Well, I saw Andy’s soup at a museum in Wilmington, Delaware, but can’t say I actually had soup with him. Or any other Andrew, like Wyeth, whose work I also saw there. Anyway, needless to say a big year mainly for getting my book over the finish line of publication, but I did manage to be more adventurous on the food scene than in the past few years, since COVID. Here’s my top ten for this year:

10. Calamansi dish, sturgeon with Thai flavors, Atsumeru
All three of the omakases I ate in a fairly short time were good, but I think I was most charmed by Atsumeru in the former Temporis space, because they’re young and it had a very pleasant laidback feel; I came out rooting for them.

9. Pork belly, crab lion’s head soup, Nine Garden
If my choices at this Shanghainese restaurant in Chinatown sound familiar, it’s because on my first visit I ordered straight off of John Kessler’s advice at Chicago mag.

8. Lamb carpaccio sandwich, Cellar Door Provisions
I’ve been to Cellar Door Provisions several times, though not since COVID, I’m pretty sure. From a coffee shop that dabbled in farm-to-table dishes, it has a new chef de cuisine, Alex Cochran, and dinner there basically seemed like Feld Light—a similar approach to treating farm to table ingredients simply. Not all of it worked—I remain unconvinced that there’s anything to do with green strawberries but let them ripen—but one dish—some lamb carpaccio on their crusty black bread, with greens and something like farmer’s cheese—was an absolute wow, and other things were very good as well.

7. Musubi, skewers, Kanin
I went to Hawaii last year and while Hawaiian food was interesting, I’m not convinced it was great—mostly pleasant enough as blue collar comfort food. I went to this Hawaiian-Filipino spot in Chicago and pretty much thought it beat everything I had there (except Leonard’s malasadas and this one banana lumpia I had at a night market). There’s something to be said for elevating your game to compete in Chicago.

6. Prosciutto Friulano Il Gigante, Fratelli Martin, Pordenone
I go to this silent film festival in Pordenone, near Venice, every year, and by now I mostly eat at the same restaurants every year. This was one I knew existed but had not been to before, and wound up going there twice in one week. Very good pastas and risotto, but the bigger draw is the assortment of prosciutto they will make you a plate of. I asked the waiter to bring us two different ones to compare, and he brought us a fairly standard (very good) San Daniele prosciutto—and then this one, which took us to a whole different level of meaty, funky complexity.

5. Petite Vie
No picture of my food because I was there to have dinner with Meathead (resulting in this interview). But the new, smaller (and packed to the gills on a weeknight) version of Paul Virant’s Western Springs restaurant wowed me with classic French flavors and techniques. The burbs are lucky to have him.

4. Saltimbocca, Prosciutto with cheese and balsamic, Il Carciofo
I went to Joe Flamm’s newish Roman restaurant early in the year, and found it just okay—but it seems like Flamm’s restaurants need a little time to grow into themselves. The one thing I considered an unalloyed hit was the mortadella sandwich on fresh-baked bread. I returned in the fall with some friends—hence the grabbed-quickly-and-possibly-after-someone-had-already-dug-into-it photos—and frankly, it wowed throughout. The saltimbocca showed above was the best hunk of pork I’ve eaten in some time. But honestly, everything was pretty great—pastas, the namesake fried artichokes, that sandwich again—I will find an excuse to go back soon.

2-3. Roast chicken, tarte flambée, Creepies

2-3. Cod in beurre blanc, labneh with chives, Cafe Yaya
I pretty much planned on Cafe Yaya, the new restaurant from the Galit duo of Zach Engel and Andreas Clavero, being #2 ever since I had their roast chicken and the labneh dip with chives, which inspired me to make labneh dip every time I had people over since. A more recent dinner that included this piece of cod in a beurre blanc (a phrase I typed many times in my book, without quite knowing what it was or when I’d had it before), and a duck confit with lentils which my wife had, confirmed how much I liked it.

But then I went to Creepies, from Anna and David Posey. And it’s not just that it was plenty good—as my son said after tasting their roast chicken, “Why isn’t every chicken like this?”—but it was good in very similar ways: high class comfort food, dishes you recognize easily but have rarely had so well executed. Except I had them twice this year in two different places. Anyway, I debated which was #2 and which was #3 on my list for a couple of days, and finally decided it wasn’t something where I had to make a choice. They’re both great in very similar ways, and I would be happy going back to either one (and undoubtedly will).

1. September menu, Feld
Is there any recent restaurant story to compare with Feld’s first year and a half? Chef Jake Potashnick worked up farm-to-table hype on social media before opening in the summer of 2024. But the deliberately artless plating and aggressive minimalism got it skewered in its first few weeks by at least one reviewer and on one of the same social media platforms (Reddit) that it had lived by. It seemed like it was heading toward being one of those legendary ambitious-pretentious flops, like TMIP or The Black Sheep. But then I started hearing the same thing from other writers—”Actually, I kind of liked it.” By the time I did my piece on them at Fooditor, Feld had figured things out and reached a steady model for warm and friendly service; but the winter menu I had, which I recall as being a lot of turnips, was still just promising. I decided I wanted to try it at the height of the summer season—when it would be tomatoes and corn and so on.

So I went back the first week of September. And it wasn’t just promising—by now, a year and a few weeks old, it was magical, like walking through a farm or an orchard and being told “Here, taste this!,” over and over. (Since one of their suppliers is Oriana’s Orchard, I actually have done exactly that.) Tomatoes were used so many different ways that I can’t reconstruct what the dishes were, but the one pictured above—peaches in a poblano cream—was a perfect example of Feld at its best, a combination you have not had before, simply but attractively plated, and zinging and singing in your mouth. After a year and a half, Feld has a Michelin star, a Banchet nomination for Best New Restaurant, and I can’t wait to get back at different seasons to see what else they can do.

I’ve been making ten best lists forever at different places; here’s the whole list of them:
2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019 2018 2017 2016 2015 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003

Monkey King Jianbing in Skokie