. They will elbow and jab, and step on your feet repeatedly in hopes that you’ll move aside. They’ll swing their huge television cameras side-to-side, hoping to take out at least one or two competitors in their way.

Having to tolerate the abusive practices of the press is the one aspect of the Bocuse d’Or that I loathe (and sadly for me, it is the only aspect of the Bocuse d’Or with which I must deal). Part of the problem is that the event coordinators don’t screen the press (for example, asking for credentials or a photography portfolio). Practically, anyone with a camera or notepad, claiming to be a member of the press, can get in. And so, you have way too many bodies pinned in a very small space, with no food, no drink, and no break. Naturally, egos run high, emotions run hot, and tempers will flare. Reducing the number of people in the press pit, alone, would alleviate some of the nastiness.

Then there’s getting the shot. The platters and plates are paraded the length of the press pit, usually at a speed that is too fast to get a decent shot. Some of the M.O.F.s are pretty good about pausing every step to allow photographers to get their clicks in. But a few fly by, only pausing every ten or fifteen feet. So, depending on where you’re standing in the pit, you may not get a shot of every platter.

I hope the event coordinators can improve this aspect of the event. Two days of fighting for space in the pit – especially after the awards ceremony on the last day, when it floods with a dangerous amount of people (the crush of the press trying to get back into the pit right before the awards ceremony got very scary at one point) – will dispirit even the most upbeat person.

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It has been a privilege and pleasure serving as the official photographer for Team USA in the 2013 cycle. Not only was I granted access to some incredible events and given the opportunity to capture some amazing moments, but I forged some very important friendships along the way. For me, that was the best part of it all.

I look forward to the next competition cycle and hope to see an American on the podium in Lyon in 2015.

The day after the competition, I got on a plane to Copenhagen. I’ll account for that trip under a separate post. In the meantime, here are photos of the meals I ate during my week in Lyon:

Auberge du Fond Rose (Lyon)
Brasserie le Nord (Lyon)
Brasserie l’Ouest (Lyon)
Daniel et Denise (Lyon)
F&B (Ecully)
Le Bouchon des Filles (Lyon)
Le Caro de Lyon (Lyon)
Le Centre (Lyon)
Têtedoie (Lyon)

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Photos: A Frenchman waving the French flag at the Bocuse d’Or, Lyon, France; a portrait of Paul Bocuse at the Institut Paul Bocuse in Ecully, France; a cold lentil salad with salted fish at le Bouchon des Filles in Lyon, France; an M.O.F. at the pass at Auberge du Fond Rose in Lyon, France; with Roland Passot and Monica Bhambhani at the Notre Dame de Fourvière, Lyon, France; cheese cart at Têtedoie in Lyon, France; Gavin Kaysen at Daniel et Denise in Lyon, France; Corey Seigel, Gavin Kaysen, and Richard Rosendale at the pop-up marketplace at Eurexpo, Lyon, France; M.O.F.s telling secrets at the Eurexpo in Lyon, France; the Japanese meat platter at the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, France; a giant puff pastry, a part of the French meat platter, at the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, France; Davy Tissot, M.O.F., parades a plate in front of the press pit at the Bocuse d’Or, Lyon, France; Thibaut Ruggeri, the seventh French candidate to win the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, France.

Every year, hosting chef Debbie Gold and I invite three guest chefs from Kansas City, and three from abroad. In the years that I’ve sat on the committee, I’ve helped invite chefs like Sean Brock (Husk and McCrady’s), Curtis Duffy (then at Avenues, now at Grace), Shawn Gawle (then pastry chef at corton, now at saison), William Bradley (Addison at the Grand Del Mar), Michael Laiskonis (then pastry chef at le Bernardin), and Matthias Merges (yusho) to Kansas City.  Locally, Gold has invited chefs like Ted Habiger (Room 39),  Howard Hanna (Rieger Grill & Exchange), Carl Thorne-Thomsen (story), and the late John McClure (formerly of Starker’s Restaurant).

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

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This year, we are pleased to welcome the following six chefs to Kansas City for the 2013 Chefs Classic, which will be held on Sunday, June 23 at The American Restaurant (for reservations, please visit the Harvester’s website):

Michael Beard
(715 Mass; Lawrence, Kansas)

Patrick Ryan
(Port Fonda; Kansas City, Missouri)

Todd Schulte
(Genessee Royale Bistro and
Happy Gillis Café & Hangout; Kansas City, Missouri)

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Vinny Dotolo
(Animal; Los Angeles, California)

Kelly English
(Iris; Memphis, Tennessee)

Nancy Olson
(Pastry Chef of Gramercy Tavern; New York, New York)

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

Photo: Chefs William Bradley and Matthias Merges prepping for the 2012 Harvesters Chefs Classic in the kitchen at The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri.

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Europe: if it weren’t for your slow-speed (and often, non-existent) internet and lack of air-conditioning, I’d declare you the superior continent without reservation.

But God bless, every time I step off a plane or train in Europe, be it in Brussels or Strasbourg, Zurich or Amsterdam, I’m greeted with the intense smell of coffee and butter. Lots of coffee and lots of butter. And every time, I close my eyes, inhale deeply, and convince myself that I was never meant to be born in America.

What are a few days of slow connectivity and sweat, anyway? The Europeans make it work, and with style to spare.

So can I, I resolve.

So can I.

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Paris.

My first trip there was when I was three years-old. In the three decades since, I must have visited more than two dozen times. Perhaps, for that reason, Paris hasn’t been the subject of my travels in the past few years, relegated to being a stopover between other destinations when convenient.

But, despite falling in love with Paris rather late in my young life, I now find it irresistible, with its endless alleyways and eateries, grandeur and history. Where else can you hear I.M. Pei and Louis XIV whisper in the same corner where DaVinci smiles and Victory spreads her headless wings, or hear Quasimodo ring those medieval bells, and watch Napoleon slumber under a gold-ribbed dome?

I love Paris.

So, on my recent trip to France, the primarily purpose of which was to photograph the Bocuse d’Or in Lyon, I couldn’t resist making a pit-stop in the City of Lights.

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It’s amazing how much one can accomplish (or eat) in twenty-four hours.

When I landed at Charles de Gaulle, my friends Stéphanie Biteau of Cookcooning and Laurent Vanparys of Gastros on Tour had my short stay mapped out for me. I gave them carte blanche for my day, and they made all the arrangements.

After dropping my things off at Stéphanie’s beautiful two-story hideaway in the 9eme arr., I headed first to Pierre Hermé to see what unexpected flavors he was offering in his pastry case that day. At the moment, he was celebrating baba cakes. There were about a half-dozen different ones. Although I love baba, I focused on the macarons instead. One in particular – a pearly, iridescent one with white truffles with hazelnuts – reminded me of a pasta dish I had last year at The Oval Room in Washington, D.C., which paired truffles with toasted hazelnuts wonderfully. My favorite macaron that day was piped with a filling infused with Pedro Ximenes and studded with boozy raisins to match.

Then, to lunch. By chance, my friend La Tache was in Paris. So, on a last-minute notice, he met me at septime, an upwardly trending restaurant in the 11eme arr. Like the growing number of younger, more progressive chefs of our time, Bertrand Grébaut shifts the focus of the dining experience away from trimmings and trappings and on to ingredient and cooking quality. The menu is simple and surprisingly affordable, given the level of cooking and quantity of food served. At lunch that day, Grébaut offered a fixed, three-course menu for 28€, and a five-course, chef’s choice menu for 55€.

Our lunch included casseron (a cephalopod) on a creamy bed of ricotta with white beans, snowed over with shaved cauliflower. We had buttery merlu (hake), gently cooked and served with root vegetables and citrus, followed by a beautiful strip of chicken breast cut from a roasted bird. The skin was thin and crisp, the meat was juicy and tender. It was served with Brussels sprouts and a spot of jus.

If you’re in Paris, consider septime.

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La Tache had pre-ordered a galette des rois (king cake) from Jacques Genin, so I followed him there after lunch.

Genin used to offer a menu of pastries at his chocolaterie near the Place de la République. The last time I was in Paris, I dropped by Genin’s twice for his lemon tart, honey-walnut tart, and fabulous mille feuille. Sadly, he has trimmed his menu down. Now, he only offers mille-feuille (with a variety fillings) – and chocolates, of course – for in-shop eating. For anything else, you have to call ahead for pick-up and take-away.

But, we were told that the cooks will often make extra pastries depending on the day’s call-in orders. That day, they had a few extra lemon tartlets. So, La Tache ordered one, and I ordered mille-feuille, and the two of us whiled away the afternoon over coffee and sweets. The mille-feuille was just as wonderful as I remembered it, a stack of ultra-flakey, almost caramelized pastry piped with a cream filling (I ordered praliné).

Before I left, I asked if they had any extra galettes des rois. It was the last week Genin was making these holiday cakes (the Epiphany had passed a couple of weeks earlier), and they looked magnificent. The shop girl counted the ones on the counter and came up with an extra one. So, I took it.

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My friend Laurent Vanparys, like me, left his office career to pursue his dream. He partnered with Laurent Lapaire, owner of l’Agapé Substance, to open a wine bar on the rue Mazarine (right across the street from l’Agapé Substance) in the St. Germaine des Pres. Here, Vanparys focuses on rare, biodynamic wines, mostly ones from Europe (although he hopes to grow his New World inventory in the future). I happened to be in Paris a couple of days before the official opening, and Vanparys invited Biteau and me to drop by for a pre-dinner drink.

A shotgun space with a low ceiling and a spartan look, épure feels like an underground cellar. A narrow bar, shaped like a kayak, runs its length. Vanparys poured us some wine from his snug seat at the prow, and offered us some snacks.

An American couple peeked in. Although the store wasn’t officially opened, Vanparys welcomed them in for a look. The wife seemed familiar. After some conversation, we realized that we had known each other in college, with many mutual friends between us. Thirteen years later, in a different country on a different continent in a wine bar named épure: an unexpected reunion. The world is a small and wonderful place.

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Those looking for a nice dinner in the quiet 16eme arr., you now have akrame, a Michelin-starred restaurant by Akrame Benallal near the Étoile. Benallal – French-Algerian by birth – is an alumnus of the kitchens of both Gagnaire and Adria. And you will see the influences of both of those chefs in the cooking here.

Presentations were clean and neat. And his flavor combinations were unexpected and dynamic. But, unlike Adria (and Gagnaire, based on my limited experience with Gagnaire’s food), Benallal focused less on proving a point with his cooking, and more on balancing flavors. His restraint proved that Campari and cockles, for example, could go together wonderfully (bridged by an emphasis on black truffles), and that licorice isn’t an ingredient to be feared. He paired licorice with apple and yogurt in two different desserts, and they were both wonderful.

Akrame is not showy or shiny. It’s quiet and confident. And that’s my favorite kind of restaurant.

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Buoyed by calories and cream, between my winkless flight over and a full day on my feet, I had gone forty hours without sleep. So, when I finally crashed, I went so deep under that it took me a couple of minutes to orient myself when I awoke to someone pounding on my door.

The voice on the other side was unmistakable, that French accent: it was David Toutain.

He had dropped by for breakfast.

Stéphanie steeped some tea, and we sliced into Genin’s galette des rois. Tented by a puff pastry dome, this cake had a buttery frangipane filling that, miraculously, didn’t compromise the super-flakey shell around it. Instead of a baby (which I’m accustomed to finding in king cakes), Genin tucked animal figurines – elephants and crocodiles, for example – into his king cakes. I found a purple, Jeff Koons-like caniche (poodle) in my slice, which earned me a paper coronation (yes, even Genin’s king cakes came with cut-out crowns).

Paris in twenty-four hours: a lot can happen. Thank you, Laurent and Stéphanie, for being wonderful hosts.

I packed my things and headed to the train station to catch the noon TGV to Lyon. I’ll continue that portion of my travelogue under separate cover.

Here are the places I ate in Paris:

Paris
Akrame
épure
Jacques Genin
Pierre Hermé
Septime

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Photos: A purple poodle, from Jacques Genin’s galette des rois, Paris France; the bar at septime in the 11eme arr., Paris, France; the menu at septime; chocolates and pastries at Jacques Genin near the Place de la République, Paris, France; Laurent Vanparys at épure in the St. Germain des Pres, Paris, France; shaving 42-month Comté at akrame in the 16eme arr., Paris, France; Stéphanie Biteau and Akrame Benallal at akrame.

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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 did more than my fair share of living in the first two months of this year. I’ll start with January.

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Shortly after the new year, I made the long trek to The Greenbrier for the last Bocuse d’Or USA training session with Richard Rosendale, the U.S. candidate for the 2013 Bocuse d’Or competition.

With a few weeks left before the big show in Lyon, Rosendale, his commis Corey Siegel, and coaches Gavin Kaysen and Gabriel Kreuther spent most of the session furiously training in the resort’s historic Bunker. Also, making a special, one-day appearance at judges’ table at The Greenbrier this time was the great Andrew Friedman, author of many cookbooks (including upcoming projects with Paul Liebrandt and Michael White), the blog Toqueland, and the book “Knives at Dawn,” which chronicled Timothy Hollingsworth’s bid for the Bocuse d’Or in 2009. It was wonderful to have his insight and company.

In the two days we were there, Rosendale and Siegel made two trial runs, each five-and-a-half hours long, followed by two more hours of plating, tasting, and evaluations. As a result, this last trip to The Greenbrier was a quiet one. So much attention was devoted to the day-side business that we had little energy for more in the evenings. Instead of spending our off-hours bowling, swimming, or skating (in the winter, The Greenbrier builds an outdoor ice rink), as we had done on previous trips, this time, we opted to enjoy a couple of leisurely dinners and turn in early.

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I have eaten at every restaurant at The Greenbrier, and there were two things I wanted most to repeat on this last trip: the mountainous banana split at Draper’s, and the table-side Caesar salad at Jerry West’s Prime 44. So, I had both. The banana split I had on my own, but the team indulged me on the Caesar salad, which we followed with a beautiful, 44-ounce dry-aged, bone-in ribeye. We also returned to The Forum, the resort’s Italian-themed restaurant, for some pasta and cannolis, and their tub-sized tiramisu.

I will miss our trips to The Greenbrier.

Until now, I’ve published very few photos of the closed-door training sessions inside the Bunker at The Greenbrier. And I will defer that right to the Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation, which has started to release some of those photos on their Facebook page.

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Joshua Skenes needed photos of the new interior of his two Michelin-starred restaurant saison, which he moved from the Mission District to Townsend Street in SoMa late last year. I saw it briefly, when I spent Christmas in the Bay Area. But, at the time, it was unfinished.

The timing was tight. So, on short-notice, I wedged in a quick, three-day trip to San Francisco for the photo shoot.

It is magnificent, the new saison.

This eighteen-seat restaurant, with eighteen additional seats in the lounge, has not the rambling charm of its former space, which I absolutely adored for its almost-accidental feel. The new space is stunning for reasons that may not be obvious at a first glance. Less homey than before, the new saison has a decidedly industrial look, with exposed bricks and beams, a polished concrete floor, and a vaulted ceiling that stretches over thirty-feet high. In an effort to extend the kitchen as far into the dining space as possible (or, to include as much of the dining space into the kitchen as possible), five, large, shiny reach-ins line one wall of the dining room.

But the quality of the craftsmanship and weightiness of the design of the new saison will not escape the discriminating eye, or ear. The kitchen is outfitted with the finest; the cabinetry and drawers are all tailor-made. The sound system is incredible; I relished every minute of photographing in the empty restaurant at night with the music turned up. With all the hard surfaces in the restaurant, you’d think it’d be an echo chamber. Maybe it is. But you’d never know it from the sound system. Like I said, it’s incredible.

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The interior is softened by flowering branches, culinary curios, and beautiful wood tables and chairs of exceptional millwork. That millwork can also be admired in the bar top and custom-built stations that cleverly conceal the P.O.S. system and markings (flatware, etc.). And those gorgeous copper-backed mirrors – they’re stunning too.

I first fell in love with Zalto Glas stemware at the three Michelin-starred restaurant Aqua in Wolfsburg, Germany, a few years ago. I loved it so much that I wrote to the director of the restaurant asking for more information about it (Aqua also uses Zwiesel 1872 – the Courmet Collection “Enoteca” and “First”). Admiring the stiff curves and ultra-thin stems of the glasses at saison, I recognized them immediately (actually, I identified them as soon as Mark Bright, the restaurant’s sommelier, described them to me in December). Saison has placed the largest single order of Zalto Glas stemware to date.

There are far too many other details about this no-expenses spared, $2.8 million restaurant (like, how the kitchen peripherals are housed in a sound-proof room above the kitchen, to reduce noise) for me to cover here. Suffice it to say, the devil will have a hard time finding one to conquer at saison.

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Unfortunately, saison hadn’t reopened yet. So, although I spent three days photographing there, I didn’t eat there (with the exception of a beautiful pine nut soufflé that pastry chef Shawn Gawle was testing).

But I did eat at Rich Table, where you’ll find a menu of slightly unexpected meetings (like garganelli pasta with octopus, oxtail, and blood orange). My favorite dishes came off of the “snacks” portion of the menu, like a bowl of strangely addictive Castelvetrano olives tossed in a toasted seaweed dressing, mounded with diced Granny Smith apple. We shared fluffy doughnuts dusted with dried porcini powder, and a thick-crusted bread with a hearty crumb that had been infused with Douglas fir. The crust on that bread was my favorite part. We were also served an off-menu item called the “Dirty Hippie,” a creamy mix of buttermilk and wheatgrass topped with tender sprouts and crunchy seeds.

Bar Tartine is quickly becoming one of my favorite restaurants in San Francisco. The bread (which is phenomenal) aside, the food there is flavorful and fresh. I stopped in with some friends for brunch. My two favorite dishes that day were a crunchy salad of sprouts and crucifers, pocketed with creamy knobs of blue cheese, and a fantastic “potato flatbread” topped with a sweet tomato sauce, greens, Turo cheese, and fried shallots. That flatbread is more like a large fritter, with a fried crust and a soft middle (I’ve also had this at dinnertime). If you go, you must order it.

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I tried to get some pie at Una Pizzeria Napoletana, but the line was too long. It was the same story at flour + water. So, we walked down the street to Salumeria, an Italian deli and specialty foodshop attached to Central Kitchen (both Salumeria and Central Kitchen are in the ne timeas restaurant group with flour + water). There, we had a couple of sandwiches – the ham sandwich with Gruyere, pickled cabbage, and mustard on a pretzel roll was a winner – and a garlicky little gem salad with anchovies, eggs, and breadcrumbs. The chef at Central Kitchen also sent out a few more plates for us to try, including a warm salad of sunchokes, wild mushrooms, and cheese. On a chilly night, that was lovely.

Joshua Skenes took me for Teochew (or, Chiuchow, depending on where you’re from) noodles at Hy Ki Mi Gia in San Francisco’s “Little Saigon” neighborhood. We slurped down steaming bowls of noodle soup (he got one with thick egg noodles and all sorts of beef, and Gawle and I both got thin egg noodles topped with a duck leg and some wontons), and then walked a few blocks to Saigon Sandwich, where three little Vietnamese ladies on a banh mi assembly line cut and stuffed baguettes with pickled vegetables and a variety of meats, while answering the phone and taking walk-in orders. That day, the San Francisco 49ers were playing the Atlanta Falcons for the NFC championship, and apparently the whole neighborhood showed up to order sandwiches for the game. One man called in an order of twenty-five for a banh mi football party he was hosting. God, I love San Francisco. (Note: if you order the pâté banh mi at Saigon Sandwich, expect a lot of pâté. Next time, I’ll take half pâté with some other meat.)

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Late one night, Skenes and I hopped over the bay to eat at the newly opened Duende, a pan-Iberian restaurant and bodega opened by Oakland-based chef Paul Canales, formerly of Oliveto (his father was Basque). Since the restaurant had just opened that week, it would be unfair of me to evaluate it here and now. But I will say that the pebrots farcits – a pequillo pepper stuffed with cumin-spiced lamb, currants, and pine nuts – was pretty great. Keep an eye on Duende.

And finally, coi.

I hadn’t been to Daniel Patterson’s two Michelin-starred restaurant since 2009, and many have urged me to give it another look. I liked this second meal more than my first one. My favorite dishes included a collection of young brassicas in a warm, charred onion broth dotted with new olive oil, and a refreshing dessert of oro blanco, buttermilk-ginger sorbet, and epazote by the pastry chef Matt Tinder (formerly of saison).

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I had less than twenty-four hours to unpack from San Francisco and re-pack for Europe.

Next stop: Paris, Lyon, and Copenhagen.

But I’ll save those destinations for my next post. For now, I leave you with a list of restaurants that I visited at The Greenbrier and in California:

California
Bar Tartine (San Francisco)
coi (San Francisco)
Duende (Oakland)
Hy Ky Mi Gia (San Francisco)
Marlowe (San Francisco)
Rich Table (San Francisco)
Saigon Sandwiches (San Francisco)
Salumeria (San Francisco)

West Virginia
Prime 44 (The Greenbrier)
Draper’s (The Greenbrier)
The Forum (The Greenbrier)

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Photos: Shawn Gawle’s pine nut soufflé at saison, San Francisco, California; Gabriel Kreuther, Andrew Friedman, Gavin Kaysen, and Monica Bhambhani in the Bunker at The Greenbrier, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; Richard Rosendale torching his pavé of beef, The Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia; the kitchen at the new saison, San Francisco, California; the new saison, San Francisco, California; sprout salad at Bar Tartine, San Francisco; hot chile oil and “oil sticks” at Hy Ky Mi Gia in San Francisco, California; Monterey Bay abalone at coi in San Francisco, California; and arroz negro at Duende in Oakland, California.