A curious year in which I didn’t feel like I found much of interest outside of the mid-to-high end; partly I was really trying to wrap up my book, so little time for driving around far-flung corners of the city hunting for new Mexican or Chinese delicacies. I ate many good things, but it was not exactly a rare discovery on my part that, say, Johns Food and Wine was good. Still, I hope this list offers some ideas worth checking out.

Two places I left off the list: yes, like everyone I ate at Cariño, and especially liked the huitlacoche version of Alinea/Schwa’s Black Truffle Explosion. But we all know it, and I ranked a very similar dish from chef Norman Fenton’s previous incarnation at Brass Heart #1 on my list in 2020, so let’s give somebody else a chance. And there’s a hot new place that I went to, but I’m writing a piece about it and I won’t know exactly what I thought until I finish it. So if the chef is reading this, its absence is not a criticism, just a bit of stage management.

Travel this year was mostly for my wife’s legal organization, and to places I’d either been before (scouting out dinners in Toronto last year was fun, actually having the dinners this year was anticlimactic) or took an instant dislike to (Phoenix leapt to my least-loved city in America slot). But there’s a little eating-the-world here, so with no further ado:

10. Squash and white chocolate galette, Bungalow by Middle Brow
Bungalow by Middle Brow has a hot dish at the moment—tavern style pizza on Tuesday nights—but I have to admit I can’t get excited enough about tavern cut, served on every street corner in Chicago, that I want to drive to the burbs for it (Kim’s Uncle Pizza) or get there precisely on Tuesday and wait in line. (I thought about ordering from Pizza Amici, a new place from some of the people involved with Kim’s, on Friday, but it was showing a 2-1/3 hour wait for delivery. For tavern cut!) Instead, I go there in the mornings and have the place nearly to myself, but the inventive savory-sweet baked goods deserve more notice.

9. “Salad balls,” smoked pork, etc., Stumara
Any time I see an interesting cuisine on Instagram, I follow the restaurant. Not sure I would have raced to Pirosmani in Wheeling, a place selling premade Georgian foods, but when I got a PR announcement about them opening a sit-down restaurant next door, Stumara, I expressed interest and was invited to check it out. It was a fascinating mix, meaty dishes (as you might expect from that part of the world) but also touches of modernism, Moto in Georgia; and a lot of fresh stuff, like the balls of salad (that look like falafel). I don’t usually expect anything resembling haute cuisine from such parts of the world but between a lot of hearty fresh food, very welcoming service, and curious touches of sophistication alongside peasant pleasures, this was well worth the trek up to Wheeling.

8. Assorted seafood, Ocean Grill
This bustling Vietnamese-run spot on the fringes of Chinatown was one of the year’s big surprises—a place packing them in for lots of Asian seafood, nearly all of it made better by a splash of the funky condiments on the table bursting with fish sauce, garlic and other strong, pungent flavors. (h/t John Kessler)

7. Malasadas at Leonard’s, Honolulu
I enjoyed trying a lot of food in Hawaii but it was mostly kind of blue collar eats, which were fine but did not leave me pining for loco moco and a side of macaroni salad when I got home. (Maybe for banana lumpia, though—the best I had was from a church group’s stand at a night market on Kauai.) The things that seemed well-nigh perfect, world-class, were the malasadas—doughnut balls with tropical fruit fillings. It’s packed every morning, deservedly so, and you will not regret the wait.

6. Pastries at Panaderia Rosetta; Pastor and steak tacos at “Orinoco,” Mexico City
I couldn’t quite pick one for our Mexico City trip, not because there weren’t candidates but because I was overloaded with them. The moment you feel hungry you can walk to the closest taco stand and have one of the best tacos of your life. EVERY time. Anyway, had some great pastries at Panaderia Rosetta, a spinoff of one of Condesa’s best-loved restaurants, and it’s a good sign if my wife wants to return to a place, so I’ll praise Taqueria “Orinoco” for that—though I will say that when Rick Bayless commented on my choices, that was the only one he wasn’t wild about. (I think it might be a bit Americanized in its flavors, compared to ten million others in CDMX. But as the old saying goes, Happy wife, happy tacos.)

5. Pappardelle with corn and blueberries, Bar Parisette
I liked the Parisian classics from chef Madalyn Durant a lot, but the standout was the most American-flavored dish on the menu. So if you go and you spot something that doesn’t seem quite Parisian… order it!

4. Chestnut coffee cake, Daisies
Daisies as an Italian restaurant for dinner has been a favorite for a while, but this year Daisies as where I go for coffee, a work space and Leigh Omilinsky’s pastries has been one of my standard morning stops when I want to get out of the house. I picked this chestnut coffee cake because 1) I liked it a lot, 2) I just had it so I know it was from 2024, and 3) I happened to snap a photo of it because my son’s girlfriend was going to meet me there for lunch and I saved a bite of that and the orange olive oil cake for her and sent a photo to encourage her to get over here, but it could be any number of things. But I will say that afterwards, she picked up exactly those two things to share with my son the next morning (if they lasted that long).

3. Grana arso pasta with lobster and crab meat, Johns Food and Wine
Johns does pretty much everything I’ve tried well, but the standout seems to be pasta—on my first visit I was wowed by some perfect gnocchi with Italian sausage, and the second time—well, it says something when you order a pasta with lobster and come away saying that it was “the cheap stuff, mainly flour in different forms, that impressed—the pasta had just the right toothsome-rubber texture, and the sparing use of toasted bread crumbs, demonstrate what makes good pasta so good.”

2. Roast duck with sugar shack beans, Dear Margaret
Lots of heartily good midwestern produce-y things at the French-Canadian neighborhood gem, including Gunthorp pork, Three Sisters spinach tossed with wild rice and ricotta (a dish I imitated at Christmas dinner), and a slice of parsnip cake for my birthday. Read more about it here.

1. Moqueca, Brasero
I just picked a dish more or less at random—a Brazilian rice dish full of seafood—but really, both of my meals at John Manion’s latest restaurant were just orgies of robust seafood, accompanied by things like pao de queijo, a salmon ceviche full of South American spices and brightly fresh vegetable-based sides. Not the only new place that I went to more than once this year, but the one I wanted to get back to fastest and try more. So I did.

I’ve been making ten best lists forever at different places; here’s the whole list of them:
2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003

Meeting ex-Chicagoan Henry Adaniya at his (now-closed) hot dog stand, Hank’s Haute Dogs, Honolulu.