Book Report: Where Chefs Eat, A Gluttonous Traveler’s Companion Fete-a-Tete 1

Book Report: Where Chefs Eat, A Gluttonous Traveler’s Companion

A restaurant suggestion is like a good piece of gossip. It makes you feel in the know, chosen, part of the cool crowd. Knowledge, in the case of restaurants, is definitely power. And while there are many options of where to turn for this ever-important wisdom: your chic best friend, Zagat, Yelp, our Restaurant Rolodex (duh!), there may be no better resource for traveling than Where Chefs Eat, the newly published encyclopedia of best restaurants in the world from Phaidon. With this baby in our hands, we know there’ll be no more tourist trap dining for us.

The book is densely packed with over 3,000 restaurant recommendations in more than 70 countries from the people who really know: chefs including David Chang, Yotam Ottolenghi, Massimo Bottura and more. That’s definitely the lunch table we’d like to sit at.

Easy to navigate by country or major city, the book is divided into categories like “Local Favorite,” “Bargain,” and “Worth the Travel,” and we’re never going to travel without it.

Brightly colored and clothbound, Where Chefs Eat looks great on a coffee table, and would be a great gift to receive right before a trip. It’s also available in digital versions so it doesn’t have to add weight to your already loaded suitcase.

Near and far, we’ve rounded up some of the places we’re dying to eat.

Hong Kong
Restaurant: Bo Innovation
Recommended by: Jereme Leung
Bo Innovation’s Alvin Leung isn’t your average Chinese chef. “With hair dyed to match his purple-tinted glasses and a fondness for tattoos, his image is as pure chef as rock star… at Bo Innovation he deconstructs the traditional Chinese palate to produce tasting menus via modern techniques borrowed from the cutting edge of Western haute cuisine.”

Amsterdam
Restaurant: De Kas
Recommended by: Stefano Baiocco
After becoming a grower of his own vegetables and herbs right on the property and at a near by farm, chef Gert Jan Hegemony opened this modern Mediterranean restaurant in a restored 1926 hothouse. “Book the chef’s table for a tasting menu that makes the most of all those fresh vegetables and herbs.”

Brooklyn
Restaurant: Blanca
Recommended by: Enrique Olvera and Jorge Vallejo
This small loft space turned into a chef’s tasting table, located on the outskirts of Bushwick has even the most reputable chefs making the trek out to Brooklyn from all over the world. “It is the place that has had the greatest impact on food recently.”

San Francisco
Restaurant: State Bird Provisions
Recommended by: Daniel Boulud
Opened by husband and wife team Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krazinski, this simply designed open kitchen restaurant has some interesting, eccentric food that are brought around the restaurant by waiters, dim-sum style.

London
Restaurant: Morito
Recommended by: Yotam Ottolenghi
Eat like a local. Ottolenghi recommends his favorite Morito because “stopping by for a snack and or a drink on Exmouth Market always reminds me why I love living and working in London. And I could eat a bucket of the beetroot borani with feta, dill, walnuts, and nigella seeds.”

 

Go on now, buy the book here – happy eating!

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Where Chefs Eat Fete-a-Tete
Where Chefs Eat