an incomplete list of nearly perfect meals

[march 2016]

new: studio in copenhagen

what is a nearly perfect meal? it is an idiosyncratic confluence of elements, the sum of parts. it has almost nothing to do with expense, other than that special dinners draw people together and place them in a suitable and shared frame of mind. this can be done anywhere, which is why this is not a list of restaurants but a list of meals. this can also be done for nearly any price, which is why some of these meals involve pancakes.

i now realise what everyone who opens an ambitious restaurant knows: it takes enormous effort to reproduce reliably what sometimes unexpectedly and serendipitously materialises when people get together to cook or eat.

in most of these cases, the food was confident and made with care, the beverages appropriate (but often not exalted), the company incomparable. some of these places i've been to many times, some only once. in every case, the particular perfection of the meal has not been reproducible in other places and at other times. your mileage may vary.

copenhagen
studio; frederiks have; kødbyens fiskebar; noma; ved stranden 10

nuremberg
essigbrätlein

paris
chheng sim; les deserteurs

london
10 greek street; 40 maltby street; otto's; st. john bread and wine; kandoo; brawn; taberna do mercado; morning coffee at mother's milk; saturday afternoon tea at postcard

tokyo
shunsui; gesshinkyo; tsuru ni tachibana (with updates from our japanese correspondent)

las vegas
chada

san francisco
kiss; quince; minako; greens; food inc (for their tuna niçoise sandwich on either a sunny day or a rainy one); pagolac; chapeau!; firefly; jackson fillmore; pancake sunday 5.13.07

berkeley
chez panisse; the cheeseboard

cambridge
hungry mother; bondir; cooking with fire and clay; morning coffee at hirise

malden
biryani park

palo alto
bay leaf cafe (yellow lentil sambar soup, on a wet day); homma's (outside on a warm summer night)

new york
shopsin's

lenox
nudel

boulder
the kitchen

marfa
cochineal

new orleans
galatoire's, the parkway bakery

osaka
hon-kogetsu

kyoto
mo-an

singapore
green pasture; fuli seafood

järpen
fäviken magasinet

washington dc
minibar

an equivocal and cautious age

But megalomania can be a useful counterbalance to our own equivocal and cautious age. Judd, whose work looks better as time goes by, reminds us via his Marfa empire what it is to care unreservedly, even maniacally, about art, which he regarded as synonymous with life, not peripheral to it.

michael kimmelman, "the last great art of the 20th century"

this is what i saw in marfa two years ago (even more).

remote food

does the spirit of a place show up in its food? i think so, at least in marfa, tx. check out my article about food and art in marfa, on the ideas section. 

inside dan flavin's largest installation, at the chinati foundation..

the private library of donald judd

two weeks ago, 2300 miles away

fly to el paso, rent a car, grab some tamales, drive 3.5 hours west-northwest. you end up in marfa, tx. a neat place, with yurts. art's not bad either.

donald judd

john chamberlain

dan flavin

roni horn

more judd

exactly what it says

(L-R) a mallory, some buttered toast, a beezus, a coffee mug

slow morning

the winds have stopped, it's cold out and bright, and the heat is on. robert byron's road to oxiana recalls a much earlier time in travel, and neil young and crazy horse are on the turntable.

100 works in mill aluminium

marfa is 3 hours fast drive from el paso, which has few charms for me except a panoply of tamale shops. in marfa, you can see donald judd's 100 untitled works in mill aluminum. the pieces are all of the same external dimension, but inner volumes are all variations on a theme and no two are the same. in the light that washes in through the enormous windows on the east and west walls, the mill aluminum surfaces of these massive boxes dissolve and become transparent. these two images are of the inside of the second shed. an unsettling yet quiet place, where solidity and evanescence coexist.