Destination: United States

review: pioneer… (notion)

You know what I like about Dave Racicot? He’s passionate. He’s generous. He’s fearless. And, he’s just a bit crazy. There’s little glory, if any, in slim margins, empty seats, and twenty-hour days. But chefs across the world run the restaurant gauntlet again and again. Why? They love to cook. They were made to cook. […]

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review: pioneer… (notion)

You know what I like about Dave Racicot? He’s passionate. He’s generous. He’s fearless. And, he’s just a bit crazy. There’s little glory, if any, in slim margins, empty seats, and twenty-hour days. But chefs across the world run the restaurant gauntlet again and again. Why? They love to cook. They were made to cook. […]

Continue

travel: crawl up the five…

Burrata.  Sea urchin. These two ingredients recurred with such frequency at my table on a recent trip to the West Coast that you’d think they sponsored my blog. It amazes me the intensity with which food trends move these days. Beyond burrata and sea urchin, I also wallowed happily in a fair amount of pristine […]

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travel: crawl up the five…

Burrata.  Sea urchin. These two ingredients recurred with such frequency at my table on a recent trip to the West Coast that you’d think they sponsored my blog. It amazes me the intensity with which food trends move these days. Beyond burrata and sea urchin, I also wallowed happily in a fair amount of pristine […]

Continue

review: you can’t get there quickly enough…

Seasalter, Laguiole, Baerenthal, Cala Montjoi, Honfleur, Fürstenau, Sluis, and Järpen: these are just a few of the far-flung places that people travel many hours – by planes, trains, automobiles, and, if you’re foolish and crazy like me, bicycles – to reach just to have a meal. There is not, unfortunately, the same tradition of traveling […]

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review: you can’t get there quickly enough…

Seasalter, Laguiole, Baerenthal, Cala Montjoi, Honfleur, Fürstenau, Sluis, and Järpen: these are just a few of the far-flung places that people travel many hours – by planes, trains, automobiles, and, if you’re foolish and crazy like me, bicycles – to reach just to have a meal. There is not, unfortunately, the same tradition of traveling […]

Continue

best of 2010: the restaurant edition…

A blizzard of gastronomic white paper from tastemakers here and there gave this lame-duck week of 2010 a needed dose of excitement, angst, and confusion.  Who doesn’t love rummaging through another’s list of dirtied linens at the end of the year? While I’m a taster, not a tastemaker, I happily add to the storm my […]

Continue

best of 2010: the restaurant edition…

A blizzard of gastronomic white paper from tastemakers here and there gave this lame-duck week of 2010 a needed dose of excitement, angst, and confusion.  Who doesn’t love rummaging through another’s list of dirtied linens at the end of the year? While I’m a taster, not a tastemaker, I happily add to the storm my […]

Continue

best dishes of 2010…

It’s that time of year again when I shock myself into making new year resolutions by taking a look back at all of the food I ate in the last twelve months. Over the past few weeks, I’ve revisited hundreds of dishes and, through some mysterious and highly subjective process that involves memory and mood, […]

Continue

best dishes of 2010…

It’s that time of year again when I shock myself into making new year resolutions by taking a look back at all of the food I ate in the last twelve months. Over the past few weeks, I’ve revisited hundreds of dishes and, through some mysterious and highly subjective process that involves memory and mood, […]

Continue

review: olio…

I wanted to catch up with two friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while. Anticipating that I wouldn’t be particularly peckish (there was a whole lot of eating going on those few days in San Francisco), I was more fixated on my good company than the venue. They suggested Luce, the newly Michelin-starred restaurant […]

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review: olio…

I wanted to catch up with two friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while. Anticipating that I wouldn’t be particularly peckish (there was a whole lot of eating going on those few days in San Francisco), I was more fixated on my good company than the venue. They suggested Luce, the newly Michelin-starred restaurant […]

Continue

review: sweet heat…

The fact that Kevin Gillespie was one of my favorite cheftestants from Season 6 of BravoTV’s Top Chef reality show factored little in my decision to visit Woodfire Grill.* In fact, I hadn’t intended on eating at Woodfire Grill at all on my recent stop in Atlanta. When Gillespie passed through Kansas City earlier this […]

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review: sweet heat…

The fact that Kevin Gillespie was one of my favorite cheftestants from Season 6 of BravoTV’s Top Chef reality show factored little in my decision to visit Woodfire Grill.* In fact, I hadn’t intended on eating at Woodfire Grill at all on my recent stop in Atlanta. When Gillespie passed through Kansas City earlier this […]

Continue

review: retrospective… (alinea)

Nashville, Tennessee, 2004.  A ruddy-cheeked cherub came out of the kitchen after dinner to say hello. He was just a kid.  I was just a kid. We both loved food. He cooked. I ate.  We started talking. Though our conversation drifted from here to there, it moored mostly around a new restaurant that was opening […]

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review: retrospective… (alinea)

Nashville, Tennessee, 2004.  A ruddy-cheeked cherub came out of the kitchen after dinner to say hello. He was just a kid.  I was just a kid. We both loved food. He cooked. I ate.  We started talking. Though our conversation drifted from here to there, it moored mostly around a new restaurant that was opening […]

Continue

review: sanglant, mais pas bleu…

I’m fairly certain I was whining about the demise of the daringly bloody roast beef sandwich when chuckeats told me about the one at Il Cane Rosso, Daniel Patterson’s walk-up eatery in the Ferry Marketplace in San Francisco.  It could be a quick lunch option, he suggested. We made it happen.

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review: sanglant, mais pas bleu…

I’m fairly certain I was whining about the demise of the daringly bloody roast beef sandwich when chuckeats told me about the one at Il Cane Rosso, Daniel Patterson’s walk-up eatery in the Ferry Marketplace in San Francisco.  It could be a quick lunch option, he suggested. We made it happen.

Continue

travel: and then there were nine…

Before last week, I had not visited ten of the fifty states: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming. But a last-minute, two-day trip to Atlanta (finally) took Georgia off that list. Using the local, jalapeno-popping blogger, Blissful Glutton, as a sounding board, I decided to eat at Linton Hopkin’s […]

Continue

travel: and then there were nine…

Before last week, I had not visited ten of the fifty states: Alaska, Georgia, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, South Carolina, Utah, Vermont, and Wyoming. But a last-minute, two-day trip to Atlanta (finally) took Georgia off that list. Using the local, jalapeno-popping blogger, Blissful Glutton, as a sounding board, I decided to eat at Linton Hopkin’s […]

Continue