The diary is nearly done for 2024 but there’s still a return trip planned to the bananas, frozen in time Noodle Pudding in Brooklyn, a spot I didn’t think could exist nowadays in gentrified New York City. After that, LA for my usual order in Mad Men’s Musso & Frank before pasta-palooza in Evan Funke’s Mother Wolf, in between any number of tacos. The last reservation will be short-haul for the Kinneuchar Inn in the Scottish Highlands. What follows are my dining highlights from travels so far in 2024.
LONDON
We need to petition phone-makers to create The Dover filter. Regardless of the cut of you, this glamourpuss restaurant in Mayfair feels like it’s lit by Kubrick, everyone looking gorgeous and glowing. The Dover is a stunner. In fact London is falling down with stunners – again this year, there isn’t anywhere else that mixes old and new quite as well. For standout dishes, try everything on the menu at Chishuru, shakarkand saag in Ambassadors Clubhouse, single-bite spanakopita in Morchella, messy spanakopita in Oma. Do pre-lunch Fergronis in St John before Bouchon Racine. Behold the head-wrecking simplicity of Neil Borthwick’s French House. The Noble Rots and the finest dining value, lunch in The Ritz.
Bouchon Racine
Within a 15-minute stroll from Farringdon tube station are the vibey Sessions Arts Club, precise Quality Chop House, lovely Luca, buzzy Brutto, magisterial Otto’s. Nearer is St John, an institution that’s 30 years old this year. There hasn’t been a more important chef than Fergus Henderson, but St John – that spartan cornerstone of modern British gastronomy – isn’t even the best restaurant in Farringdon.
It seems unfair that Farringdon also gets Bouchon Racine, perched over The Three Compasses pub, owned and run by two of the most skilled and soundest people in the game. They won’t mind me saying that they both look like Tin-Tin characters – Dave Strauss a sailor and Henry Harris the spymaster. The former conducts front of house and the latter is the master in the kitchen. Bouchon Racine is the best restaurant in London.
Chishuru
Adejoké Bakare doesn’t know me from a crow but when I told her in January, after a mind-blowing lunch in the newly minted Chishuru that they’d get a star, she said no chance. Weeks later the joke was on Joké, as she is known, as the self-taught chef was on stage at Michelin for her technicolour West African restaurant beauty in central London.
Chishuru is like a rookie visit to Tokyo or Mexico City, where the main question you keep mumbling to yourself while gurning with happiness is I like it, what is it? Joké is now part of the backbone of superstars, like Nieves Barragán from Sabor and Guirong Wei from Master Wei, who between them have some of the most delicious and most diverse food anywhere. She hadn’t arrived when I was in but it’s brilliant to see one of Ireland’s best chefs, Christine Walsh, has joined the kitchen – maybe she’ll coax Chishuru home for a pop-up.
PORTUGAL
The best lunch and dinner I had this year were on my tod. Lunch – a beach hut in Setúbal, Portugal. Cuttlefish from that ocean, cooked in its ink with rice from the paddy behind me, served with a rosé from the neighbouring vineyard. Even the wine’s cork was local. Dinner was a few miles away in Isaias, a ramshackle fridgeless seafood taberna, where everything that made it great would make it illegal in Ireland. A runner-up would be roast suckling pig with local bubbles in Mugasa, outside Coimbra, the ancient university town.
Canalha
Portugal is having a moment for its wine and food, and in Belém there’s a cool new showroom for both. João Rodrigues works the grills and pans in Canalha’s galley kitchen like an octopus. His open tortilla with shrimp and onion, grilled squid with sheep’s milk butter and Alentejo lamb sweetbreads are all sensational.
DENMARK
Sushi Anaba
I have travelled to Noma more times than I can remember – often three seasons in a year – even following them to Japan, Mexico and Australia to get a look at those cultures through René Redzepi’s forever hungry lens. Directly and indirectly, Noma has made it easy to eat well in Copenhagen and has done more to lift a city than any other restaurant. Noma also unleashed a ballsy, anything-is-possible ambition that you don’t usually associate with northern Europe.
Sushi Anaba, unconnected to Noma, is the height of that ambition. Why would you want to go to Copenhagen and watch a Dane dress up as an itamae? Because chef-owner Mads Battefeld isn’t cosplaying. His tiny eight-seater counter, Edomae style, is the real deal, preparing some of the classiest sushi in Europe, most of it from sustainable and local seafood.
[ Eating out: 19 of the best new restaurants to try around Ireland nowOpens in new window ]
ITALY
Pepe and Peppe
A prescription for pasta and pizza heads – fly into Rome, which looks and eats its best this time of year, then get the fast train towards Naples. In Rome make the pilgrimage to Santo Palato for carbonara, or anything by the pocket force of nature that is Sarah Cicolini. When you are leaving, grab a slice from Gabriel Bonci’s eponymous restaurant for the train, along with whatever you can carry from the Mercato Centrale at Rome’s Termini station.
Get off at Caserta, and take a 20-minute taxi to the hilltop town of Caiazzo and the best pizza restaurant on Earth, Pepe In Grani. Franco’s now famous multi-floored temple of pizza is worthy of any list and the trip alone. If you want to upgrade your stay, pelt down to the coast to Peppe Guida and his one-man industry to stay in the jaw-dropping Villa Rosa in Vico Equense.
SPAIN
Aponiente
Staying in and around Cádiz, if I cut myself I’d likely bleed sherry and jamón. Milling around the musty sherry cathedrals of Jerez, oscillating between chilled fino in Jerez or briny manzanilla in Sanlúcar, and that jamón, with one or both in my mouth at all times. Some people can think in other languages – I can think in ham.
Although chef Ángel Léon has fish charcuterie, there is no actual ham in Aponiente, Andalusia’s first three-star Michelin restaurant and an edible tale of the sea. Aponiente is in El Puerto de Santa María, a laid-back beach town and part of the sherry triangle. Ángel isn’t the precious head of a whispering temple to gastronomy – his big, bold and bright restaurant is always rocking and feels unlike anything else at that level. Everything is as sustainable as it is delicious.
FRANCE
Troisgros
It only took me 53 years to get to Maison Troisgros. Troisgros in numbers: one hour from Lyons, has held three Michelin stars continuously since 1968. That’s three stars since before we went to the moon. It’s also the subject of a surprisingly watchable four-hour documentary made by a 94-year-old director, that gets 100 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Home to the most beautiful and inventive lighting I have ever seen, three generations of the family have worked there, with Michel greeting us and his son César the chef in the kitchen now.
I expected some level of playing it safe, but Troisgros has some of the most playful, creative cooking anywhere. Nothing like some of the samey three-stars that pepper France. Everything was flawless. This whole best restaurant thing is subjective, and more often it’s down to place and mood, but in fine dining there isn’t a better restaurant in the world.
