San Francisco, San Francisco…home to Haight & Ashbury, the heart and soul of music. San Francisco, where all tourists love to become rhesus monkeys for a while and hang on to the sides of the cable cars decidedly making their way through the city, where the driver insanely pulls on a bunch of levers that seem to make no sense whatsoever! San Francisco, San Francisco….where Sean Connery and Nicolas Cage expertly diffuse a band of rogue army with nothing but their wit and deadly biological weapons, in ‘The Rock’! Of course, there is also San Francisco, where the restaurant Coi (pronounced ‘kwa’) serves up a refreshing, creative and inventive array of dishes – a lot of them sternly dividing opinions across neighbouring tables with their boldness.
Coi, San Francisco
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Moto, Chicago
Gastronomical adventures in the windy city are often only attributed to Alinea, Next and Charlie Trotters. Unbeknownst to most is a little hub of innovation and madness called Moto, with the Willy Wonka-esque Homaro Cantu, serving up a style of food only a handful of people the world over are actually masters of, with impersonators a plenty - a cuisine formerly known as Molecular Gastronomy and what I like to refer to as ‘surreal’. Located near the top end of the meat-packing district, one wonders, whilst walking there, who on Earth would have a restaurant in this neighbourhood – isolated, stark, empty, but then half way down on the other side of the road, cafe’s, bars, restaurants all start showing their cheery heads and one promptly walks straight past Moto before checking the building numbers or Google maps and swiftly turning around and hunting down the front door and finding it located right beside Next/Aviary and feeling a slight glow of happiness, especially as there happened to be a table booked for drinks at Aviary later in the evening!
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Eleven Madison Park, New York
Easily one of the hottest tables in North America, hitting 10th best restaurant in the world 2012, and rocketing from 1 Michelin star, which it held for only 2 years to 3 Michelin stars – a feat that had the attention of the entire culinary world, it now seems that Eleven Madison Park is one of the most well documented restaurants with it’s famous ingredients grid where one chooses flavours, not dishes and a surprise tasting menu, makes for a lot of hype and very high expectations. However, things had been going good for me as far as having high expectations for restaurants were concerned and one had the gut feeling that this was going to be no ordinary meal.
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Jean Georges, New York
“He makes foie gras creme brulee”, is the first I ever heard of Jean Georges Vongerichten, the French demi-god of modern, cross cultural cooking. The next I heard of him was about his unique style of marrying south-east Asian cooking to traditional French, which became a source of instant inspiration. The third time I heard of Jean Georges was about his global empire of restaurants, one that people like Gordon Ramsay could only aspire towards (but as we all know, failed spectacularly). It thus goes without saying that my first trip to New York would necessitate and even demand a visit to the flagship of, what I’ve always felt, one of the finest chefs in the world – regardless of it being the rainiest day in New York for over 500 years, but luckily when that happened, I was cosily seated. The only niggle I have is that the reception area is far too small to accommodate customers for both Nougatine (the brasserie) and Jean Georges (the restaurant proper), but that aside, the spectacular full sized windows would, on a normal day, offer pristine views of Central Park, when on my visit, they offered a cosy warmth of being able to watch the torrential downpour whilst sipping on a glass of Gruner Veltliner.
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