[Restaurants and Dining] or I Know What You Did Last Paycheck

ratzofftoya

Seems like there's no thread on this? That's absurd. Anyhow, perhaps there are others around these parts who are food-obsessed. I'm not talking just about gorging yourself on a veritable buffet of Michelin starts and Burgundy vintages. I mean people who spend 45 minutes discussing what kind of lettuce belongs on a sandwich or spend serious time contemplating whether or not they ordered wrong at Denny's last week.

I figure we could chat about, you know, food theory, recent meals you had that were exemplary, local recommendations, food-related media, and other such developments, cooking, etc.

So...The S. Pellegrino list of World's 50 Best is out. Any surprises? Any places you are dying to go, or were underwhelmed by? I hit Nihonryori Ryugin in October and found it to be absolutely delicious, though not as inventive as I'd hoped. It was more like your classic Japanese flavored executed flawlessly and hitting all the right notes.

KalTorak

If I could go to one restaurant with money not being an issue, it'd be a tie between Eric Ripert's Le Bernardin (sometimes called the best seafood in the world) and Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck. Both chefs are really interesting to me, but obviously they have very different styles.