19 dishes from all over the world that blew our minds in 2023
As food writers, even during leisurely travel, we find ourselves seeking out burgeoning trends, emerging chefs and restaurants to recommend. Although our primary coverage area might encompass Southern California, culinary influences are traded all over the world, and the best way to report on those shifts is to go to the source, whether that takes us to Mexico City, Singapore, Tokyo or beyond.
These are the best meals our food writers had in 2023 that are at least one flight away — from buttery capellini Cantonese at New York City newcomer Torrisi that reporter Stephanie Breijo sneaked in during The Times’ annual Coast to Coast event to shatteringly crispy sweet potato tempura that restaurant critic Bill Addison sampled while studying the links between Tokyo and L.A’s sushi cultures. And, of course, there are the places that we stumbled upon unexpectedly: a stand pairing pulpo a la brasa with crisp white wine in Barcelona’s bustling La Boqueria market, a Kyoto bakery with masterful French pastries, a Filipino brunch in Chicago that’s featured on the Hulu series “The Bear.”
Here are 19 meals that we’re collecting frequent flier miles for, with the hopes of soon eating again:
Showing Places
(Danielle Dorsey / Los Angeles Times )
Peach cobbler at Audrey
Southern $$$
Housed in a sleek, modern farmhouse-style building in a quiet Nashville neighborhood, Audrey serves as chef Sean Brock’s most personal restaurant, a celebration of his Appalachian heritage that’s named after his grandmother. The two-story space hosts Brock’s test kitchen upstairs (take a gander on your way to the Bar at Audrey; it’s a literal laboratory), and the ground floor is anchored by an open kitchen with east-facing windows, quilts and folk paintings from Brock’s personal collection and dried flowers dangling from exposed ceiling beams.
Weekend brunch was a quiet affair, with just a few small groups spread across the spacious dining room. The entire meal stands out as one of my most memorable of the year, with highlights such as crab and grits crowned with a sorghum-cured egg yolk and an Appalachian-style breakfast plate with fried apples, tomato gravy, Sack sausage gravy, soft-scrambled eggs, hash browns and a buttermilk biscuit.
The standout, however, was the peach cobbler, a dish that we were graciously given courtesy of the kitchen after we informed that another item was unavailable. The miraculously gluten-free dessert arrived in a small cast-iron skillet with a thick brown sugar crumble and just-cooked peaches hidden underneath, with house whipped cream on the side. Although it was unexpected, we had no problem cleaning the plate. The beverage program is treated with similar reverence, with wine pairings available and brunch standouts like a chicory martini and a Bloody Mary with hearth-roasted tomato and smoked squash.
Weekend brunch was a quiet affair, with just a few small groups spread across the spacious dining room. The entire meal stands out as one of my most memorable of the year, with highlights such as crab and grits crowned with a sorghum-cured egg yolk and an Appalachian-style breakfast plate with fried apples, tomato gravy, Sack sausage gravy, soft-scrambled eggs, hash browns and a buttermilk biscuit.
The standout, however, was the peach cobbler, a dish that we were graciously given courtesy of the kitchen after we informed that another item was unavailable. The miraculously gluten-free dessert arrived in a small cast-iron skillet with a thick brown sugar crumble and just-cooked peaches hidden underneath, with house whipped cream on the side. Although it was unexpected, we had no problem cleaning the plate. The beverage program is treated with similar reverence, with wine pairings available and brunch standouts like a chicory martini and a Bloody Mary with hearth-roasted tomato and smoked squash.
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(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Basque cheesecake ice cream at Bar Spero
Spanish Tapas $$$
Few dishes left me as speechless in 2023 as Johnny Spero’s riff on one of the world’s most recognizable desserts — speechless to the point where my only words to my friend were, repeatedly, “OK, but how’d he do this?” Spero, the former pastry chef of Komi, also handles the pastry program at his excellent restaurant inspired by his travels and meals throughout Basque Country. The region’s quintessential dessert would need to be represented somehow, but Spero wanted to subvert expectation. He did this by transforming the creamy, rich cheesecake with an oven-burnt top into ice cream.
He roasts cream cheese with caramelized sugar, which forms the base of both the ice cream insert and the semifreddo: The two textures melt differently at the edge and the center for a confounding bite. Once frozen together, they’re topped with a blend of caramelized sugar and black cocoa to emulate the oven-roasting of the burnt top. Separately, he makes a caramel of black cocoa that’s covered with a crumble of dark chocolate, white chocolate, hazelnut oil and wild rice for texture and nuttiness. It all started as a special with only six available each day. Since the 2022 opening, it’s become one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, with a couple hundred sold a week. Spero says he wouldn’t dream of cutting or changing it: “There’s certain things that I know if I try to pull off our menu, our staff would probably kill me because they know how iconic they’ve become, like the Basque cheesecake.”
Spero is in the process of addressing fire damage to his Michelin-starred Reverie — a reopening on the radar of plenty of food enthusiasts — but the more casual Bar Spero is, in its own right, very much a D.C. destination. Especially for this ice cream.
He roasts cream cheese with caramelized sugar, which forms the base of both the ice cream insert and the semifreddo: The two textures melt differently at the edge and the center for a confounding bite. Once frozen together, they’re topped with a blend of caramelized sugar and black cocoa to emulate the oven-roasting of the burnt top. Separately, he makes a caramel of black cocoa that’s covered with a crumble of dark chocolate, white chocolate, hazelnut oil and wild rice for texture and nuttiness. It all started as a special with only six available each day. Since the 2022 opening, it’s become one of the restaurant’s signature dishes, with a couple hundred sold a week. Spero says he wouldn’t dream of cutting or changing it: “There’s certain things that I know if I try to pull off our menu, our staff would probably kill me because they know how iconic they’ve become, like the Basque cheesecake.”
Spero is in the process of addressing fire damage to his Michelin-starred Reverie — a reopening on the radar of plenty of food enthusiasts — but the more casual Bar Spero is, in its own right, very much a D.C. destination. Especially for this ice cream.
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(PJ Rountree / For The Times)
Quesadilla de chapulines at Bósforo
Bar/Nightclub $$$
If there were an international ribbon for best mezcal selection in the world, Bósforo in downtown Mexico City would own it year after year. Owner Arturo Dozal has direct, personal connections — no middlemen of any kind — to the modest maestros who make the sheet’s exquisite madrecuishes, verdes, espadines and other agave distillates, including sotol from the north as well as fermented pulques. A proper speakeasy, there is no sign, no invitation to enter, and, incredibly, almost no internet presence at all. Photos are discouraged inside. If you know what’s up in “D.F.”, you just know Bósforo. The bar now has an adjoining restaurant, and you can order from the seasonal kitchen next door. One dish that will never go away, however, is Bósforo’s founding quesadilla de chapulines, the first and for a time only dish available to pair while drinking. The grasshoppers are roasted in chiles and garlic and placed in a blue maize tortilla lined with a single leaf of hoja santa. Queso Oaxaca and seasonal mushrooms add a heartiness that makes the Bósforo quesadilla a meal on its own. I called it the “perfect quesadilla” 13 years ago, ahem. It still reigns supreme.
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(Danielle Dorsey / Los Angeles Times )
Speck pizzette and steak tartare at Bronzo Bar e Cucina
Italian Tapas $
I stumbled upon Bronzo Bar e Cucina by accident, at a time when I was burnt out on restaurant research and reservations. But walking down the iconic, pedestrian-only La Rambla street and seeing how many cafes sprawled onto the sidewalk with vermouths, conservas and sizzling paellas, I realized that I didn’t need to plan ahead. Even outside the tourist centers, Barcelona is rich with unassuming little haunts that, upon further investigation, occasionally turn out to be globally recognized.
While Bronzo Bar e Cucina hasn’t achieved the Michelin status of Windsor restaurant across the street, its tapas menu, with seasonal plates and Italian ingredients, is far from a secret. We had no reservation, so we were seated at the bar, but that didn’t hinder our enjoyment of the dim, stylish space. Fresh out of a stone oven, the pizzettes are a must, especially the speck with creamy burrata, sharp arugula and pesto — I devoured all but a slice before I remembered to take a picture. Harry’s steak tartare was another standout, with a simple presentation that features slivers of red onion and slices of buttered toast on the side. The night passes easily with a bottle of Venetian wine.
C/ de Còrsega, 307, L’Eixample, 08008 Barcelona, Spain
While Bronzo Bar e Cucina hasn’t achieved the Michelin status of Windsor restaurant across the street, its tapas menu, with seasonal plates and Italian ingredients, is far from a secret. We had no reservation, so we were seated at the bar, but that didn’t hinder our enjoyment of the dim, stylish space. Fresh out of a stone oven, the pizzettes are a must, especially the speck with creamy burrata, sharp arugula and pesto — I devoured all but a slice before I remembered to take a picture. Harry’s steak tartare was another standout, with a simple presentation that features slivers of red onion and slices of buttered toast on the side. The night passes easily with a bottle of Venetian wine.
C/ de Còrsega, 307, L’Eixample, 08008 Barcelona, Spain
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(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
Black Rocks course at Central
Peruvian $$$$
If forced to choose a single course out of a meal that reorients everything about where we should be seeking the creative center of the food world, it would have to be the Black Rocks course at Virgilio Martinez’s aptly named Central in Lima, Peru. Partly, this is cheating because it’s the first course in a mind-blowing procession of wild ingredients, textures, colors and flavors that is unlike anything most of us are used to in North America or Europe. Exploring the many complex ecosystems of Peru through its different elevations, Central’s “altitude cuisine” earned the restaurant its No. 1 ranking on this year’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants.
Black Rocks, focused on ingredients sourced 10 meters (nearly 33 feet) below sea level, arrives with a platter of seaweed to set the scene, followed by sushi-like lozenges topped not with salmon roe or a piece of uni but delicate circles of sargassum, a kind of seaweed, resting on what appears to be caviar but is actually dehydrated squid ink with a giant squid reduction underneath. On a separate plate, made for the restaurant to seemingly capture wet sand just as a wave has receded into the ocean, is a shell filled with meat from the head and body of a Peruvian blue crab, sweet and complex. And then, inside a ceramic bowl that looks as if someone caught the moment blue dye was dropped into a bowl of water, you find a pale clam emulsion with squid turned an intense blue with an algae ferment and spirulina. With the food comes a fresh-tasting elixir poured from a bottle that reads Momento Baja el Mar, made with seaweed distillate and cucumber that grows near the ocean. This is turned sea-foam green by your server, who spoons a bit of algae extraction into the glass.
You take it all in. The seaweed, the clams, the crab, the squid, the cocktail. Each flavor and sensation feels new. But it’s the combination of otherworldliness and comfort that I remember most from the custard of clam and squid that seemingly could have been sourced from the blue ice fog of Neptune. The emulsion, not as silky as Japanese chawanmushi but just as soothing, contrasts beautifully with the firmer bite of the sliced shellfish and tastes wonderfully of the sea right here on our own planet Earth.
For more on Central, read our profile of chef Virgilio Martinez.
Av. Pedro de Osma 301, Barranco 15063, Peru
Phone: +51 1 242 8515
Black Rocks, focused on ingredients sourced 10 meters (nearly 33 feet) below sea level, arrives with a platter of seaweed to set the scene, followed by sushi-like lozenges topped not with salmon roe or a piece of uni but delicate circles of sargassum, a kind of seaweed, resting on what appears to be caviar but is actually dehydrated squid ink with a giant squid reduction underneath. On a separate plate, made for the restaurant to seemingly capture wet sand just as a wave has receded into the ocean, is a shell filled with meat from the head and body of a Peruvian blue crab, sweet and complex. And then, inside a ceramic bowl that looks as if someone caught the moment blue dye was dropped into a bowl of water, you find a pale clam emulsion with squid turned an intense blue with an algae ferment and spirulina. With the food comes a fresh-tasting elixir poured from a bottle that reads Momento Baja el Mar, made with seaweed distillate and cucumber that grows near the ocean. This is turned sea-foam green by your server, who spoons a bit of algae extraction into the glass.
You take it all in. The seaweed, the clams, the crab, the squid, the cocktail. Each flavor and sensation feels new. But it’s the combination of otherworldliness and comfort that I remember most from the custard of clam and squid that seemingly could have been sourced from the blue ice fog of Neptune. The emulsion, not as silky as Japanese chawanmushi but just as soothing, contrasts beautifully with the firmer bite of the sliced shellfish and tastes wonderfully of the sea right here on our own planet Earth.
For more on Central, read our profile of chef Virgilio Martinez.
Av. Pedro de Osma 301, Barranco 15063, Peru
Phone: +51 1 242 8515
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(Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)
Sardines with smoked crème fraîche at Clamato
Seafood $$$
These are my personal Paris truisms: I’m always going to spend too much time in the 11th, and I’m never going to get a reservation at Septime (I did once in 2014, but I haven’t scored a table since). That’s probably because I often don’t plan very far ahead anymore. So Clamato — the seafood-focused sibling restaurant from chef Bertrand Grébaut — is my go-to because it’s walk-ins only and because the platters of fruit de mer are pristine. Clamato probably receives the best daily seafood catch in Paris: Maldon oysters, bonito, mullet, whelks, sea urchin, razor clams, octopus, shrimp, anchovies and more. I love the simplest dishes prepared expertly and in surprising ways, like these fresh sardines doused in olive oil and served with smoked crème fraîche and a salty-savory lemon preserve. I ate them with a unicorn bottle of Domaine Mosse Magic of Ju-Ju (the wine selection never disappoints).
80 Rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris, France
Phone: +33 1 43 72 74 53
80 Rue de Charonne, 75011 Paris, France
Phone: +33 1 43 72 74 53
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(Diacá)
La sopa roja at Diacá
Guatemalan $$
Diacá is something of a refuge from the hustle and bustle of Guatemala City. Perched on the rooftop terrace of a Mid-Century building in the hipster neighborhood of Cuatro Grados Norte, it offers a panoramic view of the city. Most diners share a single table encircled by transparent glass walls. It’s an ideal setting for what’s to come — a multi-course feast completely sourced from Guatemala.
My favorite dish was the first course, which chef Debora Fadul calls la sopa roja, or the red soup. Yes, there’s soup but also two accompanying dishes. I was most impressed by what at first glance looked like fish sashimi, wasabi, a bit of ginger and some kind of leaf. The diner is encouraged to make a taco with the ingredients, using the leaf as a tortilla. I was stunned when I bit into it. What my eyes had just seen didn’t jibe with what was happening in my mouth. The server explained that what I thought was sashimi was actually grilled and sauteed watermelon. The green dollop was a pea puree. The ginger? Watermelon rind. Lastly, the leaf was a Mesoamerican oregano, known as mono de espacio.
It all worked so well together and paired perfectly with the soup, with herb broth and juice extracted from the sauteed watermelon. The savory elixir with a faraway sweetness was comforting. A side dish that resembled sliced cucumber was actually perulero, a pear-shaped chayote or squash native to the country. It’s commonly boiled and used in soups or stews (that’s how my grandmother used to serve it). Here, it was thinly sliced and raw, tasting like a cross between jicama and cucumber. Eating at Diacá was a sensory and emotional experience. It made me nostalgic for those yearly trips we’d take to my grandparents’ home in north-central Guatemala, where we were greeted with a huge pot of beef soup with generous portions of chayote.
Via 6, 3-56 Edificio OEG, nivel atelier, Cdad. de Guatemala, Guatemala
Phone: +502 4007 8164
My favorite dish was the first course, which chef Debora Fadul calls la sopa roja, or the red soup. Yes, there’s soup but also two accompanying dishes. I was most impressed by what at first glance looked like fish sashimi, wasabi, a bit of ginger and some kind of leaf. The diner is encouraged to make a taco with the ingredients, using the leaf as a tortilla. I was stunned when I bit into it. What my eyes had just seen didn’t jibe with what was happening in my mouth. The server explained that what I thought was sashimi was actually grilled and sauteed watermelon. The green dollop was a pea puree. The ginger? Watermelon rind. Lastly, the leaf was a Mesoamerican oregano, known as mono de espacio.
It all worked so well together and paired perfectly with the soup, with herb broth and juice extracted from the sauteed watermelon. The savory elixir with a faraway sweetness was comforting. A side dish that resembled sliced cucumber was actually perulero, a pear-shaped chayote or squash native to the country. It’s commonly boiled and used in soups or stews (that’s how my grandmother used to serve it). Here, it was thinly sliced and raw, tasting like a cross between jicama and cucumber. Eating at Diacá was a sensory and emotional experience. It made me nostalgic for those yearly trips we’d take to my grandparents’ home in north-central Guatemala, where we were greeted with a huge pot of beef soup with generous portions of chayote.
Via 6, 3-56 Edificio OEG, nivel atelier, Cdad. de Guatemala, Guatemala
Phone: +502 4007 8164
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times)
Tomato and Laphroaig cocktail at Gen Yamamoto
Cocktails $$$
Gen Yamamoto worked for Daniel Boulud in New York before opening his place near Tokyo’s central, shopping-rich Roppongi District, where he mixes drinks solo behind an eight-seat bar fashioned from 500-year-old Mizunara oak. He isn’t much for conversation; he’s too consumed preparing the moment’s fruits (and sometimes vegetables, like sweet potatoes in the fall) and combining them in judicious amounts with unlikely, spot-on spirits.
A flight of seven small cocktails in March began with Yamamoto vigorously muddling hassaku, a nubbly skinned Japanese citrus in the orange family, and pairing it with Marc de Champagne, a French distillate that’s in the same arena as Italian grappa. It was unlike anything I’ve had before. The day’s creations also included juiced kiwi coupled with soju and sprinkled with matcha, followed by a combination that ended up being the first one I mentioned most to people when describing the whole experience: pureed Momotaro tomatoes spiked with Laphroaig and sharpened with shiso. The tomato absorbed the scotch’s peaty smokiness, and the minty herb cut right through the other dense flavors. I couldn’t imagine how well the trio would unite until my first sip.
By the end, I knew I’d never had a drinking session that more matched my personal tastes. A meditation on fruit served in stunning glassware isn’t everyone’s vibe, but I kept thinking: Couldn’t a talent and an approach like this change the game in Southern California?
1-Chome-6-4 Azabujuban, Minato City, Tokyo
Phone: +81-3-6434-0652
A flight of seven small cocktails in March began with Yamamoto vigorously muddling hassaku, a nubbly skinned Japanese citrus in the orange family, and pairing it with Marc de Champagne, a French distillate that’s in the same arena as Italian grappa. It was unlike anything I’ve had before. The day’s creations also included juiced kiwi coupled with soju and sprinkled with matcha, followed by a combination that ended up being the first one I mentioned most to people when describing the whole experience: pureed Momotaro tomatoes spiked with Laphroaig and sharpened with shiso. The tomato absorbed the scotch’s peaty smokiness, and the minty herb cut right through the other dense flavors. I couldn’t imagine how well the trio would unite until my first sip.
By the end, I knew I’d never had a drinking session that more matched my personal tastes. A meditation on fruit served in stunning glassware isn’t everyone’s vibe, but I kept thinking: Couldn’t a talent and an approach like this change the game in Southern California?
1-Chome-6-4 Azabujuban, Minato City, Tokyo
Phone: +81-3-6434-0652
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(Sarah Mosqueda)
Longanisa breakfast sandwich at Kasama
Filipino Bakery $$
It can be hard to get a reservation for dinner at Chicago’s one Michelin-starred Kasama. Luckily, it’s walk-ins only for brunch at this bakery and modern Filipino restaurant helmed by chefs Genie Kwon and Timothy Flores. The line typically stretches down the block, giving you plenty of time to contemplate decisions like chicken adobo versus mushroom adobo and cardamom kouign amann or ube and coconut ensaymada. Make sure your order includes the longanisa breakfast sandwich. Impossibly fluffy eggs are stacked on sweet, bright red Filipino breakfast sausage and a melty Kraft Single on a warm griddled pan de sal bun . This is the sandwich Sydney eats alone when Carmy bails on their research day on FX’s series “The Bear.” The fictional sous chef’s pro move is to order a side of hash browns and add it to the sandwich, which I confess I didn’t do because I ate here before I saw the episode. If you are short on time, Kasama does take daytime to-go orders. Call ahead, skip the line, pick up your order and let it rip.
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(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
Many tubers at Kjolle
Peruvian $$$
At first glance, it looks like dessert. But this flower-dotted tart with pink and intense yellow ribbons arranged like one of Richard Serra’s curvier sculptures is a savory course of tubers — potato, olluco, yuca — that helped Peru’s Pía León earn the title of world’s best female chef in 2021.
Her restaurant Kjolle, in Lima’s artsy Barranco neighborhood, is housed in the same Casa Tupac complex as Central, the restaurant run by her husband, Virgilio Martinez. Central is also where she found her voice as a chef.
Like most restaurants of its caliber — it was voted No. 1 this year on the world’s 50 best restaurants list — Central has a large international team of chefs contributing ideas filtered through Martinez. Kjolle is a more personal restaurant, easy to love with more accessible a la carte entrees in addition to a tasting menu from a smaller but ambitious team of chefs led by León.
Native Peruvian ingredients, many sourced through Mater Iniciativa, the research project started by Martinez, his sister Malena Martinez and León, are at the heart of the cuisine at Kjolle. So you might see the fruitiness of spongy white pacay seeds, a kind of ice cream bean, paired with luscious fresh scallops or the Andean tuber black mashua baked into bread or a tart. River shrimp and razor clams, flavored with coconut and cecina, are dotted with tiny green spheres of algae hand harvested from a lake high in the Andes — Incan caviar. Instead of presenting this dish as solemn high cuisine, León sends out lettuce leaves so you can make your own delicious wraps, Vietnamese style, to eat with your hands.
But the tart called muchos tuberculos, or many tubers, served early in the meal, is a statement of purpose for Kjolle. With a crust made from the quinoa-like grain cañihua and an intense potato flavor that borders on sweet, it shows that a culinary exploration of one of the world’s most ecologically diverse places can be delicious and fun. You can use a fork. But I don’t think León would mind if you just picked it up in your hand and ate it.
Address: Av. Pedro de Osma 301, Barranco, Lima, Peru
Phone: +51 1 242-8575
Her restaurant Kjolle, in Lima’s artsy Barranco neighborhood, is housed in the same Casa Tupac complex as Central, the restaurant run by her husband, Virgilio Martinez. Central is also where she found her voice as a chef.
Like most restaurants of its caliber — it was voted No. 1 this year on the world’s 50 best restaurants list — Central has a large international team of chefs contributing ideas filtered through Martinez. Kjolle is a more personal restaurant, easy to love with more accessible a la carte entrees in addition to a tasting menu from a smaller but ambitious team of chefs led by León.
Native Peruvian ingredients, many sourced through Mater Iniciativa, the research project started by Martinez, his sister Malena Martinez and León, are at the heart of the cuisine at Kjolle. So you might see the fruitiness of spongy white pacay seeds, a kind of ice cream bean, paired with luscious fresh scallops or the Andean tuber black mashua baked into bread or a tart. River shrimp and razor clams, flavored with coconut and cecina, are dotted with tiny green spheres of algae hand harvested from a lake high in the Andes — Incan caviar. Instead of presenting this dish as solemn high cuisine, León sends out lettuce leaves so you can make your own delicious wraps, Vietnamese style, to eat with your hands.
But the tart called muchos tuberculos, or many tubers, served early in the meal, is a statement of purpose for Kjolle. With a crust made from the quinoa-like grain cañihua and an intense potato flavor that borders on sweet, it shows that a culinary exploration of one of the world’s most ecologically diverse places can be delicious and fun. You can use a fork. But I don’t think León would mind if you just picked it up in your hand and ate it.
Address: Av. Pedro de Osma 301, Barranco, Lima, Peru
Phone: +51 1 242-8575
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(Cody Long / Los Angeles Times)
Khao kluk kapi from Le Du
Thai $$$
Chef Thitid “Ton” Tassanakajohn’s Bangkok restaurant Le Du is named for the Thai word for “season.” The menu changes often, but the one dish he’ll never remove is the khao kluk kapi. It’s his take on fermented shrimp paste fried rice, a popular Bangkok street food. Tassanakajohn sources most of the ingredients for the dish from the nearby Samyan market, including plump river prawns. He grills the prawns on an open flame with pads of butter. To make the rice, he ladles in chicken stock, like risotto, and adds cream and a pungent fermented shrimp paste called kapi. He makes a tom yum prawn sauce using prawn heads, lemongrass, galangal, Makrut lime leaves, chile paste and cream. The dish comes together with the grilled prawn covered in the tom yum sauce and crumbles of crispy fried egg. He spoons a mound of the rice off to the side and garnishes it with small heaps of raw and cooked condiments: pork jam, green mango, red onion, chiles and lime leaf. I took the time to get a bit of everything onto each bite, savoring the caramelized pork, the funk of the rice and the rich prawn sauce. I’d fly back tomorrow just for this dish.
399/3 Silom 7 Alley, Silom, Bang Rak, Bangkok 10500, Thailand
Phone: +66 92 919 9969
399/3 Silom 7 Alley, Silom, Bang Rak, Bangkok 10500, Thailand
Phone: +66 92 919 9969
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(Danielle Dorsey / Los Angeles Times)
Pulpo a la brasa and patatas bravas at Mercat de la Boqueria
Catalan Spanish $
With its imposing arched entryway featuring sun- and sky-hued stained glass, it’s impossible to miss La Boqueria market off busy La Rambla boulevard in Barcelona. The history of food vending at the site dates back to the 13th century, with its current iron structure built in 1914. Inside its buzzing halls, you’ll find florists, butchers, farmers, espresso and wine bars and stalls with a global selection of freshly prepared foods. Vendors will call out to you, offering samples and waving menus, but in these scenarios, I look for locals who appear nonplussed by the crowds and follow their cues as they veer toward their favorite stands. I’ll bounce around, sampling mussels in white wine sauce at one stall and then Prosecco and a cheese plate at another.
All of that to say that I can’t tell you the exact vendor or stall where I ate life-affirming pulpo a la brasa with saucy patatas bravas and prawns in garlic butter. What I remember most — aside from how a glass of crisp white wine paired perfectly with the plump and briny seafood — is the pleased smile of the woman who worked the stand as she watched my friend and I devour our meals. She was happy to banter with my broken Spanish as she dipped baskets of chopped potatoes into bubbling vats of oil.
La Rambla, 91, Ciutat Vella, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
All of that to say that I can’t tell you the exact vendor or stall where I ate life-affirming pulpo a la brasa with saucy patatas bravas and prawns in garlic butter. What I remember most — aside from how a glass of crisp white wine paired perfectly with the plump and briny seafood — is the pleased smile of the woman who worked the stand as she watched my friend and I devour our meals. She was happy to banter with my broken Spanish as she dipped baskets of chopped potatoes into bubbling vats of oil.
La Rambla, 91, Ciutat Vella, 08001 Barcelona, Spain
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(Laurie Ochoa / Los Angeles Times)
Beets and caviar at Mirazur
French $$$$
The mark of a great three-star chef is not that he or she will serve you caviar. Anyone with money and access can pop open a tin. Which is why it wasn’t the caviar that took my breath away in this seemingly simple dish concocted by Mirazur’s Mauro Colagreco. Instead, it was the humble beetroot. Indeed, your introduction to the justly famous course is the beet unadorned — prettily arranged deep pink slices resting in a wide white bowl. Then, one of the restaurant’s servers appears with a small copper pot and spoons cream sauce loaded with caviar over the beets. Many sensations hit your mouth at once — the snap of the caviar, the lusciousness of the cream sauce, but what comes through most is the suppleness and very essence of beetroot with a complex sweetness that is almost chestnut-like.
Like so much of Colagreco’s food, this dish began in the garden. A harvest of Crapaudine beets — “thought to be the oldest beet cultivar still in existence,” according to Uprising Seeds, “dating back possibly 1,000 years to the time of Charlemagne” — was left in the cellar for two months while the restaurant was closed. Colegreco came back to discover an astonishing concentration of flavor in the dehydrated roots. His gardeners replanted the beets, which grew even larger and more flavorful. When it came time to harvest, Colagreco, as he told Michelin’s Georges Rouzeau, decided to cook the beets in a salt crust to concentrate the flavor even more. The addition of caviar is his way of honoring the “noble root.”
Mirazur, 30 Av. Aristide Briand, 06500 Menton, France
Phone: +33 4 92 41 86 86
Like so much of Colagreco’s food, this dish began in the garden. A harvest of Crapaudine beets — “thought to be the oldest beet cultivar still in existence,” according to Uprising Seeds, “dating back possibly 1,000 years to the time of Charlemagne” — was left in the cellar for two months while the restaurant was closed. Colegreco came back to discover an astonishing concentration of flavor in the dehydrated roots. His gardeners replanted the beets, which grew even larger and more flavorful. When it came time to harvest, Colagreco, as he told Michelin’s Georges Rouzeau, decided to cook the beets in a salt crust to concentrate the flavor even more. The addition of caviar is his way of honoring the “noble root.”
Mirazur, 30 Av. Aristide Briand, 06500 Menton, France
Phone: +33 4 92 41 86 86
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(Jenn Harris / Los Angeles Times)
Pang susi from Pangium
Singaporean $$$
Malcolm Lee’s Pangium restaurant, at the top of a hill overlooking the Singapore Botanic Gardens, is a magical place. Here, Lee serves a tasting menu that highlights Straits cuisine, with many dishes stemming from a taste or memory from his childhood. His pang susi looks like a miniature pineapple bun with a cracked and golden top. The texture is remarkably chewy and crumbly, soft and flaky all at once. Inside is a savory filling of ground Iberico pork with roasted coriander seeds and candied winter melon. It was three bites of pure pastry bliss.
11 Gallop Road Gallop Entrance, Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore 259015
Phone: +65 8938 3891
11 Gallop Road Gallop Entrance, Singapore Botanic Gardens, Singapore 259015
Phone: +65 8938 3891
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(Daniel Hernandez / Los Angeles Times)
Beet mousse and crumble at Parcela in Tepoztlán
Mexican $$
I ate a lot across Mexico this year, from Valle de Guadalupe to Los Cabos and all over Mexico City, where while living there, one of my mottoes became: “The best part about living in Mexico City is being able to leave it.” A two-hour driving radius from the center of North America’s biggest megalopolis offers infinitely satisfying weekend trips across the Mexican altiplano. For many, the clichéd obvious choice is a getaway to Tepoztlán. This “mystical” tourist town of cobbled streets and teeny resorts offers breathtaking vistas of the towering nearby mountains from any terrace.
Lately, chilangos have been spreading buzz about a restaurant named Parcela. You can’t get more farm-to-table than this: Parcela (“parcel”) is an outdoor dining space that sits right in the middle of the farm that supplies its kitchen; guests first pass rows of growing corn and greens along a wooden plank walkway to get to a stylish oasis teeming with fronded plants, an attractive bar and a semi-open kitchen. Plates are 100 % seasonal and shifting constantly. When I went in the spring, I was floored by the wallop of flavor contained in this beet mousse over a bread crumble for dessert, topped with berries that were likely still on the vine that very morning. Try everything here — roasts, salads, aguachiles, tostadas — but strategize for a proper round of desserts. This beet mousse was so good, I ordered two.
Lately, chilangos have been spreading buzz about a restaurant named Parcela. You can’t get more farm-to-table than this: Parcela (“parcel”) is an outdoor dining space that sits right in the middle of the farm that supplies its kitchen; guests first pass rows of growing corn and greens along a wooden plank walkway to get to a stylish oasis teeming with fronded plants, an attractive bar and a semi-open kitchen. Plates are 100 % seasonal and shifting constantly. When I went in the spring, I was floored by the wallop of flavor contained in this beet mousse over a bread crumble for dessert, topped with berries that were likely still on the vine that very morning. Try everything here — roasts, salads, aguachiles, tostadas — but strategize for a proper round of desserts. This beet mousse was so good, I ordered two.
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(Bill Addison / Los Angeles Times )
Sweet potato at Tempura Kondo
Japanese $$$
The admiration for chef Fumio Kondo and his tempura restaurant in Tokyo’s Ginza district parallel the veneration around Jiro Ono: Both are masters grounded in tradition who also believe in refining and advancing techniques in pursuit of perfection. Kondo famously calls tempura a “steamed food.” The batter he developed is so sheer and enveloping that seafood and vegetables cook to precise tenderness as the exterior fries to a crackle. Kondo’s signature dish is a hunk of sweet potato he bobs in oil for half an hour or so until the inside is fluffy and the skin nearly shatters; it’s an addition to one of three dinnertime omakase options that begin at around $100, and it’s absolutely worth it. Another marvel: julienned carrots whooshed through the wok for 30 seconds until they emerge in a greaseless tangle, more delicate than any shoestring fries you can ever imagine. If you are fortunate to land a seat — Kondo is 76, who knows how long before he retires? — you too might wonder if you’ll ever have tempura this extraordinary again.
5-Chome-5-13, Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo
Phone: +81-3-5568-0923
5-Chome-5-13, Ginza, Chuo City, Tokyo
Phone: +81-3-5568-0923
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(Stephanie Breijo / Los Angeles Times)
Capellini Cantonese at Torrisi
Italian $$$
There’s a lot of ink to spill over Major Food Group’s new restaurant Torrisi, which functions as both an entirely fresh ode to New York City and a nostalgic return to where the hospitality empire that brought us Carbone all began. The open kitchen turns out the bombastic but reverent Italian food that chef-partners Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone have made their calling card since launching their original, counter-service restaurant Torrisi in 2009, but now it’s done with flair that incorporates Jamaican, Chinese, Vietnamese and Jewish cuisine, plus other enclaves and cultures from the city.
In their Capellini Cantonese, glossy and fragrant with garlic and ginger and scallions, the iconic Chinese stir-fried, in-shell lobster gets the Italian treatment, and my life is better for it. It’s simple seeming, but don’t let it fool you; this dish incorporates emulsified lobster roe, along with a handful of aromatics that punch up the flavors of butter, sesame oil and olive oil. I’ve tried to re-create this blending of both worlds at home, to no avail, causing me to spiral and scheme over when I could possibly be back in Torrisi’s glowing dining room again.
In their Capellini Cantonese, glossy and fragrant with garlic and ginger and scallions, the iconic Chinese stir-fried, in-shell lobster gets the Italian treatment, and my life is better for it. It’s simple seeming, but don’t let it fool you; this dish incorporates emulsified lobster roe, along with a handful of aromatics that punch up the flavors of butter, sesame oil and olive oil. I’ve tried to re-create this blending of both worlds at home, to no avail, causing me to spiral and scheme over when I could possibly be back in Torrisi’s glowing dining room again.
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(Betty Hallock / Los Angeles Times)
Petti di pollo al burro at Trattoria Sostanza
Italian $$$
Tuscany is known for bistecca alla Fiorentina, the colossal steak that appears on nearly all trattoria menus across Florence. So why would I order chicken breast? Because every table at the 150-year-old family-run Trattoria Sostanza, on a small side street not far from the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella, orders the legendary petti di pollo al burro, chicken breasts in butter sauce. The simple name belies the surge of deliciousness it effects: Two juicy chicken breasts arrive at your table, still sizzling in a pan with a pool of frothing caramelized butter; the server proceeds to finish basting the chicken with spoonfuls of the brown butter in front of you (the smell starts to overtake your senses) and then squeezes lemon juice all over before transferring it to your plate. I’m not the first or last to claim, “It’s the best chicken breast I’ve ever had.” (Note: The bistecca is also worth ordering here.)
Via del Porcellana, 25/R, 50123 Florence, Italy
Phone: +39 055 212691
Via del Porcellana, 25/R, 50123 Florence, Italy
Phone: +39 055 212691
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(Amy Wong / Los Angeles Times)
Every croissant from 2/7 Kitchen
Bakery $
One of the greatest joys of traveling in Japan is that you can find delicious food anywhere — in my two week trip, I cannot recall a single meal that wasn’t delicious. But the food I think about the most, that I can still smell and envision so clearly was at 2/7 Kitchen. The best time to visit this Kyoto bakery is early in the morning. It’s quiet and cool outside, and when you walk in, you’re hit with a waft of warm, buttery-scented air, and the sight of rows and rows of the most beautiful, golden brown pastries you’ve ever seen. On my visit, I tried to order as many as I could: a croissant, a pain au chocolat, a curry bun and an almond croissant. I tackled the pain au chocolat: the delicate crisp outer layer of the pastry shattered in my mouth, the inside was warm, buttery, flaky and soft. Each pastry was amazing in its own right — I also particularly enjoyed the sugary crust atop the almond croissant — that made for a perfect, simple breakfast.
207-3 Ayazaimokucho, Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto, 600-8072, Japan
Phone: +81 75 353 1930
207-3 Ayazaimokucho, Shimogyo Ward, Kyoto, 600-8072, Japan
Phone: +81 75 353 1930
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