I was in Toronto early this year, and I’m heading to Mexico City at the end of the year. So I may yet have better things in 2023… but I’m declaring the year closed once this publishes. 10. Ribeye and cobb salad, Gibsons I’d say Gibsons is probably the most popular and successful restaurant in town I’d never been to, except it’s also pretty much the most successful restaurant any of us have been to in Chicago, one of the highest-grossing spots in the country. Anyway, I had to interview a couple of the guys in charge for my book, and they very kindly offered me lunch. I’ve had more steaks than ..read more

Pordenone. 2022 could have been the year that everything went back to normal. But of course it was never going to be that—we’re still figuring out what the new normal is. For me, my habit—of twenty years, as the list of past top tens at the bottom shows—of scouting the city for new things, which sometimes pays off, often does not, came to an end with lockdown. Not that I still don’t try more new things than most people, I’m sure, but with my book to work on I’m no longer driving up and down, say, 43rd street in Canaryville looking for new awnings indicating new places to try. I’m more likely ..read more

If 2020 was adjusting to a new reality, 2021 was new reality and old reality all mixed together. We returned to restaurants, and we returned to restaurants shutting down because somebody on staff got COVID. We traveled– I even went overseas– and yet by year’s end travel seemed to be shutting down too. So who the hell knows what’s next. Myself, I didn’t go to restaurants in 2021 nearly as much as in past years, partly because I just have adjusted to a new life doing more cooking at home, and partly because I’ve been working on this book, so I didn’t knock myself out to go to every Esme or Rose ..read more

My sons hand-pressing tacos for a lockdown meal I’ve always been interested in food; I moved to Chicago in part for deep dish pizza and all those other exotic things to be had here. (The other part was to be able to see obscure movies without having to book and project them myself.) But my life took a turn in 2002, when I read Calvin Trillin’s piece on Chowhound in The New Yorker and I discovered that you could devote your life to hunting such stuff out, and you could write about it on the internet, and meet up with other people—met on the dangerous internet!—to share what you found ..read more

Sons, at The Loyalist for Son #2’s (left) birthday It’s a transitional time in life for me—one kid out of the house already, another about to be. They have been such a part of my dining life for so long, my companions on discoveries, the audience I practiced my material on before it went into cold type. Not that they aren’t still—two of the high-end dinners about to be cited here were with Son #1, now old enough to be served wine and beer (and to do a shot with the chefs, which he did). But even when I traveled the world in the past, it was with them. Yet this year I took two trips without th ..read more