I wish I could have shared about my lunch at Chef Rasmus Kofoed’s Geranium two weeks ago, but first I had to get home from Copenhagen (since I was having too much fun while there to spare any time for blogging), then I first had to tell you about my birthday dinner at Noma, and then spend a week preparing for our annual Thank God It’s Spring daffodil party. So only now do I have the spare brain to tell you about our afternoon at what’s currently #42 on the list of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

Here are a couple things you should know before I move on to what you’re really here to see—pics of food porn. (And I will, for the most part, let those pics stand for themselves. Additional words would not do them justice.)

First, Chef Kofoed is a three-time winner of the Bocuse d’Or cooking competition, having walked away with the bronze, silver, and gold. Which had us impressed before we ever took a bite of his creations. (The closest I’d ever gotten to that famed event previously was when Next restaurant offered its Bocuse d’Or-themed menu.)

Second, the restaurant is in an unusual location. Rather than being in the center of Copenhagen, it’s on the eighth floor of Denmark’s national soccer stadium. Not at all a place where I’d have expected this level of cooking. But, oh—the view! Here’s the scenery out the window from our table.

But enough of the restaurant’s reputation and view—what counts is the food we were served. And so … (more…)

Back in January, I told you how I’d tried and failed to get a dinner reservation at Noma—currently rated the #1 restaurant in the world—for a celebration of this year’s milestone birthday, and then how I inexplicably succeeded. Now that I’m home from my trip to Copenhagen, it’s time to fill you in on how the night went.

Short version:

It was amazing.

Longer version:

First off, there didn’t seem to be anyone in the city who wasn’t aware of both Noma’s culinary reputation and the difficulty of getting in. Whenever I’d mention how I was going to spend (or had just spent) my birthday, eyes would go wide, and whatever was said in response could easily be boiled down to “Whoa.” People took pride in the way Chef Rene Redzepi and his introduction of new Nordic cuisine had made the rest of the world take notice of their country.

Our reservation was on March 31 for 7:30 p.m., and when we arrived a few minutes before then, an employee opened the front door and we were greeted before we were even out of the taxi. And when we stepped through that front door, I was stunned to see there were several dozen members of the staff assembled to greet me, with Redzepi front and center, reaching out to shake my hand and wish me a happy birthday. It was totally unexpected, because, well, didn’t these people have food to cook and other customers to serve? But even so, they somehow found the time to circle us and make us feel welcome.

I once more asked Redzepi—why am I even here? How is it that in the midst of his Tokyo pop-up, he would pick me, out of the thousands of hopefuls wishing to dine at Noma, to get one of the rare tables for two? He had no specific reason for having made a dream come true, other than that every once in a while, he’ll notice such a request, and try to help out if he can. I expressed my gratitude again (after all, they do get 20,000 reservation requests per month), and we continued chatting en masse, answering their questions about our time in Copenhagen so far, and what we’d planned for the rest of the trip. After what seemed like at least 10 minutes (but surely it couldn’t have been, right, not with other customers already seated and needing attention?), we were led to our table, and dinner began.

We didn’t end up leaving until nearly four hours later. (more…)

There’s an easy way to tell whether you’re my kind of foodie, and that’s if upon taking a look at this photo from Edible Selby‘s gallery of the Copenhagen restaurant Noma …

… you don’t think “I’ll pass” or “that’s weird” or “what the heck is that,” but instead, your first thought is —

I want that in my mouth RIGHT NOW!

Because that was my immediate, visceral reaction.

There are other ways to know whether we’re on the same culinary wavelength … but that’s a good start.

I told you earlier this month how I’d tried—and failed—to get a reservation at Noma to celebrate my milestone birthday later this year. Chef Rene Redzepi’s Copenhagen restaurant is currently considered the best in the world, and has been ranked as such four of the past five years. Noma’s home location is temporarily closed right now, and operating as a pop-up in Japan, where it reportedly has a waiting list of 60,000 people.

But last night, in a stunning surprise that I still can’t quite believe … I got my reservation!

Why is that so stunning?

Consider that a columnist for The Guardian once wrote: “The chances of getting a table at noma these days are about as likely as getting invited to the Queen’s Palace for dinner … ”

And that getting in is so difficult, the story of a woman who had a reservation and was looking for a date went viral.

So, yes. That I could get a table was astounding. How I was able to get that table is even more astounding, considering I let my dream of a milestone birthday dinner there go after my January 12th failure.

So I was stunned Wednesday night when—after I shared a recent review of the Japanese pop-up on Twitter to explain to my followers why I’d so wanted that birthday dinner—

—Chef Redzepi reached out to me personally and asked when my birthday was! (more…)

So late last night—or early this morning, depending on how you keep track of these things—I attempted to book a table at Noma. With a milestone birthday coming in March, I figured, what better place to celebrate then at the Copenhagen restaurant that’s currently considered the best restaurant in the world? And since you might want to eat there someday, I thought I should share how it all went down.

Reservations for the date in question began at 10:00 a.m. Central European Time, which translates to 4:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, so I set an alarm for 3:45 a.m.—two alarms, actually, because I activated a Fitbit silent one to vibrate on my wrist in case the main alarm failed—and slept for a few hours before waking, stumbling downstairs, and being confronted by this pre-booking countdown screen.

I had no idea how many others around the globe were staring at something similar, but found out, once 10:00 a.m. Central European Time rolled around, that there were at least 1,449 of them—because I was number 1,450, with an estimated wait time of more than an hour. And there were equally as many behind me in the queue, because when I decided to try logging in using my iPhone, I was assigned a number greater than 3,000. (more…)

The year 2014 contained an amazing amount of good food eaten across three continents (plus one island that was 2,182 miles away from any continent). Looking back on those meals to winnow down my 10 favorite dishes of the year, my decision on whether or not to include a dish came down to questions such as these—

Did its pleasures go beyond conscious thought? Was my appreciation more than just intellectual admiration for the talents of the chef?

If you’d been nearby, and if your eyes had been closed, would I have confused you, because my groans would have made you assume you were present at an orgy rather than a meal?

Here the dishes which made me moan the loudest last year … (more…)

I may have let my season tickets to Next lapse once I no longer had that Syfy salary funding three trips to Chicago each year, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still interested in what the ever-changing restaurant has in store for 2015. I’ve been lucky enough to experience five menus there—Sicily, Kyoto, The Hunt, Vegan (twice!), and Bocuse d’Or—and have never been less than wowed.

Here, as just announced over on it Facebook page, are the three cuisines Next will be tackling next.

January – May

Next: Bistro

4 Years after opening with our Paris 1906 menu we embrace the more casual side of Parisian dining culture. With the great flood of 1910 behind them, Parisians embraced the Bistro. In 2015, Next will as well.

Every week we will introduce new items on our evolving 5-7 course chalkboard menu — we will also have specials and supplements on a daily basis.

Casual, delicious, and filling for the cold Chicago winter. And the kind of menu you’ll want to revisit every few weeks.

$80-$120 per person.
Please note: optional supplements of $ 15 – $ 75 will be available to order in the dining room. (more…)

When it came time to choose where I’d eat during the recent World Fantasy Convention—and you know me, I hate to waste a meal on a hotel restaurant—my number one choice was Rose’s Luxury, judged by Bon Appétit as 2014’s best new restaurant in America. Getting the chance to eat there represented a different sort of challenge than most popular restaurants I’ve been to, which have involved using my Internet-fu to snag a table the instant reservations for the date I needed became available online.

Rose’s Luxury, however, doesn’t take reservations. Which results in the kind of wait one Yelp reviewer recently experienced: “We waited in line approximately 1h45m before putting our name down. After that was another 2h30m wait to get a table.” And another, who waited even longer: “I waited about 5 hours for a table on a Saturday night, starting from lining up outside at 4:30 to being seated around 10:00pm.”

There seemed to be only one way to avoid that kind of wait—arrive around 90 minutes before the restaurant opens, guaranteeing you’ll be part of the first seating. That will keep wait time to a minimum. I was up for standing outside the restaurant before it opened—hey, I had no problem getting to Franklin BBQ three hours before it opened, so 90 minutes was nothing to me—but would I find others foodies at WFC who’d think the experience worth the wait?

I did!

Here I am with Rajan Khanna, Jenn Reese, Liz Argall, Greg van Eekhout, and Barry Goldblatt after we’d ordered and eaten EVERY FREAKING DISH on the menu that night.

But let’s go back in time, and see how the night began … (more…)

We’ve eaten at Bryan Voltaggio’s Frederick restaurant Volt multiple times, both in the Main Dining Room and the Chef’s Dining Room. But somehow, we’ve never been able to snag reservations at Table 21, the 8-seat counter which wraps around the open kitchen, where you’re served a tasting menu comprised of (what else?) twenty-one courses. Reservations become available at 9:00 a.m. exactly one month in advance , and I guess I just never jumped quickly enough for the days I was seeking.

But last week, serendipity worked in my favor. Old friends who’d long been drooling over my various Volt reports were visiting from out of town, and I’d gotten reservations for us in the Chef’s Dining Room. But the day before, I received a cell from Volt asking whether we might like to move to Table 21, as there were suddenly four available seats.

Who could say no to that?

And so last Thursday, the four of us headed over to Maryland to join four strangers (who due to the intimate nature of the seating would soon become friends) around the kitchen as Chef de Cuisine Scott Muns (recently of Rose’s Luxury) led his team to serve up a delicious and inventive meal.

And so it began … (more…)

Remember the Sansaire immersion circulator I bought earlier this year, which I used to prepare the best steak I ever cooked? I loved all the food it helped me sous vide, but there was one relevant issue which prevented 100% satisfaction.

Food cooked via that method ends up pale and unappetizing on the outside, and requires searing to develop a nice crust. I was using a hot pan to achieve this, but in addition to that being messy, not all food is flat, so it’s difficult to reach all the nooks and crannies of a chuck roast, for example.

Something more was needed. That something is my new toy, the Searzall.

The Searzall, which I’d backed on Kickstarter, is a cone that attaches to a blow torch head, basically turning it into a radiant broiler, achieving much higher temperatures than can be reached in a home oven broiler. Additionally, the Searzall is meant to protect the meat from what’s known as “torch taste” which can sometimes occur with an open torch flame. For both of those reasons, I signed on for a Searzall as soon as I heard of it. (more…)