Well, it finally happened – nine months into 2026, and I got around to posting my favorite dishes from last year. Now that we're back in action, let's try to keep some momentum going. In a little change to the usual routine, things are divided into the South Florida post from earlier, and now here, all the other good things from elsewhere that we ate in 2025. We covered a lot of ground last year: a much-awaited return to Japan, more than a decade after our first visit; short trips to Cape Town and Copenhagen; and even shorter trips out to the Bay Area and up north to Philadelphia, NYC and Hudson Valley.
Looking back on these meals makes me think about something that has once again become a hot topic in the food world. It seems that every five years or so, someone writes an obituary for fine dining or, relatedly, its close cousin the tasting menu. This time around, the one tolling the bell is one of its primary practitioners: chef Bruno Verjus announced in an instagram post this week that he is closing his Paris restaurant, Table, after holding two Michelin stars for the past five years and climbing his way up the "World's 50 Best Restaurants" list.[1] In the announcement he says, "I want great ingredients. Great cooking. Great ideas. Great hospitality. But simpler. Faster. More affordable."[2] This was followed by an interview in with he formally made this year's "Fine dining is dead" proclamation. And he's not alone. Just a few weeks ago, I saw a story querying, "Does Gen Z Have the Patience for Fine Dining?," including insights from Dominique Crenn (Atelier Crenn), Matthew Kammerer (Harbor House), Charlie Mitchell (Saga), Flynn McGarry (Cove), and E.J. Lagasse (Emeril's).[3] For the contra position, a story on the Resy website just claimed that "Today's Tasting Menus Have Evolved With Something for All of Us".[4]
For whatever it's worth, my experiences over last year (and more recently) would suggest that rumors of the death of fine dining have been greatly exaggerated. But – as some others have said – what "fine dining" means, or what it ought to mean, may be changing. And that's a good thing. Does it require tasting menus with courses running into the double digits that invariably feature caviar and truffles and wagyu? Does it require multi-million dollar spaces with collectible original artworks? Does it require pressed white linens at every table? No. No. No. Every meal featured on this list was exceptional, memorable, special. Some were indeed at posh tasting menu temples. Others were at izakayas and casual counters and tables. Some featured combinations I'd never encountered before. Others were iterations of recipes that are hundreds of years old.
One thing I definitely notice – and this may be more indicative of how my own interests have started to skew, rather than any trend – is that many of them were driven by the ingredient itself, more so than any showy, multi-component presentation. I also notice something that is not ever gong to be captured in any picture or even any recap of a particular dish: so many of these meals were made that much more special by a kind, thoughtful gesture from a chef or server: squeezing us in for an early seating at the counter in a fully-booked restaurant, a final bite of an item I'd been longing for the entire night, a comical pantomime that transcends language barriers. There's one quote from Charlie Mitchell which I think nails something about the current AI-infected zeitgeist: "The value of real-life experiences is still high."
So yeah: maybe I too want great ingredients, great cooking, great ideas, and great hospitality, simpler, faster and more affordable. But even so, sometimes I do want to see a chef stretch his wings, take chances, maybe even just indulge. We don't need to kill fine dining to move forward – perhaps just be a little more expansive in what that phrase means.
As always, a disclaimer: this does not purport to be a definitive “best of” list, only a very personal accounting of my favorite things over the last year. While this particular post follows my travels, the primary focus here is on South Florida. And there are typically way too many footnotes. A new one for this year: em-dashes notwithstanding, all content here is generated by an actual human who pays for all his meals. These first few rounds are going to be pretty Japan-intensive. If you don't like that, well I'm not sure we can be friends, but you can just scroll down a bit.
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| nodoguro nigiri - Sushi Satake (Tokyo) |
Chef Takeshi Satake spent 25+ years at Kyubey (which seems to be a particularly prolific training ground for Tokyo itamaes who go on to start their own places) before opening Sushi Satake in Ginza. While many omakase sushi progressions tend to go from lighter to richer neta, Satake does something different. When the rice first comes out and is still warm, he goes with the bigger flavors, and as the rice cools he moves to the more delicate ones. The pattern repeats a couple times over the meal as the rice is replenished. So after several rounds of otsumami (including a very nice eel nanbanzuke[5] and a hearty, intense ankimo (monkfish liver) with nitsuke sauce), the first bite of nigiri was chu-toro (medium fatty tuna), followed by buri (winter yellowtail), then hirame (fluke), then hokkigai (surf clam). The pattern then resumed with this nigiri of nodoguro (black-threat sea perch), a surprisingly rich and fatty white-fleshed fish, lightly torched to bring out those fats and slightly crisp the skin. It's one of my favorite fish and this was one of the best iterations I've ever tasted.
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| shrimp bisque, taro croquette - Den Kushi Flori (Tokyo) |
I really wanted to go to Den, which is a favorite of many smart folks whose opinions I trust. I also really wanted to go to Florilege, which is one of the top examples of French-influenced Japanese cooking in Tokyo. Turns out chefs Zaiyu Hasegawa (Den) and Hiroyasu Kawate (Florilege) opened a restaurant together! (Cue: Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell). Den Kushi Flori is the product of their combined efforts, with an 8-course tasting menu that features several things served on skewers,[6] served at a dining counter that wraps around a big open kitchen so chefs can bring dishes directly to the diners. This was a really fun and tasty meal, the vibe of which is encapsulated in this dish which combined a frothy, intensely-flavored shrimp bisque with a crispy-outside, creamy-inside taro croquette. A little French, a little Japanese, a little something on a stick, a lot delicious. Honorable mention to the shirasu (whitebait) rice topped with shirako (cod milt) bathed in an escargot-style garlic and parsley butter.
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| dashi, crab cake, bamboo shoot - Gion Nishikawa (Kyoto) |
Down a stone path in Kyoto's historical geisha district, just a couple blocks from Yasaka Shrine, in an old tea house, sits Gion Nishikawa. Chef Masayoshi Nishikawa and a small team work on one side of a hinoki counter, preparing a multi-course kaiseki dinner that features an encyclopedia of techniques and seasonal ingredients. Our February visit included fugu in multiple guises (its flesh paired with steamed turnips in a hollowed-out orange; slivers of its skin encapsulated in a jellied broth; creamy fugu shirako over rice with grated bottarga on top), delicate flounder sashimi with baby onions, ankimo in a rich nitsuke sauce with bear[7] yakiniku, among other things. But my favorite was among the most elemental of the dishes: a bowl of clear dashi, with a fluffy crabcake and young bamboo shoots. Nishikawa brings in wild kombu from Hokkaido to make the dashi, but it's also precision and technique that make for a broth so clear and delicate while simultaneously so vivid and intense in flavor.
(All my pics from Gion Nishikawa).
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(All my pics from Gion Nishikawa).
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| sabazushi - Nominokoji Yamagishi (Kyoto) |
Chef Takahiro Yamagishi's flagship, Tominokoji Yamagishi, has one of the highest Tabelog rankings[8] of any Kyoto kaiseki restaurant. But the kaiseki experience is not for everyone, and not for every night, and there's only so many kaiseki meals I can do on one trip and stay married. So we instead went to his more casual izakaya, the similarly named Nominokoji Yamagishi. It was awesome. The seating is all around a counter facing an open kitchen. The menus are only in Japanese, and hand-written, and mostly just befuddled every translation app I had on my phone. The crew spoke virtually no English. We managed just fine. Pristine sashimi of tai and buri. Crispy fried fugu. A little mini-bowl of oden with braised daikon and yuba. A beautifully burnished, meaty grilled chicken wing. Creamy potato salad spiked with iburi gakko (smoked daikon pickles). Airy tempura spring onions. But what I had my eye on the whole meal was the sabazushi – pickled mackerel pressed over rice, which they would slice from a big roll and sear with binchotan charcoal to order. This is a word in Japanese that I know – it's one of my favorite dishes. I'd ordered it. It didn't come. I worried. Then – literally for a post-dessert, after bringing out the pudding – chef comes by and asks, "Sabazushi?" Yes, please. I have never felt more seen.
(continued ...)
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| zuwaigani (snow crab) - Horin at Beniya Mukayu (Yamashiro Onsen) |
From Kyoto, we headed north to Yamashiro Onsen in the Kaga hot-springs region to stay at the absolutely wonderful Beniya Mukayu, a beautiful, serene ryokan made even more picturesque by the blanket of snow that came down overnight during our stay. At its restaurant, Horin, the menu is very crab-intensive in the winter season. This zuwaigani (snow crab) grilled over binchotan – the legs separated and split open, the rest of the meat picked and folded back into the shells – was one of the best I've ever eaten (and I loved this technique for deshelling the leg meat).
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| zuwaigani (snow crab) - Sushi Kibatani (Kanazawa) |
Yes, more crab. It was the season, and Kanazawa in Ishikawa Prefecture is one of the best places to find them. Sushi Kibatani focuses on regional fish and seafood with classic Edomae technique, so of course there would be crab. There was kegani (hairy crab) among the opening bites, there were crabs serving as chopstick rests, and toward the back end of the rounds of nigiri, there was this, a pristine tranche of zuwaigani from the leg over a mound of more picked, sweet, creamy meat. Once again, some of the best crab I've ever tasted. While these types of meals can often be an exercise in subtlety, chef Mitsuhiro Kibatani does not shy away from strong flavors: our otsumami included squidgy, first-of-the-season hotaru ika (firefly squid), shiokara (salted and fermented squid entrails, a pungent traditional drinking food), raw ama ebi with a tangy sea cucumber sauce, and seared meji maguro (baby tuna) daubed with fiery karashi mustard in place of the usual wasabi.
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| abalone with a sauce of its liver - Sushi Kinoshita (Tokyo) |
So, a little back-story. On our maiden voyage trip to Japan in 2014, our first meal – just a couple hours after touching down from eighteen hours of travel – was at Sushi Yoshitake. It was an almost surreal experience. At the time, the restaurant was on the third floor of an entirely nondescript apartment building in Ginza. We arrived a few minutes early, made our way upstairs, found a wooden screen which looked like the entry, and nearly stumbled into a small room where several diners were already mid-meal. The hostess shushed us out, and then steered us around a corner toward what looked like a cupboard built into the wall,[9] then opened the door and motioned for us to step through into what was our private little sushi den for the evening. One of the signature dishes at Yoshitake was tender steamed abalone, served in a rich sauce made of its liver. The abalone – and the entire meal – was revelatory, a lesson in technique and product that was unmatched by anything I'd previously experienced.
Fast forward a decade, and as we are planning a second trip to Japan, I come across Sushi Kinoshita, which interests me in part because Nakamura Masayuki, the chef-owner of Kinoshita, trained at Yoshitake.[10] Sure enough, Kinoshita is located on the second floor of a nondescript apartment building in Nishi-Azabu. We take a taxi, and the driver drops us at a place that appears to be a French restaurant, but in any event is clearly not an omakase sushi den. The host there graciously tries to help us find our way, though he's never heard of the place, and points us toward a building a couple doors down. I spy the lantern with kanji that matches what I saw on their website, we head up the elevator, and we're in the right place.
It was an outstanding meal, probably my favorite of the trip (and the favorite of all my co-travelers), highlighted by – yes – the steamed abalone in a sauce of its liver, done every bit as well as that bite from ten-plus years ago. And a little bonus: after you've eaten the abalone, chef will add a dollop of sushi rice to your bowl to sop up the rest of the sauce. So many people going to Tokyo chase reservations only at a handful of prized places. And I'm sure they are great. But it often seems that at least some folks are doing it for clout instead of genuine appreciation, when there's so much more to experience if you broaden your horizons even a little. An experience like we had here is enough to demonstrate to me the folly of the trophy-collectors.
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| tomato carpaccio, Karoo wagyu - Fyn (Cape Town) |
After doing the 18 hours back and forth to Japan, I didn't really think more long-distance travel would be on the agenda. But Mrs. F actually had a work-related trip that was taking her to Cape Town, and I wasn't going to be left behind. The real highlight was the few extra days we took to journey out to the Gondwana game preserve, but there was some very good eating in Cape Town, highlighted by a solo lunch I had at Fyn. Too often these days, "serious" restaurants doing tasting menus start to resemble each other no matter where on the globe you may find yourself. But this one, aside from being really beautifully executed, felt very much of its place. The meal starts with the "bok box," in which you are presented with a choice of proteins for later in the meal: on my visit, eland (a large antelope), springbok (a small, dainty antelope) and ostrich (a big gawky bird, but you probably already know that). Before getting there, the menu works its way through an abundance of local ingredients and flavors: yellowtail in the style of Cape Malay pickled fish, local rock lobster in a chawanmushi, chokka (a local squid) done like noodles in a sesame sauce, kingclip (a local fish). My favorite was this juicy tomato carpaccio served over a kombu salsa with a tranche of very tasty seared beef from South African producer Karoo Wagyu.
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| snoek takoyaki - Pier (Cape Town) |
We had another very good meal at Pier, a seafood-focused restaurant that is sibling to La Colombe, which is probably the most celebrated restaurant in Cape Town. This is a high production value kind of meal: it starts with an assortment of bites strewn about various coral and shell shaped place settings, like something you might find in Bikini Bottom. Several of the courses that follow involve some tableside theatrics: the bread course is accompanied by hake finished on a portable grill and flaked into a small chafing dish of curry butter, there's a very impressive cheese cart and a possibly even more impressive treasure chest of mignardises. This was a first for me: a takoyaki cart. And yes, I'm a sucker for takoyaki, and even more when its a way to feature a local product: snoek, a type of South African smoked mackerel.
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| crab, carrot, brown butter - Illata (Philadelphia) |
During a brief visit to Little Miss F in Philadelphia, Mrs. F and I found ourselves with a few hours to kill before a mid-evening flight. On something of a whim, we popped into Illata right as it was opening, and were lucky to score a couple seats at the bar counter. Lucky because this tiny shoebox of a restaurant is usually booked up well in advance. Lucky because they've got a delightful, quirky menu, much of which changes often, and is willing to take some chances. Lucky because it was a BYOB spot, and the generous gentlemen sitting next to us at the counter had brought some very good wines with him, and was happy to share. I enjoyed everything: the marinated mussels with hakurei turnips, miso and chili crisp; the tender shrimp with juicy peaches and salty coppa; the chicory salad with anchovies, buttermilk and comte which like a caesar from a paarallel universe. But most of all, this composition of sweet crabmeat bound with brown butter and topped with thinly shaved carrot ribbons.
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| fjord shrimp - Kødbyens Fiskebar (Copenhagen) |
Copenhagen. Very good eating town, you may have heard. We'd never been, and finally fixed that over the summer. First stop was at Kødbyens Fiskebar, a casual spot in a former meat-packing district doing some very serious food, with a particular focus on local fish and seafood. What a fantastic place. Some dishes are pretty straightforward and traditional: mussels steamed in cider and soft herbs, finished with double cream. Some are very ingredient-driven: lightly cured mackerel with a bright, fresh tomato and juniper sauce. Some do some things I've never seen before: razor clams with plankton, parsley and ricotta, fresh peas with "squid cheese," dill and garlic flowers. My favorite were these fjord shrimp, a seasonal summer treat, these tiny shrimp are incredibly sweet, and so delicate you can eat them whole, with nothing but a swipe through some ramson mayonnaise.
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| herring smørrebrød - Selma (Copenhagen) |
I am a big fan of the whole Scandinavian smørrebrød thing: just about anything you could possibly want to eat for lunch – but very often pickled herring – served open-faced over a thin tranche of whole-grain rye bread. At Selma in Copenhagen they have turned it into something of an art form, with some combinations that verge into esoterica while still preserving the essential concept. Here, cured herring gets topped with wispy ribbons of shaved fennel, pink pickled onions, baubles of herring roe, and the most shockingly red raspberries I've ever seen. Would I have ever thought to combine herring and raspberries and put them on rye bread? No, but I'm glad someone did.
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| shrimp cocktail - Noma (Copenhagen) |
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| berries and woodruff - Noma (Copenhagen) |
I feel like this should be accompanied by something akin to the "I bought this Tesla before Elon went crazy" bumper stickers. Yes, we went to Noma, as part of a series of lunches they did over the summer at a communal table for members of their "Taste Buds" retail products subscription program. This was summer of 2025, before the shitshow over head chef Rene Redzepi's abusive behavior broke earlier this year. Really, the shitshow was nothing new: back in 2015, Redzepi acknowledged having been a bully in the kitchen, and even in 2023 – when Noma "closed"[11] amidst increasing media scrutiny of its heavy reliance on, and arguable abuse of, unpaid interns ("stages") – it was unclear how much the kitchen culture had really changed.
But this time, with the N.Y. Times amplifying the complaints of Jason Ignacio White (former head of fermentation at Noma) and roughly three dozen former employees, the stories had some traction, ultimately causing Rene to step back from day-to-day operations at the restaurant (whatever that means – I guess at least no public berating of staff and jabbing them with kitchen tools), and Amex to pull its sponsorship of the Noma L.A. pop-up. The reaction took multiple forms. On one side, you had folks breaking out the typical "If you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen" line (close to literally in this instance). You had a number of chefs (many former disciples at Noma) acting as apologists, typically with some form of a "That was then, this is now" approach, accompanied by somber statements about the challenges of the industry and how it has to change (i.e., the same kind of things Redzepi was saying back in 2015, and again in 2023).[12] You had lots of diners willing to adopt the "Appreciate the art, not the artist" approach. And then on the other side, you had the folks calling for boycotts and for heads to roll. You know, just a typical debate like on every other subject in this day and age.
I don't have all the answers. Though there is at least one simple one: don't be an asshole. And maybe some corollaries: don't work with assholes if you can avoid it; and don't patronize assholes if you can avoid it. I do hope that the folks who actually run restaurants and work in them learn, and actually implement, some lessons from these stories. I don't think anything is going to change the fact that kitchen work is hard, grueling labor. But there's got to be a way to do it without abusing the folks willing to perform that work.
Having said all that: the experience at Noma was pretty remarkable. The room glowed with midsummer light, the table was strewn with ingredients that would go into the seventeen courses to come. These included a potted lemon thyme plant hiding some potato soup sipped through a knotweed stem, a daylily whose leaves were brushed with with white currant leather, a zucchini stem brushed with a pesto-like sunflower seed paste, a sliver of S.C.O.B.Y.[13] macerated in berry juices, another planter on which live snails crawled as we ate some cooked ones nestled above, an edible candle of white chocolate filled with lemon verbena mousse. The motto of Noma's retail outlet is "Try New Things," and we certainly did that.
But the dishes that were the most memorable for me were maybe the simplest and most ingredient-driven. More of those tender fjord shrimp we'd had a couple days earlier at Fiskebar, here blanched and peeled right before service, dressed with a sauce from their heads along with some seaweed-infused butter, and served over rice cooked in sencha tea. A bowl of peak season, juicy mulberries in a woodruff-infused cream, with its unique, sweet, grassy aroma.[14] Maybe you do need a lot of hands to peel those shrimp and pick those berries. But when you're charging what a meal at Noma costs, you can probably figure out how to pay them. And you can teach them how to do it without being an ass.
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| hot and cold smoked salmon - Kadeau (Copenhagen) |
Our final meal in Copenhagen was at Kadeau, which first opened in Bornholm,[15] a small island which catches more sun than most of Scandinavia, making it good for farming and also a summer tourist destination. A few years later, the trio of chefs (Nicolai Nørregaard, Rasmus Kofoed and Magnus Klein Kofoed) opened Kadeau Copenhagen, which has climbed its way up the Michelin ladder to three stars in 2026. I thought it was a beautiful meal – unique and creative and certainly involving some meticulous technique, but ultimately more about the ingredients than how they were manipulated. That was on display most clearly in a signature dish: salmon, salt cured, cold smoked, then hot smoked, so it has a firm pellicle protecting some incredibly silky, tender flesh underneath. They bring a whole side of the fish to the table, then scrape the meat for individual servings, plated with a sliver of slow-poached onion and doused with lavender-infused butter. For years, the best salmon dish I'd ever tasted was the reef-net caught Lummi Island salmon that came out of the smoker at the afore-mentioned Willows Inn.[16] It's been replaced.
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| chartreuse slushy - Sirene (Oakland) |
I am almost certain that this is the first time that a cocktail has made one of my "Best Things I Ate ...." annual reports. Is it because this one is in semi-solid form? No. It's because this is a Chartreuse slushy, and I am quite fond of that herbaceous liqueur crafted by Carthusian monks, and this is brilliant and absolutely delicious (even if the lighting skewed its usual pale green shade). They serve it at Sirene in Oakland, which is a sibling to The Morris in San Francisco, and the folks who run these places are even more Chartreuse-obsessed than myself. Sirene also serves some very pristine fresh seafood, some very unusual seafood charcuterie, and a very fun fried chicken tower that comes with all the fixings.[17]
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| kanpachi, smoked tomato ponzu - SingleThread FieldNotes Dinner (Healdsburg) |
Our primary purpose on this west coast trip, aside from being an excuse to visit Frod Jr., was a "FieldNotes" dinner being hosted by Kyle and Katina Connaughton at the farm they run for their wonderful Healdsburg restaurant, SingleThread. Joining them were the chefs from a couple of my other absolute favorite places: Matthew Kammerer from Harbor House, and Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski from State Bird Provisions. It was an idyllic experience. Right in the middle of the farm, they set up a tent for one long table of about a hundred diners. Adopting one of SingleThread's signature moves, several opening bites were served nestled among a gorgeous centerpiece: part hassun, part floral arrangement. The standout dish for me was this delicate crudo of kanpachi swimming in a smoked tomato ponzu, speckled with fresh cherry tomatoes, a variety of cucumbers and their blossoms, tiny cubes of lemon verbena gelée, and other goodies.
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| chicory salad - Manor Rock Restaurant (Hudson, NY) |
When dining at home with Mrs. F, I have been known to protest that "A salad is not a meal." Of late, I've shown a bit of flexibility on that stance, particularly if said salad involves copious amounts of cheese and freshly toasted croutons, a good dressing, and perhaps a hearty protein. But I also will happily acknowledge that "A salad is part of a meal" – indeed, sometimes a really great part. I was reminded of that during a short end-of-year trip up to Hudson Valley, where I had a couple absolute banger winter salads. First, at Restaurant Manor Rock, a spot in the town of Hudson run by the folks who run a farm in nearby Taghkanic. They make some beautiful charcuterie from their own pigs, which they will also serve various chops from as a main course, like this coppa steak. But the unexpected "wow" moment of the meal was this salad: winter chicories, purple mustard greens, shaved fennel, in a pine nut coriander vinaigrette. Simple, intense, pleasingly bitter, and a welcome part of a meal.
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| castelfranco radicchio salad - Casa Susanna (Leeds, NY) |
And another! Casa Susanna is a restaurant run by chef Efrén Hernández that makes its home in the Camptown lodge in Leeds, at the foot of the Catksill Mountains. His menu is rooted in Mexican flavors; his execution swings from faithfully traditional to creative and inspired. The smoked lamb barbacoa with tuxpeño corn tortillas was straightforward, hearty and delicious. On the other hand, the kombu cured mackerel in squid ink aguachile, buried underneath pickled white radishes and jet-black tortillas, presented like a minimalist artwork, while still maximizing flavors. But once again the surprise hit was a salad: here, gorgeous castelfranco radicchio (with pinkish-greenish leaves whose texture and bitterness both may be a bit more delicate than other varieties) and some slivered seckel pears, dressed in a sunflower mole dressing, dusted with epazote powder. Just a great dish.
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| opening bites - Kabawa (New York) |
We're coming in for a landing! And what a fun way to finish. Nearly a decade ago I had a really fine meal at Momofuku Ko, which was by then David Chang's very grown-up tasting menu flagship for his Momofuku empire. He closed Ko in 2023 but kept the space, which in 2025 he handed over to chef Paul Carmichael, who had previously run Má Pêche, and then Momofuku Seiobo in Sydney, Australia. Carmichael opened Kabawa, which is a paean to the flavors of the Caribbean written by someone who knows them inside and out. Instead of a long-form tasting menu, Kabawa offers diners a choice a handful of choices among three courses (app / main / dessert), and then fills in a bunch of spaces along the way. So there's sweet plantains with scrambled eggs, salt cod and caviar acting like a very fancy ackee and saltfish; jerk spiced duck sausage; stewed goat, picked and pressed into a neat cube,[18] in a spicy scallop creole sauce. But it's all right there in the opening bites: a platter of buss-up-shut (a buttery, flaky, paratha-like bread) and bammy (crisp-edged, dense cassava cubes), accompanied by curried chickpeas, tangy, floral guava chutney, sweet plantain jam, and a swoop of butter with pepper jelly. I love these flavors – it's thrilling to see them treated with such attention and reverence.
There we have it: the best things I ate in 2025, everywhere other than my home base of South Florida. I encourage you to read the recap of last year in South Florida, if you haven't already, and also to be grateful for all of the people whose dedication, inspiration, passion, compassion and hard work make these kinds of experiences possible. I know I'm thankful.
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[1] Which apparently is now going to just be called "The 50," Whatever. Next they're going to be asking us to call it "The Fiddy." I'm not going to lie: I use it, along with several other tools, to do my research when I'm traveling, and will often end up at places that wind up somewhere on the list. (Chasing the "top-rated" restaurants on the list is for starf*ckers as far as I'm concerned.) But the notion of annually naming the "50 best restaurants in the world" has always struck me as absurd, without even getting into their opaque selection process, susceptibility to lobbying, focus on European style tasting menus, and tendency toward hype. The "rebrand" is not intended to address any of those things; rather, it's just to expand the footprint, which has already grown to include bars, hotels and vineyards. I wonder what else is in the pipeline: 50 best luxury watches? 50 best private islands
[2] He tries to dub this "Fast Lane." That, I think we can all agree, is a terrible name, right up there with "molecular gastronomy" and "techno-emotional cuisine." And is this really anything different from what Yves Camdeborde coined as "bistronomy" back in the 1990's?
[3]I don't know that the piece answers its own question with any kind of consensus opinion, though some common thoughts emerge: "luxury" ought to be defined by quality and provenance, not just cost; diners do have shorter attention spans and tend to experience things through their phones; but still and yet, what really matters is the experience.
[4]Of course, Resy has clients with tasting menus and reservations to be filled.
[5] Apparently the Portuguese brought escabeche – fried fish pickled in a sweet-sour vinegar sauce with julienned vegetables – both to Japan, where it became nanbanzuke, and to the Caribbean, where it appears as "escovitch fish."
[6]That's the "kushi" part of the name, for kushiyaki, i.e., grilled things on skewers.
[7] One of the highlights of the meal was Chef Nishikawa himself. While kaiseki meals can sometimes have an air of solemnity, Nishikawa was joking with his crew throughout the meal, and eventually with the diners too, despite language barriers for us gringos. When he mentioned an item that was not on the printed menu, we weren't sure if we'd heard him correctly. "Bear?" we asked. "Bear!" he responded, rearing back with his "paws" up for emphasis. The entire restaurant burst into laughter, an unfortunately infrequent sound in a Michelin two-star restaurant.
[8] I suppose Tabelog could be described as the Japanese equivalent of Yelp, with the notable difference that the folks providing ratings at Tabelog generally seem to be a lot more knowledgeable and informed about what they're eating, and the ratings thus a lot more reliable.
[9] I swear I am not exaggerating.
[10] As an additional selling point, if you're an O.G. "Iron Chef" fan like me: before Yoshitake, he worked with the original Iron Chef, Rokuzaburo Michiba.
[11] After announcing its closure, Noma did a multi-month residency in Kyoto, then reopened in Copenhagen for the first half of 2025 before announcing a multi-month residency in L.A. for the spring of 2026, then returned to Copenhagen in August of this year. I'm reminded of a rug store in Miami that had a "going out of business sale" sign up on its windows for at least a decade.
[12] As Dominique Crenn said in one reaction piece: "We have been talking about this forever."
[13] It's hard to decide which sounds more gross: the acronym or what it stands for: symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, a byproduct of kombucha fermentation.
[14] This dish immediately brought to mind a dish of blueberries and woodruff ice cream I'd been served more than ten years ago at Willows Inn on Lummi Island, Washington by chef Blaine Wetzel, one of Redzepi's proteges at Noma. As it turns out, Wetzel was also accused of running an abusive and harassing workplace, as well as misrepresenting ingredients as locally sourced, which led to the restaurant's closure. Abuse does travel in intergenerational cycles.
[15] Bornholm is part of Denmark, though off the coast of Sweden. I assume there is some history of internecine Scandinavian quarrels over that particular geographic quirk, but I've gone down enough rabbit holes for this one post already.
[16] Or maybe it came from Costco!
[17] Weird side note: I have now been to three different restaurants all in the same space on Grand Avenue: first Boot & Shoe Service, which shut down because its owner turned out to be a creep (I really did not intend for abusive kitchen environments to become a recurring theme in this post, but here we are); then Sister, with new owners who tried to pick up the pieces (a place I really enjoyed over a couple visits); and now Sirene.
[18] I did kind of miss picking around all the wonky bones you usually have to navigate with a stewed goat dish, though my fingers were much cleaner.
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