The Most Memorable Meals of 2014

City London, England Address and phone: 55 Jermyn St (+44 20 7629 9955) Website: wiltons.co.uk I arrived in England this fall the morning after my grandmother had died, with my mother sitting by her side in a dementia ward in Southeast London. The time lag produced an odd effect: My mom and I had both encountered the initial shock of the news on separate continents, and by the time we saw each other, a more pervasive, burrowing sadness had taken hold. We were running on empty, and we needed a proper meal. My mom tends to be utilitarian in her dining habits, far more concerned with convenience and unfussiness than Michelin stars or bold-faced chefs. But she'd read a Times review of Wiltons by Giles Coren and it struck a nerve. (Read it for yourself—it's hilarious and involves a rather excellent Heston Blumenthal cameo.) Midweek reservations are tough to come by—this is the type of old-guard British establishment where you're likely to be surrounded by off-duty MPs, and City Boys regaling each other with cricketing triumphs—but the maitre 'd vowed to make it work. Maybe he saw the desperation on our faces and took pity; maybe he just had tables to turn. Either way, he dispatched us for a tour of the Fortnum & Mason's food hall and, sure enough, my mom's phone rang a half hour later with promises of a table. She deemed him a "lovely man," and thus the master class that is lunch at Wiltons began. We sat on plush banquettes with pillows to support our backs, looking out on the gorgeous back dining room full of fine art and uniformed waiters pushing trolleys of roasted meats. I drank French wine with a saddle of rabbit, while mom ate lamb cutlets with mint jelly. When she took her first mouthful of the Stilton soufflé, served in an antique silver vessel that keeps the pungent cheese at just the right temperature, she closed her eyes and said, "This is the best thing I have EVER eaten." Of course, we had dessert—a perfect bread-and-butter pudding finished table-side with vanilla-bean custard—and immediately burst out laughing at how good it was. That lunch gave us everything we needed that day: The feeling of being spoiled; good, honest British cooking; and a meal we could both appreciate—the unfussy Brit and the snobby food writer equally overcome by its timeless charms. My grandmother was the cook of the family, and her famous Sunday roasts a common thread through family memories. At Wiltons, it felt like we created a new tradition. Two days after my grandmother's funeral, we returned to the dining room with my brother to make the most of Thanksgiving abroad. We sampled more widely this time—native oysters with buttered brown bread, roasted woodcock and bacon-topped partridge—but the results were the same: A welcome sense of occasion, and resounding agreement that Wiltons rules.—Chris Schonberger

City Mount Pleasant, SC Address and phone: 106 Haddrell St (843-884-0052) Website: wreckrc.com You get to the Wreck by driving to where the land ends. The South Carolina shoreline is a web of marshland, with veins of seawater creeping up over what should be solid land; this is why they call it the Lowcountry. The Wreck is on one of these veins, down a road that's mostly home to fisheries and private docks. The red buoy at the driveway is the sign you're in the right place. There are hundreds of seafood shacks around Charleston; trying to settle on the one to go to on a five-day trip with my brand-new fiancé was like a thousand Sophie's Choices. Every shack has the same menu—fried scallops, oysters, and shrimp, hush puppies, she-crab soup. Each one has ridiculously fresh seafood that's mercifully unfucked with, and the rest of their dishes have been recipe-tested into canon over the last 250 years. I finally chose the Wreck based on two little words: fried grits. The night we went it was cold on the enclosed porch that is the Wreck's dining room, but two gas fireplaces and the ambient heat from the massive fryers kept us warm. We sat perched over that disappearing coastline, watching boats return for the evening, the lights of Charleston in the distance. Our dinner arrived golden on paper plates, wedges of lemon tossed on top. We were in love. The grits were fantastic.—Regan Hofmann

City: Paris, France Address and phone: 84 Rue de Varenne (+33 1 47 05 09 06) Website: alain-passard.com Some gals crave jewelry for their birthday; I asked for vegetables. For years I dreamed about getting dolled up and sitting in the small, graceful dining room of Alain Passard’s Michelin-starred L’Arpège. On one of those unseasonably balmy April evenings that lend Paris an especially romantic sheen, here I finally was, about to savor the chef's revered vegetable tasting menu. For nearly four hours, waiters brought out plate after elegant plate starring straight-from-the-garden produce. Silky consommé teemed with petite ravioli; green garlic tasted of earth. There was a parade of peas, carrots, and radishes, all so vividly hued and snapping with freshness, it was hard to believe they were of the same species I once refused as a child if it didn't carry the reward of cake afterwards. We sipped wine; we watched Passard dart to and from the kitchen with the type of awe usually reserved for celebrity sightings; and we swooned over retro Îles flottantes that pulled us into a more dignified era. The meal cost approximately $900, but there were no regrets at our table. This was the memorable night we witnessed the the apex of farm-to-table cooking—the simple, focused, flawless transformation of nature’s bounty.—Alia Akkam

City: Ensenada, Mexico Address and phone: Calle Alvarado and First St (646-119-4530) Website: laguerrerense.com Going with Bill Esparza, the unofficial spokesman of Baja’s food scene, on a seafood taco tour was a culinary dream come true. We tried sea-snail burritos in Tijuana and wolfed down exceptionally light fried-fish tacos in Ensenada—but our last stop of the trip, La Guerrerense, was by far the most memorable. For more than 50 years, the stand has been serving “Le Bernardin-quality seafood,” as Anthony Bourdain put it, on styrofoam plates in the street. He wasn’t being hyperbolic—Sabina Bandera’s tostada topped with sea urchin (stewed with onion, tomato, coriander, and olive oil); raw slices of Pismo clam; and salted avocado is truly a bucket-list dish for any Mexican-food fanatic. Adorn the beautiful disk of fresh-caught seafood with chilitos de mi jardín—a super-concentrated salsa bandera made with dried chiles, peanuts, and olive oil—then prepare to slip into seafood nirvana. Besides Bandera’s talent and creativity, there’s a reason La Guerrerense stands out from the pack: Fishing cooperatives deliver fresh-caught seafood to her home between 5am and 8am every morning. She creates cooked ceviches from sea urchin, salt cod, and whatever else they bring her, then cools them and shepherds them to the stand. I bought one of Bandera’s 16 homemade salsas to take home with me and store in my pantry; weeks down the road, it was there as a reminder that all the mind-blowing food I ate in Baja wasn’t a dream.—Erin Mosbaugh

City Los Angeles, CA Address and phone: 207 Ord St (213-620-0461) Website: littlejewel.ja

What rings true for the rest of the country never applies to New Orleans—in the best ways and worst ways possible. Which is why replicating the feel of that particular port town outside state lines has always been a challenge. But if cured bass from Sinaloa can travel to South Central, and mutton from the Xinjian provience can make its way to the San Gabriel Valley, why not a proper po’boy from ‘Nawlins? It’s as confounding as the city itself.

The closest thing to a Bywater bodega in Los Angeles is located next to a dim sum parlor in Chinatown: The Little Jewel of New Orleans. There, amidst the musk of Chinese herbs and roasted peking ducks, you’ll hear orders being called from a noisy speaker outside: “Blackened Catfish. Muffaletta. Ready.” Typically, the voice belongs to proprietor/chef Marcus Cristiana-Beniger, a New Orleans native and former (porn) art director blessed with an eye for detail.

With Lee Dorsey crooning overhead, graze the market’s aisles to find regional items like canned Blue Runner Red Beans and jars of tangy Blue Plate Mayo. The latter is essential for Cristiana-Beniger’s Big M’ po’boy, filled with roast-beef, double-battered shrimp and oysters, and cabbage (shout out to the Irish Channel), all sitting atop french bread from Leidenheimer Baking Company and smothered in “debris gravy.” Andouille and tasso are smoked in-house. And you’ll even find a spin-off version of the trademarked “Crawfish Monica” available only during Jazz Fest—with mornay sauce instead of Velveeta.

For Cristiana-Beniger, setting up shop in Chinatown is not some act of encroachment. Rather, it points to the neighborhood's history as a place in transition. He’ll cite the Chinese massacre of 1871, or the fact that Italians shared living quarters with the Chinese during early waves of immigration (note the Sicilian tribute W.O.P. “Without Papers” salad). And no place better exemplifies that type of cross-pollination than New Orleans.

On a shelf high above the register sits a corked brown bottle. It was excavated by Cristiana-Beniger while exploring the underground network of rooms and passageways below the restaurant. (Note: the slope on Ord Street is artificial). Aside from rotting chicken carcasses and vintage pogs used in illegal fan-tan rings, he found an antique bottle from the 1920s of Passion Liqueur—a company based in New Orleans, of all places.

Even in Los Angeles, you can always find a little voodoo amid the rubble.—Justin Bolois

City: Bronx, New York Address and phone: 800 E 149th St (718-292-7949) Website: none

Another year gone; yet another struggle to conjure the memories of meals past. In 2014, I ate my way through Portland, OR (shout out to the dirty fries at Lardo!), landed an improbable table at Barcelona's Tickets, and witnessed the theatrics of Grant Achatz's Alinea. Each experience, in its own right, fundamentally affected how I consider restaurants. There are always chefs and places that drive change, and those are integral for doing what we propose to do at First We Feast: Understand how culture and food interact in a holistic way.

Restaurants are no different. Last December, when thinking about memorable meals, I considered place and time. I thought about marking occasion. And now, tasked with the same assignment again, those ideas have resurfaced. The most remarkable evenings don't require the "best" food, the "hottest" chef, or the "sleekest" decor. Instead, these nights stand out through a confluence of company and flavor—food serving not as main event, but as conduit for conversation, discovery, and recollection. Alinea and Tickets, no doubt, do this on otherworldly levels. Closer to my home, Carnitas El Atoradero in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, does too.

I ate there, with my brother and his now fiancé, on a frigid, wet October Saturday. We had pig's feet drenched in chili verde; carnitas tacos; and brilliant chili rellenos. Denisse Lina Chavez's home-style cooking transports mind, body, and soul. No, one isn't magically whisked from the South Bronx to Puebla. Instead, diners are reminded that New York City offers so much more than Heatmaps and belt-notching.

The Bronx, one could say, emerged in 2014. Bourdain went. And if that's not an indicator now, what is? Still, Carnitas El Atoradero would be what it is wherever it was situated. There is a mission: Cook and celebrate the food from home. There is no pomp and circumstance. Dishes do all the talking, but they are not divorced from the restaurant's matriarch. Chavez commands her humble dining room with delightful ease. She spotted us immediately as pilgrims to her alter, swiftly offering explanation of Saturday specials and samples of the most authentic dishes (those that may confuse folks whose grasp of Mexican cuisine begins and ends wrapped in a tortilla). She is at once chef, host, and historian.

Food writers will tell you the mole is a must have. Don't listen. Not because the mole is bad (in fact, the slow-cooked, rich sauce is excellent), but because everything else is equally delicious. If you go, eat what you like.

When my brother and I left, I shared with him a superlative (I am famous for these): "That was the best place I've been to in New York in a decade." We didn't discover El Atoradero. The small storefront has been covered by near enough everyone (including, this year, the New York Times). Nor did we traipse up there under the auspice of journalism. We went to do something we now so rarely do, just have lunch together.—Nick Schonberger

City Mexico City, Mexico Address and phone: Guillermo Prieto 129 (+01 55 5546 5066) Website: lapolar.com.mx The three months I spent in Mexico City this year involved a procession of illuminating meals that, if condensed into an imaginary gastronomic flipbook of sorts, would be an OD of culinary excellence. There was that 5am breakfast of eggs and beans after staying up all night at Latin America’s largest goth convention; the chile rellenos made from dried anchos in barrios bravos; the 300 day-old mole. But the pinnacle—or at least the experience that crystallizes that quarter year into one telling moment—was a bowl of soup. That bowl of soup was birria, and that birria was at La Polar, a two-story mariachi hangout in San Rafael that has been serving the goat-based dish since 1934. There are, basically, two things on the menu. 1) Birria in soup. 2) Birria out of soup, with the soup served on the side. The restaurant is on a corner that slopes upward, flanked by a highway. The trek escalates your hunger. There is a cluster of mariachis outside, chatting and smoking with the valets. A wire cage holds a parrot, squawking Spanish. A band performs in a room to the left—crisp norteño rhythms, replete with a rapping snare drum. Parties of 12, 15, 25 are eating and drinking. Another band of mariachis, dressed in black with red ric-rac, swarm a table to our right and begin a tune. The noise is cacophonous, each band trying to drown out the other. Standing with a friend fresh of a plane from the U.S., I have to yell our order of draft beers over the din, feeling my hangover dissipate in anticipation. In the back, a cook presides over a stockpot, ladling out broth and hacking the meat into manageable portions. We order it both ways—in soup, out of soup—and moments later the birria hits the table trailing steam, with a basket of cloth-wrapped tortillas, limes, salsa, and chopped white onion. We add on a side of avocado, doused in lime and salt, cutting off slivers with our spoons and eating it plain. This birria is not like the neon-orange bowls I’ve eaten in Los Angeles, or the clove-heavy versions in Guadalajara. It’s practically blond, an unassuming pile of meat in a straw-colored broth with bits of gristle, spine bones, and pieces of tendon. We fork shreds of goat into golden tortillas, spoon on the salsa, add slips of avocado, and dip it into the hot broth. I swallow a kaleidoscope of salt, earth, and corn—a purr of chile, and the sweet crunch of white onion. The Negro Modelo is tooth-numbingly cold, and it all hits me in one deluge of sensation: the noise, the flavors, the smirking waiters in their formal attire, and the glee that spills over from adjacent tables. The soup and the scene have a dizzying capacity to satisfy. I’m reminded of a J.D. Salinger line: “Oh, this happiness is strong stuff.”—Scarlett Lindeman

City: Florence, Italy Address and phone: Via del Porcellana, 25/R (+39 055 212691) Website: none My girlfriend and I spent two weeks in Italy. It was her job to get us in front of the right walls, and mine, the right plates. We saw a metric fucking shit ton of Renaissance art and also had a bunch of truly mind-blowing meals. In Rome, at Sora Margherita in the Jewish ghetto, there were the perfectly crispy, piping hot carciofi alla guida, and a heavenly, house-made cacio e pepe topped with a dollop of fresh ricotta. Or that divine antipasti plate at Roscioli right outside the Campo Di Fiore, with an absurd, borderline-traumatizing truffled mortadella. In Venice, there was barely touched crudo just plucked from the sea at Gatto Nero on Burano. Or even, on our first day in Florence, a tripe-stew sandwich eaten street-side with a cold Coca-Cola, with a peppery tomato sauce and a melting meat texture unlike any offal I've ever had. But none of them crept up on us—and blew us away—like the meal we had at Trattoria Sostanza in Florence. We were exhausted from a day of rushing past Michelangelo's David and flying through the Uffizi in its closing hours. We'd been in Italy for a week, and were burning out on destination food stops—the list we had for Florence was filled with places that, at the moment, sounded too heavy with frills or were too far a walk from where we were holed up, watching bizarre Italian game shows, trying to summon the energy to go. The decision was ultimately, "This place. It looks good. They have Florentine bistecca. We'll be fine." We walked over to Sostanza, and almost walked past it. The door to the place was tiny, and the first thing we saw was a butcher's counter—a relic of its century-plus life in existence there. When we showed up without a reservation, we thought we'd be sent packing, but we made the official gesture of Dumb Americans who didn't make reservations (a shrug and a "please, we'll wait"), and a waiter huffed and then smiled and took us back to a table, two seats, right next to each other. At the rest of the table were a French family of five already two bottles in, and two Italian businessmen sitting at the head and one corner of the table. Whatever, we're seated. We're good. The place was a trattoria, alright: Little to no decor, except for framed pictures and bills from famous customers. Hand-written menus, entirely in Italian. But also, not long after we sat down, piping hot, fresh-out-the-oven doughy Italian bread, almost tossed at us. The bread crackled on first bite, flakes and crust everywhere—it was, quite possibly, the greatest piece of bread I'd ever had. But bread alone doesn't a meal make. Next came tortellini en brodo, little meat-filled micro-dumplings swimming in a chicken broth so good, it actually might have reduced one of us to tears—the secret, of course, is a rich, golden, bright-as-sun stock made from the gallina bollita (or: boiled hen). And then came my order, Florentine bistecca: A perfect t-bone, plain and simple. Because we were deep into a bottle of Chianti Classico at that point, it wasn't until the next day that I realized the Italian guy next to us—jabbering at us in Italian, pointing to a picture of a white cow on his phone—that I was not eating a steak from the very same cow pictured on his phone, but in fact, eating a steak from the same type of cow on his phone (it's all white, and it's called a "Chiana cow," and now you know). But it wasn't the Florentine bistecca in the Florentine trattoria that blew us away. That would be Sostanza's apparently famed petti di pollo al burro (or: butter chicken). Here's what you need to know: They take chicken, cook it over coals in a cast-iron pan, then dredge it in flour and finish it in the oven with butter. It doesn't sound like much. But if you take a moment to Google "Sostanza butter chicken," you'll see various attempts by those haunted by the greatness of this dish—the way the chicken was perfectly moist, with crunch on the top layer, and flavor bursting through every single bite, and a peppery-butter wading pool around it in the cast-iron waiting to be sopped up by the aforementioned bread—and the various ways they failed to perfectly conjure the dish's flavors even remotely. Maybe it's because of the way it's cooked over hot coals. Maybe it's just because Sostanza's been making this dish for more than a century. Maybe it's just because it tastes better in a restaurant in Florence where time and space seem to completely evaporate and all that's left is this trattoria, the people in it, you, and your centuries-old protein selection of choice. And there was dessert, too—far from an afterthought, a slice of pillow-soft cake, layered with chunks of craggy, crunchy meringue, and besieged with a handful or two of tiny strawberries, each bursting with flavor. For lack of poetry, it was weird as hell, but like the rest of the meal, it was as understated and modest as it was unexpectedly glorious. As the bill (like all other bills there for, presumably, 150 years strong) was taken care of—that is, with the comically oversized, leather-bound ledger they used to record every diner's tab—we attempted to convey our gratitude to the owners for (quite literally) squeezing us in that night. And while my girlfriend and I might not have spoken a word of Italian between the two of us, as we smiled and chattered away in our own respective languages, us with an empty bottle of Chanti Classico in front of us, rolling our eyes in pleasure at the absurdities of what just happened, marveling at the room, a generations-old dining destination, they seemed to get the message: We'll be back to Sostanza, with friends and family, to continue our own little history within its magnitudes, and as soon as we possibly can.—Foster Kamer

City Los Angeles, CA Address and phone: 2056 Hillhurst Ave (323-662-1214) Website: yucasla Yuca's Hut is a famous taco stand, situated in a parking lot off Hillhurst Avenue in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz. It's a place where everybody from out-of-work actors to Beverly Hills celebs flocks for killer carne asada tacos. But earlier this year, I discovered something much better: the double cheeseburger (with everything), which is the best burger I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. Every day, a fight rages within to forgo the short walk from my apartment and fork over the dough (five and a quarter bucks) for this incredible sandwich, which appears relatively run-of-the-mill upon first glance: bun, patty, cheese, and condiments. But once you get closer to the thing, its wonders reveal themselves: a super-soft white bread bun, lightly grilled on the top while the underside of the top bun is loaded with ketchup, yellow mustard, and sliced white onion; two thin patties almost romantically glued together with vibrant, sizzling yellow American cheese; and, under the beef, a bed of iceberg lettuce, a thin slice of beefsteak tomato, and a healthy dollop of mayo spread out over the bottom bun—a seemingly misplaced afterthought, but in reality, a genius placement. The secret seasoning that transforms this burger from homely to my worldwide favorite cheeseburger of all time comes from the fact that the patties (I have no idea where the meat comes from, and I don’t care) cook in the same spot on the grill as the carne asada meat, and they soak up all that carne asada-spiced magic. The tacos can kiss my ass.—Jonathan Cristaldi