#blahvsfood in 2019 ... The International Edition

(The Japan section and my impressions of the country are towards the end... do feel free to skip straight to that part if you’re not as interested in the fancy restaurants) 

I ate at 8 of the world’s top 25 restaurants on the San Pellegrino list this year. So I could start by talking about a meal at one of the many well known superstar restaurants, but one thing I’ve always prided myself on is how I’ve known a chef and restaurant would become huge long before they did. Whether it was restaurants like Bomras or Indian Accent or Bombay Canteen or Masque before they became so famous and celebrated, or Gresham or Hussain or Rishim (among others) as chefs today, I’m quite blessed to have seen the chefs and restaurants I love go and achieve superstar status over a 3-5 year period. So when it comes to my international travels, let me start by highlighting Atomix and Inua, both of which will be among the worlds top 25 restaurants in a few years. 

Atomix (New York) is the fine dining restaurant started by the extraordinary Junghyun Park whose neighbourhood style (and absurdly affordable) Korean restaurant Atoboy is one of my absolute favourite restaurants. I felt it would be hard to come up with a restaurant that could match the high expectations that Atoboy had created, but Atomix is no ordinary restaurant, it is a transcendental coming together of a chef, an idea, a moment, a space to create a place that is flawless and unforgettable. The restaurant has very few seats around a U shaped counter serving a 10 course tasting menu that redefines not just your idea of what Korean food can be but food itself. You taste flavours and textures that are like nothing you’ve ever had before, every dish brings a tingle of anticipation knowing that you will not just be surprised but amazed, every bite is a sensory experience. This is food to make you weep and thank you Howard Chua-Eoan for taking us there. 

I almost cancelled my dinner at Inua (Tokyo) because it was my last night in Japan, I had done enough great restaurants, I wanted to go back to street food and chef Thomas Frebel (ex Noma) focuses on vegetarian dishes. But Gresham Fernandes insisted I go and I am so glad I did because this is one of the four best restaurant meals I’ve ever eaten in Asia (with Gaggan, Den and the much missed Andre’s). I can still taste the enoki steak, the rice with bee larvae, the matsutake and pine mushrooms. This is a restaurant that defies categorisation and labels. If you’re ever in Tokyo, just go! 

The other big surprise for me was Disfrutar. I was disappointed because I didn’t get a table at Tickets in Barcelona and was forced to go to Disfrutar instead. This is the magic of food though, how unexpected surprises lead to unforgettable experiences because I was so fortunate to have had the opportunity to eat at Dirfrutar. This restaurant is the truest inheritor of El Bulli’s legacy, where the technique and the chemistry are not the focus but just an enabler to have food that’s so full of fun and surprise and flavour and joy. It amazed me that this wasn’t one of the world’s great restaurants so it gave me great happiness to see it as the highest debutante on San Pellegrino’s Top 100 all the way up at number 19.

The other great meal in Spain was at En Cellar de can Roca. It was a tough, tough night for me, my mind was mush, but despite that I can still remember the meal, the dishes, the inventiveness, the presentation, the truffled brioche, the olives.. I have to go back just to experience this genius again. 

In other great meals, I actually fell in love with the very unfashionable and old school Le Bernadin. A lot of people (including well known chefs) tried to dissuade me from eating there saying it was old fashioned, boring and uncreative, that the produce was bad, that the service was unfriendly. I am so glad I didn’t listen because I can’t think of another meal where every single bite was so full of flavour, an explosion of taste in my mouth and brains, with warm, friendly, helpful service. At a time where sometimes the concept gets more buzz than the food, this place is one of the world’s great places to just go eat meat, fish and seafood cooked to absolute perfection and you can see why this has been one of the world’s greatest restaurants for decades. 

Also in New York, I continue to love, love, love 11 Madison Park. I ate at the bar this year so I had just about 11 courses but not only was the food perfect, the service is probably the best in the world. Not only did the server know who I was, where I had eaten, when I had eaten there last but what really blew me away was that they took the time to research that Ulysses by Tennyson was my favourite poem and then created an experience with that woven around it. This is a restaurant I am in love with. 

Other highlights in New York include the aforementioned Atoboy which is the one place I would recommend to anyone visiting New York regardless of budget. I was sceptical about going to Momofoku Ko because of how much David Chang seems to be a TV Personality rather than a chef but it was worth all the hype and more. I also won’t forget the shower of truffle in my pasta at Per Se. 

I thought Estelle was very good but not special, much like Flora Bar. I prefer the drinks at Cosme to the food (though that corn dessert is really a bit special). And if you are a pork lover please go eat at Momofoku Ssam Bar! 

The one place in New York that really disappointed me was Blue Hill at Stone Barns. I’ve seen the Chef’s Table episode, I know all about the genius of Dan Barber but for me a restaurant where I’m supposed to pontificate on the difference between two carrots or the butter from two different cows is too esoteric for me to love. I’m not saying it’s not good, it may even be great, but like I said earlier, I’m looking for the emotional experience of food rather than the intellectual and Blue Hill at Stone Barns left me cold. 

Over on the West Coast, I know Saison gets a lot of grief because of how expensive it is but I feel it’s worth every dollar. It’s amazing how they make a 500 dollar meal feel so intimate, almost like you’re at a neighbourhood kitchen but they do. The food Joshua Skenes cooks mixes elements you would never think of matching into little bites of magic, none more so than the sea urchin on toast. The dishes were both surprising and familiar, creative but comforting, with desserts every bit as good as the mains. This is one of the ten best meals of my life. 

I loved Benu, just the simplicity of the cooking, the crisp, clean flavours, the almost minimalist perfection of Cory Lee (who I think is a spiritual and stylistic brother of Gresham). I wish more chefs in India would learn to cook like this instead of trying to overpower you with flavours and ingredients. 

Manresa was another great example of beautiful, clean cooking that lets you focus on flavour. I can still taste the deceptively simple Farm Egg and Dandelion, a symphony of flavour and texture and one of the best egg dishes I’ve ever had. 

I enjoyed how In Situ at MOMA in SF plays around with great dishes from across the world and makes it accessible. When it comes to local food, I loved Swan Oyster. I queued for two hours but I must say that Alex Sanchez was right to ask me to go there... that place is a scene! 

What I didn’t like was Atelier Crenn. Pretentious food, pretentious service and crossing the line from being self aware to self indulgent. 

In Los Angeles, hot restaurants may come and go but I’ll always love Animal, the ultimate meat lovers heaven. I thought Maude was overrated but AOC was underrated, a crowd pleaser if there ever was one. I also discovered the phenomenal tacos at the tiny Guisados, a place that deserves to have some sort of cult built around it. 

Moving to Asia, I really liked Cheek by Jowl in Singapore. Rishi Naleendra’s food feels almost like an Asian interpretation of Californian cuisine with great produce, clean flavours and subtle Asian influences. But my favourite discovery there is New Ubin Seafood, in a tiny corner of a warehouse parking lot in an grungy industrial district. It has the best crab I’ve had in the Singapore (both the chilli and the pepper crab are excellent) with a seafood chilli Sambal that is addictive. The Sichuan peppercorn infused dishes at Sichuan village continue to be as combustible and irresistible as ever but I was happy that after going there for ten years I’ve finally started exploring every part of that menu. 

Before I get to the most special part of the year (Japan) I wanted to also mention the outstanding hummus at Azaam at Berlin and the Asian inspired Peruvian food at Pica in Ubud, Bali. 

I don’t think I’ve ever been to a country which comes close to Japan in terms of food. The great restaurants all lived up to the hype, none more so than Den, but my memories go beyond them, to every meal, in every small town and neighbourhood. 

I’ve already written about Inua. The other truly unforgettable fine dining meal in Japan was at Den. Fine dining in Japan has always had a certain formality, a serious grandeur, with everyone dressed to the nines and speaking in hushed voices. In that world Zaiyu Hasegawa has had the impact of a punk rocker, bringing a spirit of irreverence and fun, breaking every rule, and single handedly dragging high end Japanese dining into the future, showing that you can have fine dining with warmth, with intimacy and with a real sense of community. With just 20-25 seats, it’s not easy to get a table but if you do, try sit at the bar seats so you can chat with Zaiyu and his small team of five chefs, as well as Joy and her front-of-house team. The fried chicken (stuffed with sticky rice and pine mushrooms when I went) is justifiably famous but my favourite dish was the sticky rice cooked in sirloin fat and served with sirloin strips, miso soup and pickles.

The other great Japanese meal was at Narisawa where the Kobe beef with powdered caramelised leek charcoal is pretty much as spectacular as a steak can possibly get. 

Florilege and L’effervescence were not just the best French meals I’ve had outside France, they also astonished me by how seamlessly they infused Japanese flavours into classical French food, working with local produce to show how French food can make an evolutionary leap by assimilating it’s diverse cultures. 

I don’t know the names of half the things at at a Kaiseke meal at En in Kyoto because Chef Suzuki Takei speaks no English but there was a subtle beauty to every dish he cooked. En seats just 6 people a night, because the chef felt that his time at restaurants didn’t allow him to make food with the attention to detail, the commitment to perfection that he sought. This is a labour of love and it is reflected in the food. 

The only meal I didn’t love in Japan was at Nihonryori Ryugin. The food was excellent but like at Atelier Crenn I felt it was too self important, and I think the era where restaurants believe that they should be intimidating and put themselves on a pedestal is dying. 

The greatest realisation I had in Japan was that you don’t need to go to a famous or expensive restaurant to eat extraordinary food. You don’t even need to go to a big city. In every single small town and Onsen, in tiny izakayas and Yakitori joints, in subway stations and fish markets I ate meals like that I cannot forget, that I can close my eyes and see and smell and almost taste, that draw me back to Japan. 

I’ll never eat American style sushi again or sushi rolls for that matter. I’ve never been a huge sushi fan but in place after place I ate Sashimi that blew me away. I ate raw fish and prawns and chicken and eel and  realised how much we overcook our food, how much we destroy the flavour and the texture of the food we serve. There was one nameless place at Tsujiki where the Sashimi was truly an out of body experience, fresh juicy pieces of fatty and lean tuna, moist pink salmon, meaty eel, whitefish and bonito, fish that literally melted in your mouth and could only be eaten with your eyes closed and not speaking a word. 

I walked the narrow lanes of Omoide Yokocho (Memory Alley) eating perfectly charred Yakitori. I queued for Ramen joints where you picked an option from a vending machine and realised that what I used to think was a generic word for noodle was actually a gateway to a world of infinite different combinations of broth and noodles and meats and vegetables and textures and temperatures. I discovered the magic of udon and soba, of cold noodles and juicy crumb fried pork tonkatsu cutlets. 

I walked from 8-seater bar to 4-seater bar at Golden Gai, drinking sake and shochu while the bartender would make the most extraordinary snacks in a cooking space no more than 4 square feet. I ate fluffy, golden omelettes at roadside stalls, both piping hot and cold on a stick like a omelette lollipop. I discovered that no hamburger in the world comes close to a Japanese hambugu, a wonder that gets rid of the superfluous carbs and distils the dish into the absolutely purest elements of meat, umami and happiness. 

However my restaurant of the year was a tiny, nameless place in the small village of Yamashiro Onsen. I went back again and again, three nights in a row, to eat food of such simplicity, creativity and brilliance that I still can’t fully comprehend it. I ate an omelette stuffed with chilled radish and soy, a charcoal grilled gizzard where you could literally taste the smokiness, chicken Sashimi seared on the outside with wasabi, soy and ponzu. I had tuna sashimi with raw egg yolk, a salad of a half boiled egg omlette with cabbage and fresh mayonnaise.. all in a tiny village in a shop with no name. The magic of Google Translate allowed us to have real conversations over the three days, talking to the 60 year old chef and his 80 something mother over food and many drinks about children, relationships, small towns, countries and cultures, dreams and hopes, youth and ageing. We chatted with the local villagers, got invited to Karaoke bars and felt a sense of real connection with the most extraordinary country and culture I have ever seen. I will remember this restaurant forever, but most of all I will remember its fried chicken... that perfect golden, crispy, chewy crust, that juicy perfectly cooked meat, the garlic pepper powder sprinkled all over, the spiciness of the marinate.. this was the holy grail of fried chicken. And as I sat there eating it, listening to an old man tell stories of love and loss and longing and peace over many many glasses of rice shochu, I was reminded why I fell in love with food, not just for what it does for my taste buds, but for how it makes the world feel smaller, more intimate, more connected, for what it does for my soul