Members of the Restaurant Business team also shared the best dishes they had from restaurants this year. Here’s a sampling of what they said. Check out the full list of staff picks here.
Patricia Cobe
Senior Editor
Roasted Brune Landaise Chicken, Le Coq Rico, New York City
At Le Coq Rico in NYC, I had the most amazing roast chicken of my life. Juicy with crispy skin and super moist meat. And you can choose your heritage breed. I had the Brune Landaise breed, roasted, with a seasonal salad and au jus. The servers explain all the different breeds to you in great detail. This one is very similar to the classic Bresse chicken from France, but he sources it from a Mennonite farm in Pennsylvania. It’s raised for 120 days—a long time compared to commercially raised American chickens—so it develops more tender, flavorful meat. Really yummy!!
Kim Collie
Digital Production Manager
Seafood Cioppino, Tadich Grill, San Francisco
I asked my hotel concierge for a great local seafood restaurant and she steered me to Tadich Grill, the oldest restaurant in San Francisco. I took it as a good sign that myself and my husband had to wait for a seat at the long counter (all of the tables had been reserved, even though it was only lunchtime). The waiter said one of their signature dishes was the seafood cioppino, and since it was a rather cool, blustery day, it didn’t take much convincing for me to order the stew. It was loaded with clams, prawns, scallops, Bay shrimp, Dungeness crab, mussels and whitefish and was served with two pieces of sourdough garlic toast. There was also a bib, which I saw many customers wearing but I opted out of. It was truly a seafood feast—enough to share with my husband, whose eyes had popped out of his head upon the dish’s arrival. I was so caught up in eating it, I didn’t remember to take a picture until after it was nearly gone!
Chris Keating
Group President, Foodservice Media & Events
Elk Loin, Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, Knoxville, Tenn.
Larry McMurtry’s “Lonesome Dove” is one of my favorite novels. And chef Tim Love’s Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in Knoxville lives up to its namesake’s greatness. If you’re going to eat at a Western Bistro, you want to order something you can imagine, say, Lewis and Clark eating, so I went with the elk loin—served with Swiss chard, hen of the woods and candied blackberries. OK, maybe that’s not how Lewis and Clark would have prepared it, but I cleaned the heck out of that plate.
Joe Guszkowski
Assistant Editor
Beet Ginger Lemonade , B.Good, Providence, R.I.
It was not too sweet or sticky like some lemonades, with a nice beet flavor. I went back for two refills.