Category: Travel

Meet Me In St. Louis

The St. Louis dining scene is hardly cutting edge, but if you’re looking for old-time Italian charm, look no further.  This week’s installment on John Mariani’s website features two St. Louis classics + Larry Forgione’s An American Place. Forgione successfully transferred his small-carbon-footprint, locally-driven philosophy from The Big Apple to The Gateway To The West 3 years ago.  For a preview of what his Vegas outpost might look and taste like (slated to open at the Wynn later this year), you can read about AAP + 2 classic Italian places that occupy top spots in the St. Louis restaurant hierarchy.

Click here to read my tale of St. Louis dining at JohnMariani.com.

The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2008

One of the coolest things yours truly gets to do every year is vote for the BEST RESTAURANT IN THE WORLD, for RESTAURANT magazine (a British publication). Only 32 voters come from North America, and they must have eaten at every restaurant voted for within the past eighteen months. And you must vote for at least two restaurants that are NOT in your geographical comfort zone. Which is why The Food Gal and I are always hopping planes to Europe and Asia.

The winner this year (for the third year in a row) is El Bulli (The Bulldog), in Roses, Spain. I haven’t made it there (yet), but have eaten at 15 of the top 50, and 29 out of the top 100. Not bad for a sharecropper’s son, eh? ;-}

Click here for full list of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants.

FYI: This year I voted for Pierre Gagnaire (Hong Kong), Dal Pescatore (Cannetto sul’ Oglio, Italy) and Troisgros (Roanne, France), worldwide, and Daniel, Joel Robuchon, and Guy Savoy (in North America).