Celebrating our wedding anniversary over a long weekend, we enjoyed wonderful Vietnamese food at The Slanted Door in The San Francisco Ferry Building. We stopped in Carmel for amazing fire roasted Castroville artichokes with balsamic vinaigrette and sun dried tomato aioli at the Rio Grill and incredible linguine with scampi at Casanova.  Our three favorites on this trip were:

Quince (San Francisco)

Michael Tusk has taken his cooking to another level at his new location on Pacific in historic Jackson Square. The tasting menu prepared for us featured 10 special courses and among the most memorable were the carpaccio of monkfish with black winter truffle butter, a tortellini with cauliflower, sea urchin and green romesco sauce, spaghetti with black truffles and Parmegiano Regiano, and baby sweetbreads in risotto with leeks and black truffles.  The new space features high ceilings and a beautiful, understated elegance which makes every one feel part of something special. Michael’s wife Lindsay is there to make sure every one really does feel special and welcome and comfortable. This is a real winner! Quince, 470 Pacific Ave, San Francisco, (415) 775-8500

The Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton (San Francisco)

On a New Year’s weekend in Atlanta, we visited old friends Steve and Barbara Parker, the High Art Museum, the spectacular Georgia Aquarium, and the World of Coca Cola. We sampled some excellent gourmet cooking as well as plenty examples of Southern comfort food including buttermilk batter fried chicken, fried catfish, fried green tomatoes, fried okra , and the traditional New Year’s Day dishes, black eyed peas and collard greens with ham. Our favorite restaurants included:

Eugene
New Year’s Eve with James Beard award winner Linton Hopkins was a special seven course tasting menu including she-crab soup with crab fritter, lobster and toasted corn risotto, a foie gras presentation including tourchon and a whipped foie preserved in Armenac for six years, and pheasant breast with Savannah heritage red beans and rice. The chocolate cake was served with a smoked espresso ice cream. The space was comfortable, cozy and very upscale. The service was impeccable and extremely knowledgeable. What a great New Year’s Eve!  Eugene; 2277 Peachtree Road, Atlanta; Ph: 404.355.0321

Bacchanalia

In addition to several great art exhibits (the Vermeer at the Met and the O’Keefe at the Whitney) and being with our son who had just been named Executive Chef at Cru (5th Ave. and 9th St.), we also fit in some exceptional meals.

Masa (Michelin 3 stars)
This continues to be the finest Japanese and sushi restaurant in the United States. The toro with caviar, blowfish (intestines, liver, skin, and meat tempuraed on the bone), sea urchin risotto with white truffles, and Japanese Omi beef were all remarkable. These courses were then followed by a mixture of 24 outstanding sushi and seaweed roll courses. We always sit at the beautiful Japanese hinoki wood sushi bar where Masa himself is in charge along with 2 or 3 talented assistants. Nick was ours and did an amazing job that night. It is a rare treat of theater, flavors, and the finest and freshest of ingredients.  10 Columbus Cir, New York, (212) 823-9800, masanyc.com

Our fall trip to France offered many exciting experiences including fun restaurants in Beaune (Benaton, L’Hotel Bistro, Ma Cuisine), several Bouchons in Lyon to experience the unique local dishes (sausages, lentils, tripe and pig’s feet salads, quenelles), and Cambuse in Strasburg for creative seafood.  Our four favorites were all 3-star Michelin restaurants which were old friends:

Michel Bras (Laguiole)
This superb menu featured an amazing wild duck breast cooked rare with Bras’ signature mashed potatoes (half Laguoile cheese), five baby scallops with an orange sugar vinegar glaze which tasted like a crème brulee crust, and the always spectacular gargouillou of 25 vegetables and herbs at their peak of freshness served in an almond milk jus.  The rustic setting in the heart of the Aubrac region in Central France made the meal even more dramatic.

Troisgros (Roanne)
With winemaker Alex Gambal and his wife Diana as our guests, we enjoyed some great white and red Burgundy wines, a special chestnut soup from Chef Michel Troisgros and an interesting selection of a la carte choices including frog legs with cauliflower, rouget with pimento sauce, lobster salad with a sherry vinaigrette, rabbit and langoustine with sorrel sauce, and veal kidneys in an olive and verjus sauce. This was a special night in a warm and welcoming spot with good friends.

A great weekend in Chicago included another visit to Grant Achatz’s deconstructionist culinary temple where we enjoyed 22 courses including an amazing osetra caviar with emulsified egg yolk, toasted brioche foam and onion, caper and lemon distilled jellies.  Another wonderful course, a tribute to Escoffier, was squab with onion veloute in a pastry tart and a perigord truffle sauce.  Alinea was as magical as ever, but we decided to branch out a bit and had three wonderful new food experiences which included:

Avenues at the Peninsula Hotel
Four star chef Curtis Duffy’s (ex-Alinea) delicious tasting menu included a parmesan sorbet with Sicilian white truffles and tapioca pearls, a lightly poached Faroe Island salmon belly with whipped chlorophyll, fried capers, lemon zest cumin powder and apple milk, and an A12 quality Japanese Wagu ribeye with braised beef cheek cannelloni and black sesame sauce.  Sitting on the stools at the Chef’s bar is always a treat and allows diners to be part of the kitchen experience. 108 East Superior Street, Chicago, 312-337-2888, www.penninsula.com 

Sunda

In a long weekend visiting our son Scott and his fiancée Alice, we enjoyed seven memorable meals including sushi at Nobu, delicious curries at La Hore Kebab House, creative tapas at Fino, and a special family lunch at the two Michelin star Capital Hotel restaurant.  Our three favorite meals were:

Sketch
Three star Paris Chef Pierre Gagnaire’s London masterpiece offers the same type of a la carte selections with multiple plates for each main course.  We ordered langoustines, lamb, and beef, and they were all sensational.  Such amuses and starters as tuna sashimi with cauliflower cream and a delicious gazpacho soup highlighted the chef’s obvious culinary skills.  The service was perfection and the knowledgeable sommelier provided a thoughtful wine list and served the wines from gigantic decanters.  Located in the former house of Christian Dior, the décor is very contemporary and dramatic.  The dinner was a wonderful experience from start to finish.

The Square
Phillip Portman’s two star Michelin restaurant continues to offer high levels of food and service in a comfortable yet elegant setting in the Berkeley Square area.  We especially
appreciated the lasagna of Dorset crab with cappuccino of shell fish and Champagne foam and the vitello tonnato done as both a veal tartar and a veal carpaccio with tuna cream and mousse.  It was a beautiful, sunny day, and light streamed in the many windows creating a warm and cheerful atmosphere; what a special lunch.

We kicked-off a wonderful weekend of wine and food in Oregon's Willamette Valley with our good friends Ken and Grace Evenstad, who make Pinot Noir and Chardonnay at their Domaine Serene winery. Our first stop was Beast in Portland, home of one of Food & Wine's Top New Chefs for 2009, Naomi Pomeroy.

The six-course set tasting menu had some real highlights, including a chilled Armenian cucumber and yogurt soup with Dungeness crab and trout roe, which was refreshing on a sweltering night. The charcuterie plate featured a foie gras bon-bon with sauterne gelee and a steak tartar and quail egg on a toast slice, while the Oregon Cattail Creek lamb loin chop was memorable for its flavor and sweetness with the lamb demi-glace.

Pomeroy describes her cooking as “refined French grandmother” – both exquisite and accessible with a major focus on local ingredients. The restaurant is a one-room, no-frills, yet very pleasant space consisting of the kitchen and two community tables that seat 8 and 16. There are two seatings a night, offering only the six course tasting menu, with or without wine pairings, and “substitutions politely declined,” which would seem not to be a problem at this wonderfully creative restaurant.

Our first visit to this French/English city in the Province of Quebec included some wonderful bistro lunches at Lemeac, L’Express, and the Pan Asian restaurant KoKo.  Daily sightseeing focused on walking and more walking while visiting cathedrals, art museums (a John Lennon retrospective, “Imagine”), and interesting, diverse neighborhoods.  Our three favorite restaurants were:

After our early spring Normandy/Brittany pilgrimage, highlighted by the magical Sa Qua Na in Honfleur and Olivier Roellinger’s Coquillage in Cancale (the oyster capital of the world), we enjoyed five days in Paris.  This included Joel Robouchon’s 2 star l'Atelier with the remarkable Pyrenees rack of lamb, the bustling bistro Chez L’Ami Jean with its obscenely delicious rice pudding, and the newest French 3 star at the elegant Hotel Bristol with a tandoori cooked rabbit with smoked octopus sausage.  All of our dining in Paris was exciting, however our three favorites were:

To celebrate Sue’s birthday together with our two sons and their girlfriends, we enjoyed a four day weekend in Rome.  Another exciting and unexpected celebration occurred when our older son and girlfriend announced their engagement; ah, Rome, the city of romance.  All seven meals in this truly romantic city were memorable including an organic piglet prepared three ways at Michelin one star Convivio, the best homemade pasta in Rome at the family run Colline Emiliane, and the famous fried artichokes at Piperno.  Our four favorite dining experiences were:

Agata e Romeo  (Michelin 1 star)

This husband and wife team (she’s the chef) turns out creative Roman cooking including a memorable slow cooked beef cheek with polenta, suckling pig with apple compote, and broken spaghetti in an amazing skate and tomato paste.  The 100 teapots on the wall add to the homey atmosphere of this wonderful neighborhood restaurant.  Agata e Romeo,   Via Carlo Alberto, 45, 00185 Roma (RM), Italy‎  Ph: +06 4466115‎

Casa Bleve