Mouthing Off

I’ve spent a lot of time in Atlanta over the last 10 years (best friend, godson). I used to pretty much refuse to go out to eat unless it was for Busy Bee's fried chicken, or a place that had Anne Quatrano/Clifford Harrison’s name on it. So I’m hugely thrilled at just how good the local restaurant scene has gotten.

It would take too long to list list all the great new places; here's just a few. For one: La Pietra Cucina, which is camping out in a small room while they wait for the larger space to be renovated. The chef, Bruce Logue, used to cook at Manhattan’s Babbo; now he’s making homemade calabrese sausage dip and risotto with porcini and hazelnuts. And at another point, I might talk more about how insanely happy I was at Holeman & Finch—especially at 10 p.m., when they ring a cowbell and burger service starts. Besides the food (that awesome burger; farm-egg-and-pancetta carbonara), they have one of the country’s elite bartenders, Greg Best, mixing drinks. If I lived in Atlanta, I’d go there every day and end up on TV’s The Biggest Loser, or in rehab, or both.

But the highlight of my most recent Atlanta visit was dinner at Strait’s, the almost year-old Singaporean restaurant from Grammy-winning rapper/actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges and chef Chris Yeo. I know, I know, that concept doesn’t sound promising. The food, though, is honestly terrific—Yeo has a bunch of restaurants in California and they all deliver excellent food. I would have been perfectly happy eating the delectable Kung Pao chicken lollipops, honey-glazed barbecued spare ribs and tamarind-sauced filet mignon. But the truth is that I got to eat all those things with Ludacris. And he’s an awesome dinner companion (as is his adorable seven-year-old daughter, Karma). When Luda’s not shooting videos for his new Theater of the Mind CD, he’s usually at Straits, where he works the room, discussing everything from the peach cobbler to Jay-Z’s new collaboration with Young Jeezy. I could say more, but we actually get to do a story about it in the May issue of F&W. So stay tuned.  

I've already hit the slopes twice this season and have at least three more trips planned for 2009. Here are the newest après-ski hangouts I'll be visiting after spending a day in the snowboard park.

*The Hourglass, the laid-back bar in the spectacular new Stowe Mountain Resort at the base of Mt. Mansfield in Vermont, has an awesome selection of regional microwbrews (the signature Hourglass Ale is made exclusively for the resort by Rock Art Brewery) and an überlocal bar menu from chef Sean Buchanan, which includes dishes like dry-rubbed Misty Knoll chicken wings with mint-yogurt sauce and flatbread topped with delicious artisanal ingredients like Grafton aged cheddar and Maple Brook Farm mozzarella.

*The new $1 billion Snowmass Base Village in Aspen, Colorado, has a handful of hot new post-ski spots, including Liquid Sky at the base of the new gondola, plus two new restaurants in the pipes from Jeffrey Klein, founder of Aspen’s Matsuhisa.
   
*The 8100 Mountainside Bar and Grill in the new Park Hyatt Beaver Creek in Colorado is conveniently located at the base of Beaver Creek Mountain. Its 20-seat bar has a small-plates menu featuring local ingredients (buffalo from Great Range Buffalo Farms in Colorado; salmon and halibut flown in daily from Seattle’s Pikes Place Fish Market), as well as local Colorado wines, microbrews and local organic spirits. Chef Reese Hay is gong to be making marshmallows in flavors like Grand Marnier for toasting during s’mores happy hour at the outdoor fire pit.

*I fell in love with Moody’s in Truckee, California, a few years back and am thrilled to learn that its supertalented chef, Mark Estee, is opening a second restaurant, Baxter’s, at the Village at Northstar in Tahoe, California. Expect the same selection of exceptional house-made charcuterie and salumi, as well as an extensive list of eaux-de-vie, a wine list heavy on Pinot Noirs and dangerously good cocktails like Baxter’s Naughty Cider–a concoction of unfiltered organic apple juice, Charbay Tahitian vanilla rum and brown sugar topped with spiced-rum whipped cream.

When oil prices went through the roof this summer and airlines started charging all sorts of never-before-seen fees, a lot of my friends were hunkering down, forgoing any air travel, and for the first time, using that odd blend of words: staycation. But now that we're officially in a recession and discretionary spending is being, well, regarded with heavier discretion, airlines have begun slashing their prices to entice travelers. (Airfarewatchdog.com is a particularly great aggregator of airfare deals.)

For those of you about to travel, check out our "Where to Eat Out During the Holidays" guide, showcasing five great restaurants in 10 cities around the country and what special offerings they'll have for the Christmas week. (If I were going to San Francisco, I'd put in an advance order for A16's holiday dishes, like porchetta and whole roasted duck. And according to a quick search on Travelocity.com, I could get to San Francisco next week for a bargain $288 roundtrip.)

Just in case President Bush’s efforts to ease holiday hassles at the airport aren’t foolproof F&W’s Senior Online Editor Rachel Wharton has devised the ultimate airport dining survival guide so you can at least eat and drink well while you wait for delayed flights or lost luggage.

Anyone flying through Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International should check out the truly revolutionary airport restaurant, One Flew South (near gate G6, in terminal E). Chef Todd Richards wanted to give international travelers a taste of real American food as well as ingredients from local purveyors and he’s created a Southern-influenced menu of dishes like snapper seared in rendered bacon fat with jumbo lump crab grits and Benton’s bacon and Sweet Grass Dairy goat cheese salad. The restaurant also provides a bit of American cocktail history: a 1920s-inspired drink list developed by mixologist Jerry Slater.

Richards and team have to deal with their own airport-security hassles. Every knife in the kitchen must be chained to a fixture, and security conducts monthly “knife counts” to make sure none have gone missing. And pastry torches are banned, so don’t expect crème brulee on the dessert menu.
 

                      
  

In our December issue, we give a food-and-design-savvy insider’s guide to Miami’s Design District —a must-read for anyone headed to Art Basel Miami Beach. The sister fair to Art Basel Switzerland—and the most important art fair in the U.S.—kicks off tomorrow and runs through the weekend. Here, insider’s tips on where to eat and shop while navigating the art-filled weekend.

Retail design extraordinaire Murray Moss tells the New York Times which bars have the most incredible crowds.

F&W dishes on what Miami’s local art-and-design crowd orders at their favorite Design District hangout, Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink.

Nisi Berryman, cofounder of the incredible style store NiBa Home, e-mailed me today to say Senora Martinez, the new venture from Miami darling Michelle Bernstein, opened last night and has a stellar tapas menu. For shopping, Nisi says Marni just opened last night, Tomas Maier opened last week and En Avance recently moved locations from SoBe to the Design District—all are a couple of doors up from Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto’s boutique, Y-3, and close to Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink.

Stephanie Monserrat Laurent has plans for a Miami branch of Buzina Pop, her superstylish Brazilian restaurant on New York City’s Upper East Side. Tonight, she’s taking over Miami's Maison d’ Azur and will be serving Buzina Pop’s signature dishes (grilled prawns over honey-ginger coconut quinoa) and cachaca-spiked cocktails and debuting her new bikini collection.        

Le Tourment Vert, an authentic French absinthe, makes its South Florida debut this week with a special tasting tomorrow night at the Florida Room in the Delano Hotel featuring cocktail recipes created by master mixologist John Lermayer.      

      

                                                  

              

Last week, I blogged about how New York Times op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman wants us all to stop dining out at restaurants and to instead stay home and eat tuna fish to save money. Well, I consider that a restaurant version of what legendary economist John Maynard Keynes called the "paradox of thrift." If each person stops eating out, sure he or she will cut down a little on spending, but will also hurt the restaurant business, which will just slow the economy further. So to help us all get through a recession, I propose a mix of cooking thriftily and dining out at restaurants that offer great value. Here, F&W's resources for the best spots for eating out on the cheap:

*Our annual Go List guide to the best restaurants in 40 cities around the world can easily be sorted by best value—just click on the "$" icon. We also narrowed the Go List down further to the 10 Best Value Restaurants.

*Our Big City Value Eats names the top spots to eat well—and on the cheap—in notoriously expensive cities like London, Paris and New York.

*Our World's Best Meal Deals has insidery cheap eats tips from top chefs like Fergus Henderson of England's St. John and Nobu Matsuhisa of the Nobu empire.

 

A few hours of sleep and a run in Hyde Park revived me after nearly eight straight hours of eating and drinking, and had me anticipating breakfast at Daylesford Organic’s flagship London store. I have long been waiting for Britain to export Daylesford Organic to the States. The Martha Stewart-meets-Blue Hill at Stone Barns philosophy stems from Sir Anthony and Lady Carole Bamford, who 20 years ago turned their 6,000 acres of farm land in Gloucestershire and Staffordshire organic and started raising free-range poultry, Aberdeen Angus beef, making their own milk and cheese and growing their own produce. The family even produces wines and olive oils from its vineyards and olive groves in France. I experienced the Daylesford trifecta in London’s Pimlico neighborhood: At the café, breakfast at the long wooden communal table included an expertly prepared cappuccino and poached eggs and mushrooms on thick, toasted homemade whole-grain bread. Up the street is Daylesford’s garden store, a greenhouse style shop that sells flowers, garden supplies and country-chic home furnishings and antiques. And across from the café is Daylesford Butcher, where the farm’s organic, sustainably raised meats are sold. (Before I left London I got one last Daylesford fix at the just opened Notting Hill store. The upstairs has the same country market feel of the other stores with shelves of artisanal foods and just-picked produce. Downstairs is something completely new: a raw food bar.)

The rest of my day was dedicated to Marylebone High Street where I  browsed Sir Terrance Conran’s design mecca, The Conran Shop; ducked down Moxon Street for lunch at the café in La Fromagerie, one of the most amazing cheese shops I’ve ever visited; explored the shelves of Daunt Books, a 19th-century book shop that organizes both its fiction and nonfiction by geographic region – a travel junkies dream. I was still on the same street come dinnertime so I grabbed a stool at the communal table of The Tapa Room, the casual sister restaurant of the elegant, pricier Providores, which is just upstairs. For less than $25 I had one of the most satisfying meals of my trip. I ordered a glass of Mt. Difficulty Bannockburn Pinot Noir from the New Zealand-focused wine list and two small plates: a pan-fried Manouri cheese with black fig and pea shoots and a paprika roasted sweet potato topped with caramelized onion, edamame, Greek yogurt and arugula. Bob Marley and Tom Petty played from the speakers and the young couple next to me insisted I try their mochi-wrapped banana and caramel ice cream dessert that was topped with Thai puffed rice and strawberries — amazing!

I couldn’t leave London without visiting a British pub, so I made a late night trip to Waterloo for a pint of Wells Bombardier cask ale at The Anchor & Hope, London’s version of the Spotted Pig - a very proper ending to my first whirlwind tour of London.

I was overly ambitious when planning the itinerary for my first trip to London. I wanted to see the iconic sights (the London Eye, Big Ben); do some cheesy tourist things (be photographed in a red phone booth and try to make the guards at Buckingham Palace smile); and eat at the great restaurants and food spots (Borough Market, St. John). But my inner Food & Wine curiosities had me reaching out to the city’s food and style insiders in search of the newest bars, shops, restaurants and trendsetters in the city. I didn’t sleep much, but I did leave feeling like I'd tasted the perfect mix of old and new.

The rundown:

I had the pleasure of meeting visionary designer Ilse Crawford at her studio, where she and her super-talented team updated me on their latest projects (Soho House Miami for 2010; a new boutique hotel in Stockholm; and the fabulous remake of the just-about-to-open Kettner’s restaurant and bar in London’s Soho neighborhood). Over drinks at Cecconi’s, a classic Italian restaurant in the Mayfair district that Ilse redesigned spectacularly in 2005, she fed me her of-the-moment recommendations: the Rothko exhibit at the Tate Modern; the extraordinary Patricia Urquiola exhibit at the Design Museum exploring the creative process behind Landscape, the Spanish designer's recent tabletop collection for Rosenthal; the Comme des Garçons Printed Matter exhibit at Dover Street Market, the six-floor designer-label mecca conceived by Comme des Garçons founder Rei Kawakubo that stocks Lanvin, Rodarte, Zero Maria Cornejo and, tucked away on the fourth floor, an outpost of Paris’s divine Rose Bakery; and finally lunch at chef Skye Gyngell’s adorable garden café at Petersham Nurseries.

Notes in hand, I rushed around the corner for dinner at the Connaught.The hotel recently underwent a huge refurbishment that has transformed it into the latest hot spot, anchored by Michelin-starred French chef Hélène Darroze’s eponymous restaurant. There, I had an extravagant meal that included her signature starter, an oyster tartare topped with caviar jelly and a purée of haricots verts, and a decadent spit-roasted grouse with grilled foie gras and Brussels sprouts.

After dinner I ignored my jet lag so that I could properly experience the hotel's much-buzzed-about new bars. I was smitten with India Mahdavi’s playful design in the Coburg Bar and equally impressed by the mixology geek menu of drinks dating back to the 1700s. In stark contrast is the flashier Connaught Bar, which received a sparkly, Deco redesign from David Collins. By 1 a.m. the leather and marble space was still packed with a glam crowd sipping vintage cocktails, absinthe and Champagne from gorgeous stemware. I knew I’d need a killer recovery breakfast in the morning and luckily had a long list of options that I’ll blog more about next week.
 

 

I’ve recently been prepping for my first trip to London. Not wanting to break my American-dollar-based bank, nor wanting to skimp on the experience, I’ve been poring over books, blogs and magazines to create a budget-minded itinerary.

Monday night, I was surprised to find myself curled up on my couch reading the forthcoming Savoir Fare London, Stylish Dining for Under $25, front-to-back like a novel. The book, published by The Little Bookroom, comes out this December and is a tasteful, eclectic compilation of 50 affordable, yet delicious restaurants, bakeries and bars with loads of style.  Author Elaine Louie solicited suggestions from some of England’s top tastemakers, among them Peter Ting, (a crystal and porcelain designer at Asprey who also went to cooking school) and gallerist Libby Sellers. The entries read like e-mails you’d send to a close friend, all packed with insidery details like what to order, where to book in advance and where to people watch.

Here's what made the top of my list:

*Postcard Teas
Designer Peter Ting is a fan of this tiny shop run by tea connoisseur Timothy d’Offay.

*The Clerkenwell Kitchen
An “artsy-media secret" serving British comfort food, it's a favorite of Elias Redstone, the curator of the Architecture Foundation in London.

*Rochelle Canteen
“Something of a trade secret in the design world,” this small restaurant run by Margot Henderson (wife of nose-to-tail champion Fergus Henderson) serves breakfast and lunch and needs to be booked at least a day in advance.

*Books for Cooks
A Notting Hill institution with a five-table café in the rear and a mini kitchen that prepares an ever-changing menu of dishes made from cookbooks it stocks.

    

The F&W team is fanatical about coffee. We are constantly searching for the absolute best coffee experience and, sadly, it’s usually not at a restaurant. A meal should end on a high note, but often, it’s the dessert and never the joe…until now. The super-talented team at San Francisco-based Bacchus Management Group (owner of stellar California restaurants like Mark Sullivan-helmed Spruce and the Village Pub) has geeked out on coffee, so much so that they’ve launched ROAST Coffee Co. with Alex Roberts, former roast master at San Rafael's Equator Estate Coffees & Teas. The mostly single-origin coffees are currently ground-to-order, brewed and served with the utmost reverence to the bean at the group's restaurants which include Spruce, the Village Pub, Pizza Antica and its forthcoming restaurants—Café Des Amis and Mayfield Bakery & Café—opening this winter.

F&W received four different bags of beans that earned raves across the board, particularly the Kenya AA Tassia, which had remarkable blueberry aromatics. Newly minted coffee snob Andrew Green, wine and spirits director of Bacchus, compares the Kenya AA Tassia to a first-growth Bordeaux or a great Napa Cabernet.

“As you know, they say great wine is made in the vineyard. The same is true with coffee—the best coffee comes from the best growers. Our role as the roasting company is to shepherd the high-quality green coffee through the roasting process, manipulating it as little as possible, leaving as much of the single-origin character in the bean as possible,” says Green.

Other San Francisco restaurants, like Masa's, are already placing orders, and in January, ROAST will be sold at several Bay Area restaurants. An e-commerce site will be running in about a month.