[ ! ] Mon Ami Gabi Chicago Dress Code

Mon Ami Gabi Chicago Dress Code Mon Ami Gabi - Lincoln Park - Chicago - The Infatuation

Guastavino's, 71 Clinton Beginning Food, Meigas New York · Pascal's on Ponce Coral Gables, FL · Medizona Scottsdale, AZ · Sel de la Terre Boston · Dining Allowance at Mirbeau Skaneateles, NY · Dine, Ana Mandara San Francisco · Ten Penh Washington, DC · Ciudad, Salve! Dallas · Primo Rockland, ME · Cafe Juanita Kirkland, WA · Aria Atlanta · Cuvee New Orleans · NoMI Chicago

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This accomplished year I've eaten armadillo, blah fungus, and flies' eggs in birthmark booze in Mexico City, six kinds of claret sausage in Budapest, and ravioli blimp with analgesic ganglia in Bologna; I've agape aback lobster shooters in Dallas, sampled creme brulee fabricated with bee pollen at New York's "21" Club, and risked "death by gumbo" in Louisiana. So absorption bottomward the arrangement of U.S. restaurants I've eaten in this accomplished year was tougher than ever, but twenty-two jumped out as arch and amateur aloft the rest. The chefs accumulate accepting better, not aloof in the major-league restaurant cities but in unpronounceable places like Skaneateles (that's "skinny atlas"), New York. At the aforementioned time, restaurants accept become aloft in admeasurement and design. Italian restaurants accept fabricated a improvement aback the aggression of French bistros in the backward '90s, and women are now asserting themselves added angrily than anytime amid the top ranks of abundant American chefs. In allotment the best new restaurants of 2000, I focused on those that are conceived by chefs, not corporations, and I agreement that if you banquet at any of these places, the chef will be in the kitchen, cooking, and not in Las Vegas, aperture a new branch. That said, let us begin.

Guastavino's, New York

It took about seventy years to put a restaurant in the twenty-six thousand aboveboard anxiety of alveolate accolade beneath New York's Queensborough Arch (also accepted as the Fifty-ninth Artery Bridge), and now that Sir Terence Conran has done so with such amazing I beauty, all I can say is that it was account the wait.

New York borough structures are belled for authoritative boondoggles, but aback the city's landmarks agency begged Conran to undertake the renovation, it promised to atom the red band so that such a admirable amplitude wouldn't be absent to the river rats. With accomplice Joel Kissin, Sir Terence -- whose huge London restaurants like Quaglino, Mezzo, and the new Aurora are marvels of carnal adjust -- has brought one of New York's cathedrals of account to a akin of animation and allure no added restaurant in the angel possesses. Your jaw drops aloft abutting the all-inclusive four-thousand-square-foot bank of angled windows beneath the amount of the bridge. Once inside, your eyes are fatigued anon advancement to the forty-foot groined ceilings, whose buttery albino asphalt assignment was crafted by Rafael Guastavino y Moreno and his son, Rafael Guastavino y Esposito, the adept Spanish masons who came to New York in 1889 and created the beam in the Abundant Hall on Ellis Island as able-bodied as the aerial basement of Admirable Central Terminal's Oyster Bar.

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There is a fifty-seat bar, consistently awash afterwards 6:00 p.m., and aloft it is a three-hundred-seat brasserie with a glassed-in kitchen. This restaurant appearance the animating coaction of ablaze and adumbration for which Conran's accommodation are famous. The abode is animate with the complete of fashionably draped bodies adequate themselves immensely, acquisitive up the adorable all-embracing body aliment that wreaks adorable calamity on every diet: macaroni and cheese gratin; buttery gravlax; platters of algid crab, lobster, and oysters; caviar slathered on buttered blini; garlicky, acrid brandade of cod; barbecued duck; leg of lamb with braised beans; a catfish club sandwich and a duck-pastrami reuben; Conran's signature angle and chips; quiche fabricated with Spanish dupe cheese; eggs Benedict; appreciably brittle french fries; blueberry buckwheat cakes; Pavlova acerb with berries; and aces balmy applique smothered with broiled pears.

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To the appropriate as you access is a across-the-board admirable access arch up to the one-hundred-seat Club Guastavino, breadth chef Daniel Orr turns out affected fixed-price dinners that appearance off his aptitude for both accession and precision. His frogs' legs, as abounding as Grable's gams, are pumped up with garlic. His carpaccio of venison with atramentous radishes and auto oil has a absolute antithesis of gaminess and tang. And his archetypal sole a la meuniere is the bowl for which adulate was created. Special entrees may accommodate agrarian animal with a potato gratin or sea scallops served artlessly with fava beans and bounce ramps. Orr's broiled John Dory with beef bottom and agrarian mushrooms is a masterpiece, and you won't acquisition a bigger berth de boeuf in America than the massive cut of beef at Club Guastavino.

That Orr and his abrupt agents can actualize such a accomplished dining acquaintance admiral while the aberration of the brasserie rages beneath is as abundant a attestation to Conran's and Kissin's accomplishment in managing amplitude as it is to the agents they accept hired. They all assignment calm to actualize a restaurant as affecting as it is unique. Accomplish no mistake: Putting Guastavino's in the aforementioned class as the Chrysler Architecture and the Statue of Liberty is abandoned agreement it amid those active monuments that accomplish New York New York. 409 East Fifty-ninth Street; 212-980-2455.

71 Clinton Beginning Food, New York

In complete adverse to the gargantuan glamour-puss restaurants, a cardinal of superb storefront eateries accept opened about the country, proving that smallness, focus, and charge can be every bit as adorable as the alive drape of a four-hundred-seater. The clearest archetype of this is 71 Clinton Beginning Food. Beginning Food, ahead home to Ray's Chirping Chicken, is a tiny boutique breadth funkiness is aloft to a accomplished art. Inside, you get Masonite ceilings, brown-paper-draped tables, and blooming artificial banquettes piped in orange that bout the annoyed Day-Glo beard of some of the waiters.

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But customers, who may delay four weeks for a reservation, don't appear actuality for Lower East Ancillary kitsch. They appear for chef Wylie Dufresne's arresting food, all adapted out of a kitchen no beyond than one begin in a New York flat apartment. Not a distinct additive in any of his dishes is there for show; aggregate has acidity and function. Parsley soup is blooming and bracing, with chunks of candied Jonah crab. Dufresne stuffs smoky, broiled squid with morsels of shrimp and buttery fennel, afresh allowances it all up with a dribble of blood-orange sauce. He braises abbreviate ribs of beef for what charge be canicule in aphotic beer to accomplish a dank arrangement that moistens chervil spaetzle. Dufresne has an outsized aptitude for a small-sized room, but I achievement he stays appropriate breadth he is, a alarm of admirable aftertaste for anybody who loves accomplished food. 71 Clinton Street; 212-614-6960.

Pascal's on Ponce, Coral Gables, FL

Like Beginning Food, Pascal's on Ponce is all about dedication, not decor. Pascal Oudin was one of the creators of what a decade ago was alleged New Florida Cuisine, a abstraction based on beginning Caribbean flavors tricked up into sometimes tantalizing, sometimes asinine plates of abounding disparate elements. Alike so, Oudin's affable was consistently restrained, and now, at this appealing storefront, calm with his wife, Ann-Louise, and brother, Jean-Marc, he has alternate to his French roots. It would be abnormal to acquisition added than three absolute melancholia capacity in any of Oudin's dishes, but every acidity is absolutely accustomed and intense. Lump crabmeat is about seared, afresh affiliated to roasted-red-pepper butter; sea bass is cuddled in a potato crust, sauteed crisp, afresh laid beside buttery braised leeks in a archetypal cayenne-sparked booze matelote; the affluence of aflush abstain breast comes with the blooming crisis of savoy banknote and candied sauteed apples choleric with a attempt of honey and lime. Pascal's is that attenuate affair in the Miami area: a restaurant abandoned of affectation and abounding of acceptable taste. 2611 Ponce de Leon Boulevard; 305-444-2024.

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Medizona, Scottsdale, AZ

Lenard Rubin, a chef agnate in aesthetics to Oudin, has larboard the aegis of the actual chichi Marquesa at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess to accessible his own place, Medizona in Scottsdale. From the outside, Medizona is any bearding Southwest shop: a small, broad architecture with a patio. And from the inside, with the assured cow skull and wrought-iron accents, it looks like one added Casa Zorro. But afterwards the aboriginal bait of chef Rubin's eggplant tacos with lamb, arugula, and kasseri cheese in roasted-garlic-and-tomato sauce, you'll apperceive you're in for article actual different.

Rubin works a Mediterranean palette with acumen and daring: begrimed shrimp with white-bean hummus, mango-olive salsa, and a appearance of tomatillo sauce; curry-rubbed beanbag with applesauce, chives, acerb cream, and potato pancakes; honey-glazed dogie chops with parsnip potatoes and quesadillas blimp with ratatouille. The alternation of such dishes can be risky, but in Rubin's calmly they are abiding bets to affect guests who adulation intense, bold cooking. 7217 East Fourth Avenue; 480-947-9500.

Sel de la Terre, Boston

Up in Boston, the owners of the genteel Aback Bay dining allowance L'Espalier -- Frank McClelland and Geoff Gardner -- accept gone down-market with the absorbing Sel de la Terre, set appropriate beyond from the amaranthine Big Dig. With its affable adobe figurines, bean floor, bleached-white beam beams, and Provencal mural, Sel de la Terre is a acquittal from all the cartage and babble outside, and Gardner's affable is French common aliment at its best -- acutely age-old and lusty, like his sun-dried-tomato, spinach, and onion acerb riddled with atramentous olives and broiled Comte cheese. Or try the lamb sausage broiled to ablaze amber with peppers, burst dupe cheese, and age-old balsamic vinegar; or a bouillon of dejected littleneck clams with ambrosial andouille sausage, potatoes, and squash. The aliment is some of the best in Boston, and the amber bete noire with espresso anglaise and port-marinated cherries will breach your diet if not your heart. 255 State Street; 617-720-1300.

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Restaurants that crave that handguns and corpuscle phones be arrested at the door.

Expensive restaurants afterwards tablecloths on their tables.

Waiters in chef's jackets.

Steak houses that spiral about with adored formulas by alms baseless sauces with your sirloin.

Restaurants with a card of appetizers that abandoned accept to be biconcave from a tin or broken assimilate a bowl rather than adapted or prepared.

Substituting the base chat server in abode of waiter.

All Carlos Santana all the time on the complete system.

Designer tables so abundant you can't move them to get in and out.

Men's accommodation with artist urinals.

Cigar confined in fine-dining restaurants.

For whatever reasons, the cardinal of chefs abrogation the big burghal for ambiguous futures in tiny towns with beneath barter is accretion steadily. Today, some of the finest restaurants in America are way the hell out in the boilerplate of nowhere. The best acclaimed of these is the Inn at Little Washington in Virginia, seventy afar from Washington, DC. Admitting it took the Inn added than a decade to accomplish civic status, that cat-and-mouse bold has not beat added chefs who seek the abandon to baker as they ambition and to abstain the astronomic problems abounding in big-city restaurants like those depicted in Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential.

Dining Allowance at Mirbeau, Skaneatles, NY

Like Primo in Rockland, Maine, and Cafe Juanita in Kirkland, Washington, the Dining Allowance at Mirbeau, in asleep Skaneateles, New York, enhances a angel absolutely adored to be annihilation added than a dot on the map. Skaneateles is a nineteenth-century New York boondocks whose capital artery is lined with oaks and pillared homes with all-inclusive blooming lawns forth the active dejected Finger Basin that gives the boondocks its name. It's as abundant a awkward retreat as it is a active community, so the accession of the new Mirbeau resort, which looks like Monet's Giverny, gives abounding acumen for anyone to visit. Agency in a accomplished restaurant overlooking a afraid pond spanned by a Japanese footbridge, and how can you resist?

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Chef Edward Moro assembles five-course airheaded cartoon on the accomplished of New York -- its apples and peaches, its corn, tomatoes, and potatoes, forth with accomplished cheddar, venison, quail, and seafood. An archetype ability alpha with a ambrosial gazpacho and backtalk salad, move on to broken bairn pig with coriander-scented artichokes, East Bank halibut with calamari and a academician cassoulet, vinegar-marinated adolescent craven with white sausage, and on to an alluring peach-and-cherry brittle dotted with amber amoroso and biscuit streusel and topped with caramel ice cream. Sample a New York State wine, and afresh go angle on that little arch and watch the moon bundle in amid the stars, and you'll accept why Edward Moro confused here. 851 West Genesee Street; 315-685-5006.

Julia McClaskey, Dine, San Franciso

Choosing the best new chef was a breeze in 2000. Alike admitting I was abandoned center through my analysis for the year, I aloof couldn't brainstorm anyone affable a added absolute meal than the one Julia McClaskey served me in the warehouse-sized Banquet one summer atramentous in San Francisco's SoMa.

It began with seared craven livers, dank and blush inside, administration the bowl with applewood-smoked bacon, amoebic greens, and tart-sweet Bing cherries. There was a appreciably simple bloom of broiled hearts of romaine lettuce, babyish artichokes, dupe cheese, and a sun-dried-tomato vinaigrette, followed by sauteed prawns with a bright-yellow blah bloom and acutely bathetic Maui onions, brindled with broiled sunflower seeds and a tarragon vinaigrette. Broiled lobster -- trickier than you'd anticipate to do able-bodied -- nested on buttery blah risotto with blooming tomatoes and a albino vinaigrette, but the allotment de attrition was impeccably broiled chicken, ablaze gold and still sizzling, with orzo pasta riddled with Parmesan cheese and sauteed pea shoots. For dessert, I ate the apotheosis of profiteroles, beefy with coffee-bean ice chrism and pond in a aphotic amber sauce.

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If such dishes complete adorable rather than dazzling, it's because they are. But they are adorable in the best acute faculty of the chat pleasure. This is not abundance food; it is amazing in every texture, seasoning, nuance, and amount of succulence. Julia McClaskey has a axiological compassionate of her capacity and an astonishing aptitude for timing that makes aggregate that comes out of her kitchen a claimed article on how to cook. She joins added outstanding Bay Breadth women chefs, like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, Judy Rodgers of Zuni, and Traci Des Jardins of Jardiniere, by accomplishing absolutely what she does best and by reminding us all what's acceptable for us. 662 Mission Street; 415-538-3463.

For best of the nineties, aback Asian aliment wasn't actuality angled into "fusion" cuisine by American chefs who spent one night in Bangkok, addition in Mindanao, and bristles added in Hong Kong, this cuisine lay fallow. But now, led by the An ancestors of Vietnam, who opened the admirable Crustacean restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles, Asian chefs accept started to advertise the rich, endlessly alluring foods of the Far East in formidably ample restaurants breadth the Asian adornment plays as ample a allotment in the evening's action as the actuality of the affable does.

Ana Mandara, San Francisco

Anyone carper the clarification of the aliment of Vietnam, which was abundantly afflicted by French cuisine during its colonial period, charge abandoned book a table at Ana Mandara. Go at night, aback the three levels of this admirable amplitude done in Asian antiques and woods, with its own little garden and calm terrace, booty on a cine set's chiaroscuro charms.

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Actor Don Johnson is part-owner and a common attendance at Ana Mandara (which agency "beautiful refuge"), but the absolute brilliant actuality is chef Khai Duong, whose academic abstraction of classical French cuisine at Paris's Le Cordon Bleu buoys his built-in instincts for alien flavors. Admitting best appetizers are beneath than ten dollars, you could calmly accomplish an absolute meal of them: brittle bounce rolls of backtalk and shrimp with shiitake mushrooms, blue-crab soup with noodles, a bloom of assistant blossoms with craven and grapefruit, and papaya bloom with prawns and jellyfish. But you wouldn't appetite to absence the entrees, either. Try marinated blanch broiled over charcoal, tournedos of beef seared in a wok with candied onions and pepper cress, or a superb angle alleged basa from the Mekong River, adapted with scallion flowers in a ambrosial auto sauce. For dessert, go with the bananas flambeed in phyllo bedding with amber mousse and boilerplate creme anglais. 891 Beach Street; 415-771-6800.

Ten Penh, Washington, DC

Like Ana Mandara, Ten Penh advances southeast-Asian food, agreement it in the aforementioned empyrean as French and Italian cuisine. Set on the armpit of the old Sinatra Rat Pack alliance alleged Ten Penn, this new apotheosis is a large, circuitous restaurant with custom-built teak chairs and tables, a arched wine bank fabricated of chestnut, a gold-leaf Asian aboideau burden abaft the bar, and actual admirable Asian antiques. Not to acknowledgment the actual admirable silk-clad hostess and waitresses.

Jeff Tunks, additionally the comestible force abaft the accomplished East-West restaurant D.C. Coast, has installed Philippine-born Cliff Wharton to accumulate the aliment anxiously authentic, and from the Filipino pork and bounce rolls captivated in lumpia pastry and the Thai coconut-chicken soup to the Szechuan-style blooming beans and the Vietnamese-spiced blanch with papaya salad, he does aloof that. The calmness of the Ten Penh action is agitated through in what is conceivably the best another of wines affable to this cuisine in America. 1001 Pennsylvania Avenue NW; 202-393-4500.

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Biggest French Slap in the Face: Lutece, Las Vegas

Everything New York's Lutece stood for over the accomplished four decades has been absolutely abandoned at this Vegas branch, complete with piped-in new-age music and burnt sole a la meuniere.

Tallest Waiters in America

Dallas's the Mansion on Turtle Creek's dining allowance has provided anniversary aide with a adulatory brace of handmade, custom-fitted Lucchese black-cherry boots to abrasion as allotment of the uniform. Maitre d's and captains abrasion ostrich boots with their tuxedos.

Hostess of the Year

Any, and I beggarly any, of those at the advanced board at Linq in Los Angeles.

Biggest Faux Pas of the Year

Alain Ducasse, buyer of eight Michelin stars and twelve restaurants on three continents, opened the best big-ticket restaurant in the U.S. -- Alain Ducasse New York, with an boilerplate analysis of $300 per actuality -- afresh appear he would baker there abandoned occasionally, insisting with a affectionate of arced Cartesian logic, "When I am not there, I am there."

I haven't the aboriginal agnosticism in adage that women baker abnormally from men. In my experience, women's affable is simpler, added direct, added nurturing, wholesome, unpretentious, and economical. They shy abroad from pyrotechnical displays, accept no absorption in bar food, and absorption mashed potatoes and angel pie with the aforementioned awe and adulation as they do their children's toes.

Yet females in the big toques in American restaurants accept remained few. This year, however, ability able-bodied be proclaimed the Year of the Woman in American Dining. Added women accept taken the captain of admirable new restaurants than anytime before, and, while anniversary has her own appearance of cooking, all allotment a adroitness for putting aliment that is ambrosial on the table.

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In New York, Patricia Yeo at AZ (pronounced Ay-zee) is accomplishing arch work, while Nicole Parthemore is a ascent brilliant at She She in Chicago, breadth she joins veterans Sarah Stegner of the Ritz-Carlton and Suzy Crofton of Crofton on Wells. Tamara Murphy at Brasa and Christine Keff at Fandango are aloft talents in Seattle, Julia McClaskey at Banquet in San Francisco (see above) is my aces for best new chef of the year, and in Dallas, Joanne Bondy at Ciudad (3888 Oak Lawn Avenue; 214-219-3141) has accustomed that Tex-Mex-crazed burghal what it has never had: a avant-garde Mexican restaurant that absolutely showcases the amazing bounded aliment cultures of those states south of our border. I ate and ate and ate at Ciudad and never annoyed of new, alien flavors and countless textures -- balmy queso adorn on a active sun-dried-tomato sauce, flautas abounding of abstain meat with a ginger-pineapple pico de gallo, pork barbecue blimp into a broiled poblano chili pepper and topped off with broiled Chihuahua-style cheese and blooming mole, and the best arrangement of desserts -- including the alpine pyramid of wafers anchor aphotic Mexican amber mousse in a billow of spun amoroso -- I've had in any one restaurant this year. Abandoned two or three added Mexican restaurants in the U.S. are accomplishing aliment so true, and not one is accomplishing it better.

Some of the best new women chefs accept alleged to prove their animation alfresco of the male-dominated kitchens of the big cities I usually biking to. But no amount breadth she goes, Melissa Kelly cannot get abroad from me. I accept followed her from the Beekman 1766 Tavern in Rhinebeck, New York, to An American Abode Waterside in Arctic Miami, and afresh way the hell up in New York afresh to the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company in a tiny suburb of Albany.

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So active far up the bank of Maine to Rockland was acutely appropriate aback she and her fiance, pastry chef Price Kushner, took over an old board abode and angry it into a restaurant alleged Primo (2 South Capital Street; 207-596-0770), afterwards Kelly's Italian grandfather. Here, for the aboriginal time, Kelly seems to be affable wholly from her heart, fashioning a able-bodied Italian-American card abundant with the beginning aliment of New England -- breeze peas plucked from the garden, blah not an hour from the field, lobsters decrepit wet from the sea. There are admirable pizzas topped with Italian sausage, tomato, and dupe cheese. An addictive Italian ache alleged a fricco oozes Asiago cheese and eggplant caponata adored with basil oil. Pastas couldn't be better; aerial crespelle blimp with aerial meat are lavished with broiled fontina cheese, vegetables, and agrarian mushrooms. Capital courses are appropriately homespun, like broiled leg of lamb with chickpea chips and ratatouille, and bounded snow-white halibut with a risotto riddled with lobster chunks. Afresh comes ambrosia -- crisp, cheese-filled cannoli biconcave in amber and an orange-glazed pistachio popover abounding with creme brulee. Guys don't baker like this; they aloof appetite to accommodated a woman who does.

Much in the aforementioned attitude is Holly Smith, a active woman who fell in adulation with Italy and Italian aliment and whose compassionate of that country's comestible ability is axiomatic in aggregate she cooks at Cafe Juanita in Kirkland, WA (9702 N.E. 120th Place; 425-823-1505). Set in a ranch-style abode over the Juanita Creek, the dining allowance has the airy feel of a sixties ball set, with Smith attractive out from her accessible kitchen, authoritative abiding her guests are happy. And how could they not be, with dishes like langoustine with tagliatelle, beginning chickpeas, garlic, and chili, or pappardelle with sauteed craven livers, atramentous Mission figs, and a blow of marsala? What's not to adulation about buzz craven with altogether broiled potatoes or seared sea scallops with bootleg bacon, antique tomatoes, and blooming onions? And if you're acceptable and eat your chicory greens with hazelnut apples and candied Gorgonzola dressing, you can accept a allotment of Holly's caramelized auto acerb with balsamic-doused strawberries and creme fraiche.

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The French-bistro bang and the Nuevo Latino acerbity accept agape Italian restaurants out of the gastronomic account for the accomplished bristles years or so, and for acceptable reason. The pasta joints had become as addled as banal polenta. But Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich's absolute Babbo, which opened two years ago in New York, has sparked a active new absorption in bounded Italian food. Batali and Bastianich themselves opened the quintessential Roman trattoria, Lupa, in Greenwich Angel aftermost year and added afresh launched a atypical access to Italian seafood -- raw, drizzled with twenty altered types of olive oil -- at Esca, in the Theater District. Added New York entries like Va Tutto!, Revel, Peccavi, and Gubbio accept taken their own paths, while Atlantans got a aftertaste of bona fide Italian affable at Cipollini, and in Los Angeles, chef Celestino Drago opened the aboriginal absolutely accurate Tuscan steak abode in the States.

But the best account of all is in Dallas, a burghal not accepted for acceptable Italian. Owners Janet and Phil Cobb, calm with chef Kevin Ascolese, racked up bags of kilometers on the autostrada researching bounded aliment from Trento to Palermo, and the aftereffect of their altruistic labors is Salve! (2120 McKinney Avenue; 214-220-0070), as accurate and avant-garde an Italian restaurant as you'll acquisition in this country. From the aboriginal aftertaste of bootleg aliment to the aftermost little amber baci, this is a arresting bout de force, ashore in attitude and accustomed aloof abundant Texas beat to accomplish it altered from annihilation arctic of Wichita Falls.

The architecture of the restaurant is carnal and sensuous, from the bar to the alfresco patio, and there is a association dining table that encourages bodies who don't apperceive one addition to become paesans over platters of malfatti pasta with truffle sauce, risotto adapted boring in dark-red Barolo wine, gnocchi fabricated with a booze of broiled agrarian boar, and one of the best abundant steaks alla fiorentina you're acceptable to acquisition this ancillary of the Arno.

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Tobias Lawry, Restaurant 821 (Wilmington, DE)

Roger Johnsson, Aquavit (Minneapolis)

Marlin Kaplan, One Walnut (Cleveland)

Eric Di Domenico, La Caravelle (New York)

Daniel Mules, Acacia (Scottsdale, AZ)

Steven Alex Vanderpool, at Cuvee Beach (Destin, FL)

Kent Rathbun, Abacus (Dallas)

Steve Zucker, Lafitte's Landing Restaurant (Donaldsonville, LA)

Michael and Wendy Jordan, Rosemary's Restaurant (Las Vegas)

Christophe Philoreau, La Panetiere (Rye, NY)

John Belleme, Zemi (Boca Raton, FL)

Rob Boone, Bambu (Miami Beach)

Paul Sale, Icon (New York)

Tim Andriola, Mark's South Beach (Miami Beach)

Mon Ami Gabi, Las Vegas: Clumsy onion soup, beef that tastes like a Minute Steak, curly, anointed french fries, debilitated chicken, and amateur waiters who wouldn't apperceive a piperade from le pipe.

Pastis, New York: A abate adaptation of the still admirable Balthazar, Pastis pretends not to booty anxiety afterwards 7:00 p.m., except for its ten thousand abutting friends, allows smoker in the nonsmoking dining room, and serves thoroughly characterless aliment to crowds who couldn't affliction beneath what they eat as continued as they get a acceptable table.

Nicholson, New York: This year, the old New York association abode afflicted hands, its menu, and its name (formerly Nicholson Cafe), but the story's still the same. If you're not angry off by the mummy's-tomb design, afresh the banal aliment care to do the trick.

Through the nineties, it about seemed as admitting how a restaurant looked was added important than what came out of the kitchen. Designers David Rockwell, Adam Tihany, Tony Chi, and Jordan Mozer became as acclaimed in the restaurant angel as all but a few chefs, and absurd designs, which were best exemplified in restaurants like California Grill at Walt Disney World, the Harley-Davidson Cafe in New York, and Dive! in L.A., became a claim for any restaurant aloft the alehouse akin in America.

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As we access the twenty-first century, restaurants are accepting a bit added success at award the antithesis amid "experience" and eating. And the glamour-puss restaurants of the new aeon assume to be cartoon their afflatus from the TV shows and movies of the last, whether it's the Jetsons attending of New York's Brasserie 8 1/2, the La Femme Nikita chichi of Nine in Chicago, or the 007 air-conditioned of Aureole in Las Vegas, breadth wines are fetched from a bottle belfry by a Pussy Galore carbon accepted through the allowance on a wire. Best of these restaurants are advised for sex appeal, and, inevitably, the bar breadth is as glassy as annihilation out of a Kubrick movie.

Have the women of Los Angeles no pity, no restraint, no underwear? They coast into Linq (8338 West Third Street; 323-655-4555), their beard like article out of a L'Oreal commercial, and they kiss-kiss the buyer (who is, of course, alleged Mario), belfry over the Tom Blooming types active at the bar, get any table they want, sip cosmopolitans (still), and beam that high, full-mouthed beam that causes men to balloon their appetites. In the chichi caliginosity of the pearly-white, black-marbled, skylighted dining allowance (designed by Dodd Mitchell), it was abandoned with abundant accomplishment that I could apply on chef Andre Guerrero's card and accept from superb starters like white-corn soup with Dungeness backtalk and lemongrass, lobster ravioli in a curried lobster bisque, and wok-seared scallops with a shiitake-rich potato borsch and lotus-root chips. I approved adamantine to focus on adorable capital dishes like crisp-skinned whitefish with a corn-and-shrimp bouillon and red-pepper lobster sauce, and ahi adolescent patted with absurd pepper in a blood-orange ponzu sauce. But do you apperceive what it's like to watch one of those women eat a walnut-and-banana acerb with malted-milk sauce? Don't ask. Go to Linq. Be a man about it.

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The Buckhead Restaurant Group, which gave Atlanta the Buckhead Diner, the Atlanta Angle Market, and Chops, has about affected others' concepts with abundant success, but with Bluepointe (3455 Peachtree Road; 404-237-9070), Bill Johnson Studios has created a restaurant abiding to be affected by anybody else. On looks alone, Bluepointe is a beauty -- a all-inclusive multilevel amplitude with aerial ceilings and huge windows, ample banquettes in apple tones, and arched bedding of metalwork that arm-twist Frank Gehry's assignment in Bilbao and Seattle. In this atmosphere, chef Ian Winslade has to action for attention. It's a action he about wins. Winslade was accomplished on how to baker seafood at New York's Le Bernardin, and his ability in administration anniversary alone species, from pompano to tuna, wins out over embellishment, alike aback the bowl involves Asian seasonings, as it does with his miso cod with Thai basil-cucumber bloom and his peanut-crusted grouper in masaman curry. Nonfish dishes like cautiously broiled blanch sparked with Thai spices and served with a brittle watercress bloom appear off aloof as well. For dessert, go with the white-chocolate panna cotta with a Georgia-peach compote and boilerplate wafer.

In some cases, it's difficult to apperceive whether the bar wags the dining allowance or carnality versa. Annabelle's, in contrarily calm Naples, Florida (494 Fifth Avenue South; 941-261-4275), seems allotment restaurant, allotment developed action park. Steve Samuelson's architecture appearance a aglow bottle bar, a bank of water, a bluff catchbasin shaped like an ostrich egg, agenda monitors in clandestine booths, miniature asset trees, and gigondo metal sculptures -- and that's aloof the bench lounge. Upstairs, you get accurate pillars with a pineapple pattern, a aerated baptize wall, and twenty-six-foot ceilings. The ba-da-bing! agency is command ample here. (Be accurate about allotment your restaurant afterwards your wife; you aloof never know.) But, hey, this is Florida, so achieve into a booth, cull the curtains about you, adjustment from the five-hundred-label wine list, and acquaint the accomplished Andrew Marc Rothschild to baker his ass off for you. The aftereffect will be a akin of accomplished American haute cuisine you'd be beholden to acquisition anywhere in the U.S. He may do a affiliation of convalescent and poached foie gras with a abundant pistachio-onion marmalade or parfait of crabmeat with apricot caviar, afresh accompany out shallot gnocchi with abstain bonbon and agrarian mushrooms, afresh broiled Chilean sea bass with Provencale vegetables, afresh buzz arbor of lamb with a potato-and-mint salad, afresh go on from there if you're still hungry. This guy's impressive.

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Sheer abandon makes Teatro Goldoni (1909 K Artery NW; 202-955-9494) the best agitative restaurant to accessible in D.C. in a continued time. This begins the moment you are greeted by buyer Ingrid Aielli, who is as effusive as she is gorgeous. The moment you airing in, you apperceive you're in a hot zone. Olvia Demetriou's postmodern afterglow of red, yellow, and dejected colors; the three tiers of bar, dining area, and kitchen; the big, roomy, arced booths forth the walls; and the commedia dell'arte masks afraid throughout arm-twist the carnival of Venice, chef and buyer Fabrizio Aielli's hometown. In every sense, his affable is a absorption of the atmosphere and carnality versa. His creations are beaming with the colors of peppers, eggplant, olives, and saffron in dishes like monkfish over craven Israeli couscous, a acceptable bowl of linguine with mussels in active amazon and lemon-pesto sauces, and dogie medallions so dank they hardly charge the blooming porcini booze and atramentous truffles. Ruben-esque agnolotti appear in a ablution of deep-green appearance acicular with saffron threads. Teatro Goldoni is able-bodied named, for the Aiellis accept a ability for the affecting and a aftertaste for the adventurous.

Sometimes a admirable architecture has the aftereffect of abating a brand that had become predictable, alike tiresome. If you've noticed a abridgement of new Parisian bistros in this list, it's not because none accept opened -- dozens accept -- but because few are accomplishing annihilation added than aggravating to carbon the adornment and card cliches of others. But restaurateurs Joe Santosuosso and Paul Anthony accept been far added artistic by putting a actual beautiful, ample dining allowance alleged Johnny's Alehouse (1400 West Sixth Street; 216-774-0055) in burghal Cleveland, giving bloom to the abstraction with tin ceilings, chiffon chandeliers, and abundantly varnished pillars that advanced a baroque accessible kitchen, authoritative this calmly the best restaurant architecture Cleveland has apparent in a continued while. They accept additionally accustomed chef Darren Eads to put his claimed best into comedy with dishes like seared atramentous bass with nicoise accents of olives and artichokes on a bed of couscous with auto confit, and monkfish captivated with bacon and served with a potato borsch and a affluent lobster sauce. His braised abbreviate ribs with truffled mashed potatoes will avoid off ache for at atomic forty-eight hours, but his actual best abstraction is capacity dogie into ravioli, casting it with truffles, and ambience it afloat in a mirepoix of minced vegetables and candied butter.

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Acid indigestion: Rolling Stones guitarist and constant hedonist Keith Richards accepted that London's Adamantine Rock Cafe abolish from taxis its ads reading, "Proud to affection absurd items -- chicken, onions, Keith Richards." The Adamantine Rock complied.

Worst New Dish: Wasabi sorbet at Bambu on Miami Beach.

Some restaurants don't fit calmly into accepted categories of American gastronomy. Instead, they abandoned accept the advantage of actuality very, actual acceptable and very, actual altered from what added restaurants are doing. Accepting abstruse the adamantine way that chefs accord in the kitchen, not the accumulated office, Gerry Klaskala is aback abaft the stoves. The armpit of his boastful acknowledgment is Atlanta's Aria (490 East Paces Ferry Road; 404-233-7673), on the old Hedgerose Heights premises, with bleached-white walls, beaded metal curtains, and a chandelier best declared as a priapic jellyfish. In this venue, Klaskala is as accomplished with southern affable traditions -- a candied Vidalia-onion soup, absurd softshell crabs that are massive and compact -- as he is with avant-garde American concepts like a slow-roasted pork shoulder, dank with a slathering of balsamic alkali and port. As bushing as such dishes may be, don't let the acquaintance end there. Sample pastry chef Kathryn King's atramentous plums broiled in boilerplate abstract on broiled auto block with amber ice cream, or algid espresso parfait with mocha malt sauce. In a culinarily backward burghal breadth alternation restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory are revered, Aria is a auspicious alternative. Now, if abandoned the administration would admonish the developed men who appearance up in dejected jeans to go home and change....

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Many of the acclaimed New Orleans restaurateurs accustomed to tourists in the Big Easy could use a refresher advance in affable and hospitality. They charge addition to acquaint them that yesterday's acceptability doesn't accomplish tomorrow's meal. Or they could aloof pay one arresting appointment to Cuvee (322 Magazine Street; 504-587-9001), which enhances admired Creole comestible traditions with a change that makes them aftertaste alike better. Chef Richard "Bingo" Starr conjures accurate Creole and Cajun flavors by alive about alone with Louisiana products, bond brittle mirliton (a bounded pear-shaped pseudo-squash) with ambrosial shrimp, or infusing a cool napoleon with amazon remoulade and cayenne butter. Alike the requisite buzz babyish craven takes on a bounded bend with greens smothered in hot tasso ham and blah fritters, as does the abstain breast, smoked over sugarcane and nestled in a bed of Roquefort-pecan risotto. Serving this card in a actual adequate brick-walled, mahogany-accented dining allowance with acutely affable account and a amazing charge to wine (by the glass, twenty varieties), Cuvee maps a new administration in New Orleans cuisine -- one the old-timers would do able-bodied to follow.

Forgive NoMI (800 Arctic Michigan Avenue, Chicago; 312-335-1234) for the coy acronym ("North Michigan Avenue"), but acclaim it for aggregate else. The dining room's adornment -- a admirable amplitude of windows overlooking the lake, the attenuate use of rosewood and Italian circuitous tiles and beams captivated in covering -- pales aback compared with the focal point of the accessible kitchen: Sandro Gamba, who fabricated his acceptability at Lespinasse in Washington, DC.

Gamba practices a attenuate art in a burghal too about addled by comestible gimmickry and boastful presentations. He cooks backward mollusk in attic milk, afresh spikes it with a blow of lime. Actual accomplished tomatoes and a blow of chili add atom to his Thai-inspired beef salad, and he doses his risotto with mascarpone cheese, agrarian mushrooms, and a little prosciutto for a creamy, earthy, acrid delight. I can absolutely say I've never had bigger buzz lamb, served actuality with a zucchini galette and some garlic bonbon -- a assignment in abstemiousness his Chicago colleagues would do able-bodied to emulate, if not absolute steal. It's in the desserts that Gamba goes a little heavy, but that's okay, too: His arch of alien amber with "fruit of the backwoods gel" or hazelnut feuilletine and marinated pineapple is whimsy that's acquiescently indulged.

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I ate at Meigas (350 Hudson Street, New York; 212-627-5800) on the best bone-chilling night of the winter, barreling through the aperture of the alveolate restaurant with my eyelids about arctic shut. Yet afterwards feasting on chef Luis Bollo's sumptuous, abating aliment and bubbler a blue-blooded dosage of rioja and Pedro Ximenez sherry (okay, maybe added than a blue-blooded dose), I faced the barbarous algid alfresco in the acceptance that winter could not abuse me: I had dined well.

Meigas, which is Galician for "sorceress," represents a bewitched aboriginal acknowledged adaptation in America of avant-garde Spanish cuisine, with echoes of the chef's own Basque comestible traditions and of the trendsetting restaurant El Bulli in Rosas, Spain. What David Bouley is accomplishing in New York for Austrian aliment at Danube and Odette Fada for Italian aliment at San Domenico, Bollo is accomplishing for Spanish. Aback you go to Meigas, apprehend to be affected to accept from a alloy of oxtail and sweetbreads with Iberian Montsia rice, broiled alkali cod with julienne peppers and pil-pil booze of buttery garlic and olive oil, salt-crusted red snapper with raisins or ache basics and paprika oil, and almond-crusted amber croquettes in a attic foam. Can't? Well, there's no aphorism adjoin acclimation one of each.