Toast, terrine and tons of butter: The 16 best dishes I ate this year

In London, the wine bar reigns supreme right now. Sure there are ambitious restaurants with tasting menus that don’t make you feel like you’re being held hostage—I’m thinking of the dynamic West African Akoko. But they’re not grabbing the spotlight like wine bars are. These UK vino-centric spots are proliferating around the city, with lines out the door. They’re not like the ones I’ve encountered in New York, which are closer relatives to restaurants but boast a bigger by-the-glass list, plus cheese boards and flatbreads. Instead London’s version are cozy cubbyholes, with shelves lined with bottles that people can grab and take away, or better yet, that you can imbibe in-house for a few pounds more.

These places feature glorified snack food, often made magnificent by talented chefs who’ve clocked time in notable restaurants and are now headlining their own modest spaces. These innovative cooks are great at shopping and also at combining unlikely ingredients. I never spend more than £100 ($124)—a price that includes three to five dishes and a shared bottle of wine, enough to feel like a proper meal—and I have passed hours at many of these places. Another benefit: At a time when many places are booked out weeks ahead, many of the city’s wine bars are walk-in only. It’s a model made for people who eat spontaneously.

Still, New York is on a tear. It’s been a long time since so many young-ish chefs made their own singular mark on the city. Specifically, we have Kwame Onwuachi celebrating his Bronx roots at Tatiana in Lincoln Center, and Rich Torrisi, a co-founder of Major Food Group, reincarnating the beloved Torrisi Italian Specialties deli in a bigger, splashier location. Korean food has been a force on the city’s food scene: now we see Brian Kim offering a refined tasting menu that highlights lesser known dishes at Oiji Mi. The challenge for some diners: These meals aren’t necessarily cheap.

The Oiji Mi five-course menu starts at $145, without beverages; almost all the starters at Markus Glocker’s dynamic new Austrian restaurant are over $20. And these places are popular: Good luck getting a table at any of them.
I did, in fact, pick eight best dishes each, from New York and London—and I wasn’t even trying to be impartial. All the food below made a big impression on me as I ate in two of the greatest food cities in the world.

But let’s pick a winning food city: New York, take your crown. The range of ambitious restaurants you’re showing off right now is literally awesome. I’ll be applauding from a corner in a London wine bar with something delicious in front of me.

Dish of the Year: Game Liver Toast with Porcini and Pears, Cadet

Restaurants care deeply about bread in London; their chefs can achieve greatness with a simple piece of toast. So it is at the sensational new wine bar Cadet. Working out of a tiny space, Jamie Smart slathers a hefty toasted buttered white grain slice with a velvety game liver mousse, as if he’s frosting a cake. On top he arranges thick sweet pear slices and then cut-up raw cep, or porcini, seasoned only with oil and salt and pepper.

Imagine the bite you have – the crunch of the toast, the smoothness of the liver parfait, the soft earthiness of the mushrooms and finally the outrageous juiciness of a ripe pear.

Chocolate, Nut and Brown Butter Tart, Perilla

If there’s one dish that dominates conversation at the plant-filled Perilla in Newington Green (helpfully around the corner from Cadet, above), it’s the sumptuous brown butter, served with warm seaweed bread. But let’s talk about another obsession-worthy item on chef Ben Marks’s short, sharp menu: the chocolate-nut tart. The dessert boasts a thin crumbly nut base of the crispy nut cookies feuilletine laced with chocolate, followed by an inches high layer of thick caramel studded with hazelnuts and the occasional walnut. That’s topped by an equally commanding layer of deep chocolate ganache, laced with, you guessed it, brown butter.

Jollof Rice with Blue Lobster, Akoko

In the small but spacious low-lit dining room in Fitzrovia, the jollof rice arrives halfway through the multi-course tasting menu. Executive chef Ayo Adeyemi takes the dish very seriously, and even if you’ve had many versions of the West African staple, this one makes you pay attention. First the supple, intensely flavored rice is made by toasting the grains with spices before enhancing them with concentrated peppers and tomatoes; it’s served in a bowl the chef co-designed, inspired by Nigerian Nupe pottery. There’s a plump steamed blue lobster tail alongside; even more luxurious is an earthy sweet terrine made with dozens of slices of razor thin carrots.

Deep Fried Welsh Rarebit, St. John Marylebone

Since London’s time-honored nose-to-tail hangout opened in 2003, it’s served Welsh rarebit, the old school cheese-topped toast. At the new location in Marylebone, chef Fintan Sharp has transformed the classic into a giant molten nugget. He mounds a mix of Neal’s Yard Cheddar, mustard and cayenne on a toast strip; it’s mixed with flour and egg that miraculously form a crust when the concoction is dunked in the fryer. The bread, says Sharp, acts as a life jacket—the rarebit mixture attaches to it and floats in the oil instead of sinking. Then comes the pleasure of cutting into the browned croquette and watching the peppery cheese ooze out.

Crab Chalupa with Pistachio Mole, Kol

It’s hard to conceive a Mexican restaurant that foregoes staples like avocados and limes. But that’s the mission statement at Kol, the ambitious tasting menu spot near Marble Arch. Santiago Lastra, an alum of Noma Tulum, imports only a handful of products from his native Mexico and then ingeniously makes facsimiles of other ingredients. His Cornish crab chalupa shows off an incredible version of guacamole: the little fried tortilla cups are filled with a pistachio mole made with roast garlic and fermented gooseberries, a lime alternative, to make an uncanny replica of the avocado dip.

Barbecued Hipsi Cabbage with Peanut Sauce, Chishuru

Nigerian-born chef Adejoke Bakare closed her shoebox of a restaurant in Brixton earlier this year; she promises a shiny new location in 2023. Here’s hoping she brings back the barbecued cabbage. It’s hard to imagine a more voluptuous use of the veggie than this one, a summery showcase for the peanut sauce that she kept on her rotating menu. “It’s almost like the mother sauce of West Africa, every region has its own twist,” she says. Her intensely nutty version complements the smoky, crunchy-tender grilled cabbage wedges. It’s dressed with toasted pumpkin seed butter, a separate layer of richness, and enlivened with Bakare’s shitto, the Ghanian hot sauce she makes with funky fermented mushroom.

Chilled Melon Soup, Planque

Cast your mind back to summer, a very hot one in London. Imagine how delighted you might be with a cup of cool, refreshing melon soup. Even if you, like me, don’t love chilled soups, and additionally don’t care for melons. (The dish was ordered by someone else at the table.) But at chef Sebastian Myers’s North London place, a self-proclaimed “wine clubhouse,” one spoonful of soup and minds are changed. It's a dead simple combination of fragrant, sweet melons from Zerbinati in Italy. Then add judicious amounts of infused herb vinegar, and then raw cream to give it body and an earthy edge.

Chicken with Vin Jaune, Noble Rot

Noble Rot in Soho is one of the city’s foremost wine destinations with cult offerings from vintage Champagne to under-the-radar Burgundies. In the dark wood-paneled space, the menu changes, as does the bottle selection. But the golden chicken with morels and vin jaune is always on the menu. Alex Jackson’s roasted, crisp skinned bird is presented in a saucy pool that’s made with a) concentrated chicken stock; b) cream (and butter); and c) and most importantly, vin jaune, the nutty, oxidized wine from the Jura region that gives a complex kick to the richness. The experts at Noble Rot say it’s the best dish to pair with Jura wines, which happen to be my favorite.

New York

Take Out Mushrooms, with Scallion Pancakes, Tatiana

Chef Kwame Onwuachi says that the compellingly named dish at his new restaurant in the freshly refurbished David Geffen Hall is a mash up of memories from Chinese take out places he went to as a kid in the Bronx. He starts with a mix of pan-roasted mushrooms like maitaki, oyster and king trumpet then glazes them with a sweet-tangy Peking duck-style sauce so it mimics the crisp texture of the bird’s skin and a sprinkle of exhilarating five spice powder. Onwuachi’s housemade plum sauce gets pronounced fruitiness from braised sultana; the scrumptious scallion pancakes are tender, thanks to the addition of semolina.

Salted Egg Fried Chicken, Pecking House

Eric Huang has achieved local fame for the sensational chili fried chicken business he started during the pandemic, working out of an old school Chinese restaurant in Queens. (I was an early fan.) At his new brick-and-mortar spot in Brooklyn the chef is now serving a couple new options of his gorgeously crispy buttermilk-marinated chicken. The most remarkable one is doused in a sauce made that features fresh Asian salted duck eggs. He blasts the yolks with melted butter, a bit of oil and sugar to create a glaze that that is simultaneously pungent and eggy and unlike any other fried chicken going in New York right now.

Gunpowder Dosa, Semma

Usually when you come across a dosa, the crispy stuffed Indian crepe, it’s a long cylinder that dramatically overhangs a plate; occasionally, it’s folded in half. But at the stunning south Indian spot Semma, chef-owner Vijay Kumar presents his with sides tucked in, like a triangular gift. The wonderfully tangy fermented lentil pancake encloses a fiery potato masala mix (hence the name “gunpowder”) that’s punched up with ginger and a couple different kinds of chili, and served with both tomato and coconut chutneys, although it doesn’t need any embellishment.

Tortellini Pomodoro, Torrisi

At the new clubhouse of a restaurant in Soho, chef Rich Torrisi has resurrected some dishes from Torrisi Italian Specialties restaurant like hand-pulled mozzarella, served warm in a pool of oil. He further honors his Italian-American heritage with a couple of deceptively simple sounding pastas “that you could maybe see on Italian menus everywhere,” he says. Torrisi stuffs silky rounds of pasta with dense sweet cow’s milk ricotta, then serves the little packages with a sauce made with jammy, confited tomatoes that somehow taste of summer, even on a cold winter night.

Spicy Tuna Korean Hand Roll, Mari

The action at Mari happens at a big square counter in a brightly lit space in Hell’s Kitchen. There, Le Bernardin alum Sungchul Sim and his team turn a menu of handrolls into a Korean-inspired feast. The seaweed rolls, presented like mini tacos in small stands, are stuffed with rice that carries the taste of sesame seeds and the pickled radish damuji. The seafood, meat and vegetables that garnish them have all been preserved in a house soy mixture. My favorite is the cliched spicy tuna that is here a textural jackpot. The velvety fish is laced with fermented chili oil and chili aoili and topped with crunchy potato chips spiced with gochugaru, or chili paste.

Chili Lobster Ramyun, Oiji Mi

In Korea, cold noodles like naengmyeon and bibim myun are a year-round staple. At his elegant restaurant Oiji Mi, chef-owner Brian Kim wanted to introduce a dish that reflected that unique cold noodle culture. His ramyun will probably conjure up Japanese ramen—Kim sources the base from the renowned Sun Noodle, which supplies many famed ramen spots—but his noodles are especially chewy and fresh. His simple construction features a pyramid of those noodles tossed with a pungent dressing of sesame paste scallion oil and pickling liquid, and crowned with just-cooked lobster with spicy gochugaru and garlic and a dusting of salty seaweed powder.

Wagyu Tongue Terrine, Koloman

At his new, ambitious Austrian dining room, chef Markus Glocker has set out to offer a singular take on nose to tail eating. His “Beouf” first course—presented as you would be served sandwiches at a fancy tea service—is comprised of oxtail croquettes, beef tartare and, best of all and worth fighting other guests for, a terrine made of cured and smoked wagyu beef tongue and foie gras. The over-the-top combination is layer upon layer of the thinly sliced, supple beef, interspersed with a brandy-spiked, whipped foie gras mousse that couldn’t be more decadent if it tried to be.

House Special Fish Soup with Pickled Cabbage and Chilis, Che Li

On a St. Marks street packed with bubble tea stores and cell phone repair shops is the transportive spot Che Li, one of the city’s few Shanghaiese restaurants. The lengthy menu features a house special soup that is an event unto itself—it comes bubbling hot, in a cauldron of a bowl. The eye-catching yellow hued stew is stocked with white-fleshed fish fillets and vermicelli noodles; what gives the soup its addictive pungency is the pickled vegetables that float around in the mix with the bracing red chilis. It wakes you up and clears your senses and conservatively serves four, although two of us have finished off the whole thing.