2024 was the year of big, big cities. We tackled three of the world’s biggest cities and one of the major goals in each place was to eat really incredible, hyper-local food. I think we succeeded in our quest this year, and it was tough to narrow down the top five best restaurants of the year. While the Chicago list had very few Michelin stars attached to it, our world list has a total of nine stars. I loved each…
This year, since we’ve eaten so much amazing food, I’ve decided to do two Top Five Restaurant lists – one for Chicago, and one for around the world. This year, the Top Five list for Chicago is going to be really steak heavy, but it’s all leading up to my Top Five Chicago Steakhouses list, which I hope to publish sometime in 2025. We ate really well here in Chicago this year, and I’m looking forward to another year of…
Did you know that there’s a two-star Michelin restaurant in the Eiffel Tower? Typically, such a huge tourist location (one might even say tourist trap!) will only offer the most basic, mass-produced food to cater to the gobs of tourists moving through. But, here in Paris, you can find one of the city’s most elegant dining rooms occupying the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. Le Jules Verne is a very special place, and we ate here on our last…
When you dine at a Three-Star Michelin restaurant, you expect perfection both with the food and the service, and, spoiler alert, Arpege was perfect with food and service. Choosing restaurants in Paris, especially ones with coveted stars, is an extraordinarily daunting task, but I decided to book at Arpege for a couple reasons. First, they allowed bookings relatively far out (over 3 months) which, as a planner, I love. Second, Chef Alain Passard has been serving exclusively a vegetarian tasting…
Luca was our last meal in London, and one of the best! As I mentioned in my review of the Clerk & Well, where we stayed on our recent trip in July, 2024, the Clerkenwell neighborhood is chock full of delicious eateries, so we rarely had to go far to eat really well near our home base. We were delighted with Luca, a one-star Michelin restaurant, and apart from a bit of a communication snafu at the end of the…
We were lucky enough to stay in the Clerkenwell neighborhood of Central London, a bit off the beaten path for tourist attractions, though close enough that most were walkable, or at the very least, easy to get to via public transportation. Clerkenwell is also a growing foodie neighborhood of London, and we were able to check out some of the very best it had to offer while visiting in July of 2024. St. John restaurant has a few outposts, but…
I love exposing the kids to the world outside of Chicago, and part of doing that is exposing them to some of the world’s best food. After our amazingly epic experience at Cocina Hermanos Torres in Barcelona on our last trip to Europe with the kiddos, I was confident that they could handle just about anything at a Three-Michelin-Starred restaurant. It was really difficult to choose just one in London, as the city chock full of fancy eateries, but I…
Rosetta was our last stop in Mexico City in late February of 2024, and we were pretty exhausted and stuffed from all of the eating we had been doing all around the city by this point. No worries here, though, the menu is generally made up of many small, sharable plates, so we were able to eat as little, or as much as we wanted. Rosetta recently received a Michelin star accolade in the first year of stars for Mexico!…
We travelled to Mexico City this winter for the primary purpose of diving into its food and cocktail culture. I chose several dining and drinking spots based on recommendations from friends, travel books, World’s Best lists, and my own research. I chose Quintonil for our eighth anniversary dinner on February 23, 2024. Quintonil is located in the chic Polanco neighborhood of sprawling Mexico City, an area full of gorgeous restaurants, bars, shopping, and architecture. The space here is modern, minimalist,…
Indienne is one of Chicago’s newest one-star Michelin Restaurants, and they focus on vegetarian and vegan preparations, although they have a non-vegetarian tasting as well. We came here on a Thursday evening in February, and we tried all three tasting menus on offer here, since we came with one of our vegan friends. I opted for vegetarian, and Brian got the non-vegetarian. The space is beautiful with soft hues of pink, taupe and gray. Everything is modern, clean, and fresh,…