The Japan trip is over and I’m back on American soil, just in time for the world to end. That would be fine, for I will never have to be subjected to that stuff they call “fish” here again – to think my friends called me a sushi snob before.
Meals ran the entire gamut – disgusting, bad, good, great, and unbelievable. I really did not expect the highs to be so high – think two meals in my all-time Top Five high.
There’s a serious backlog of posts that will be coming soon:
- Fat Duck
- Ledoyen
- Sa Qua Na
- Le Meurice
- L2O
- The French Laundry
- Ubuntu
- Sushi in New York
- and by that time, the Japan trip will have happened
- chuck
Updates will come soon.
Two weeks ago I noticed that traffic dried up. After some digging around, I realized Google had de-listed my pages because of spam. After more digging around, I realized that my blog was probably hacked, thanks to an outdated version of WordPress. And with a touch more digging, I found out that my host (Yahoo) was not updating Wordpress to the current versions.
The annual Restaurant magazine’s 50 World’s Best Restaurants list was released last week. I’m certain the list is littered with a few controversial picks to generate buzz for the magazine. It’s not a horrible list but it’s not great either; nonetheless, lists of all sorts are a guilty pleasure of mine and it’s always fun to critique any sort of Best Of list.
I’ve been to approximately 20% of the restaurants in their Top 100 list. I’ll post some comments for each restaurant with links to my reviews for anyone that is interested. Some of the reviews, from the old days, are quite embarrassing for their petulance and/or brevity.
#1 – El Bulli (Roses, Spain) – The Mad Scientist – The safe pick for such a list, it’s hard to argue there is a more influential chef in our times.
#2 – Fat Duck (Maidenhead, UK) – Master of Production – Another safe pick that is certainly deserving.
#3 – Pierre Gagnaire (Paris) – Best Meal of My Life and
Pierre Gagnaire (Paris) – Truffles and Value – I have eaten the best meal of my life at this restaurant.
2008 – what does the future hold?
Tokyo / Kyoto / Hokkaido
A 10-14 day trip is in order to finally explore one of my favorite cuisines. My friends call me a sushi snob, and I’ve eaten at many of the important Japanese restaurants in this country, but my knowledge of Japanese cuisine is certainly at a nascent stage.
Some questions / topics I hope to explore:
Just how good is Japanese sushi? And the quality of their raw fish?
I’ve limited myself in the past year to only eating at America’s best sushi/sashimi restaurants – Urasawa, Sawa, Kuruma Zushi, and Sushi Yasuda (no Masa this past year.) How does the quality of Sawa and Kuruma’s fish compare to Tokyo’s best? Is this magic of a Sushi Yasuda nigiri commonplace in the back alleys of Tokyo? Can Urasawa’s reverence for food and ingredient place among the best of Japan? When I discuss America’s best places, the common response is always “go to Japan.” The subtext of that comment often is, at worst, the continuing Japanese fetish found in America; and, at best, a truly informed point of view. Where does my reality lie?
