I feel like I have definitely put in my lion’s share of food writing this year, as evidenced in the pages of this blog. Add several dozen posts on LTHForum.com (my handle is Jefe: my other top ten food list can be found here) as well as my column on foraging for Thelocalbeet.com. Oh and then there was my thesis for my graduate studies that was a treatise on a common sense approach to ecology that discussed our relationships to food sources and the other beings of the food chain. I also proposed that food was a catalyst for cultural interconnectedness and one of the essential expressions of humanity. So, do I really need to spew another 5000+ words reflecting on what I have experienced and learned about food this past year?  Well, it is a tradition of mine and those that know me realize that I can’t resist my compulsive urge to culminate. So bear with me, here goes another year in food and another top ten list. I’ll try to keep it around 3000 words this time!

There has become a certain redundancy to my lists, this being the fourth year in a row of writing a list as a meta- reflection, striving to find the most essential aspects of my relationships with food.  For instance, my love for foraging, which I have found to be the closest connection to finding food sources in nature, deepens year after year. But that was my number one back in 2008, dare I repeat myself? To save blogspace, you can read about these experiences here and here. I also still revere head to tail meat eating and this was a banner year for such, with the opening of my very own neighborhood butcher shop right next door to my place. I like fruit and veggies too and every year on this list I seem to highlight a new or exceptional producer from the farmer’s market at which I shop the most in Holland, Michigan. I’m sure I’ve mentioned my excitement about the return of the family run small business before too (see 3, 2). Then there are annual traditions that just seem to get better every year, like the Ox-Bow summer end picnic, which I focused on a single menu item from last year (which by the way, was head to tail fish eating- see #8).  This year I will write at length about that event as a whole. And dangit, my favorite restaurant remains the same and I could gushingly write about Birrireria Zaragoza every year. Fortunately I struck up a very fertile collaboration and meaningful friendship with Jonathan Zaragoza this year and he helped me launch my E-Dogz project and has been a key player in my culinary world. I stated last year that my list was about the relationships that develop around food. For redundancy’s sake, this sentiment is at the heart of this list too. I forged many new inspirational friendships this year and the top three entries here (among others) reflect that the most important aspect to eating and cooking (besides survival) is these relationships formed around food.

10. Cosgrove Orchards.

I’ve been shopping with these incredibly kind folks for a few years now. They were the first on the scene at the Holland farmer’s market to feature Saturn peaches, those candy sweet, low acid, white fleshed peaches with deep dimples on top and bottom that seem to squeeze the peach into a squashed donut shape. I love them. Cosgrove also grows my favorite Asian pears. What puts them on the list finally this year is how bonkers they have gone with the heirloom peach varieties. Tango peaches look like pale orange Saturn peaches but are yellow fleshed and have the tang and perfume of an apricot and the juciness of a peach. Fuego peaches are larger, milder Saturn peaches. White nectarines anyone? Fruit doesn’t get sweeter, juicier, or more fun than this.

9. Taco Hell – Halloween at Lula

I finally braved the crowds this year to check out Lula Café’s dressing-up-like-another-restaurant Halloween party. Jessica loves some Taco Bell and the collision of the lowest of the low with high cuisine sounded worth checking out to me. It was a total blast- they decked out the place complete with a fast food counter, servers wearing prefab fast food uniforms with devilish adornments, and even though we missed him, Rick Bayless, himself, made an appearance as Satan. What really impressed me was the food, though. I guess I expected tarted up, drizzled on, and micro-garnished versions of the classics. Instead we were served- in proper plastic baskets- parchment paper wrapped renditions of the classics- hard shell tacos (Crunchy Beef Taco Supreme Dark Lord), Double Decker Beef Tacos (Supreme Dark Lord style), Steak Mexi-melt (or Mephistophemelt), Chicken Chalupa(cabra), and Chicken Gore-ditas. We devoured these nostalgic bites giddily, and guilt free knowing that they were packed with ingredients with provenance such as Slagel, Guntrhop, and Werp farms. They tasted exactly like high quality faithful renditions of the real thing. It struck me that Lula, in one night, nailed so many of the current fads in contemporary dining- dressed up street food (move over Big Star), sentimental comfort food (not some deconstructed conceptual approach ala Next’s childhood menu), and ironic pop culture riffing (who wouldn’t rather eat a Taco Bell taco than a cigar). Hopefully next year they do McDonald’s with grass fed beef and artisanal singles.

8. Head to tail fish

I’ve been talking about this ever since I cooked my first Asian carp- how the average American diner is freaked out by skin, scales, and bones- which is why we cannot find a market for the invasive carp in our country. The fish cannot be cut into uniform, clean, sanitized cartridges, the accepted norm of how our fish and meat is typically, tidily served. Give me the whole dang beast. I want to crunch on the crisp tail, pick for tender morsels off the bone, savor the skin for last, pop out the little jewel of cheek meat (the best part) and yes, slurp down the unctuous eyeballs. With a proliferation of great whole fish dishes in Chinatown (see #6) and a new found appreciation for the fishmonger Isaacson’s and Stein’s, I ate more fish eyes this year than ever.

7.  Ox-Bow summer end picnic

I wrote about this briefly last year, but this event is perhaps my favorite day of the summer. It’s the only day of the entire season that the staff takes a collective day off. To keep the place running 24/7 during the summer, we must stagger our days off. Until this day after the faculty and students clear out for the summer, a day when we are all partly exhausted, partly over-stimulated from the intensity of 12 weeks of non-stop momentum, and definitely all a bit sentimental facing the impending goodbyes, we finally get to hang out as a group. Its also a day when the kitchen staff lets go of the reigns and lets everyone else use the kitchen to cook up over the top junk food classics and other mutant creations. I know that even though I don’t have to cook I always do anyway, since its what I like to do. But it is great to eat stuff that other people make and are passionate about too- most artists, it turns out, can cook pretty well. This past year’s picnic was one of the best overall that I can remember, and there was truly some over the top snacking that went down as well. I made a 12 hour smoked pork shoulder that was perhaps my finest que- pulled and eaten with home made sauce. Carmen made his family’s famous walnut encrusted cheese ball, its interior flecked with minced Buddig corned beef. But I’ve had these goodies before, it was the other bites of the day that were over the top. Jonas ordered and had shipped out Zweigle’s white hot sausages from his hometown of Rochester, NY. With a sweet hot mustard these German style franks were just killer. Alex’s famous jalapeño chorizo burgers were also pretty addictive. Anthony made one of the craziest junk food concoctions I’ve ever seen- quesadillas topped with Kraft mac ‘n cheese, fake crab, and eaten with Sriracha. Junky as all get out, but the combo worked better than you might think. Erin and Lauren made three rounds of baked Alaska, which seemed to magically appear every time the crowd started to nod off. The best of the best though, were Jason and Mike’s devilled eggs three ways- classic, chipotle, and curried. Indulgent, yes, but I’d say we deserved it!

6. “New” Chinatown

Not that China town has physically changed or moved, but the past year or two has seen many exciting developments in terms of restaurant openings. From spiffy Japanese izakaya to dollar skewers at a food mall, many of the best things I ate this year were at new spots in Chinatown. Go 4 Food was one of the first I tried and one of my favorites- a small, casual cafe dishing up Hong Kong style dishes with an emphasis on quality seafood. Their plump steamed oysters and scallops are decadent- piled with cellophane noodles, scallion, cilantro, ginger, soy sauce, and a mound of fresh ginger- these single-served bivalves are more than a mouthful and delicious. My other go- to dishes include my favorite plate of clams in Chinatown, served in their house made XO sauce. I also love the braised pigeon, which is actually fried crisp with a hint of five spice. Can’t recall even ever seeing pigeon on a menu in Chicago. Moving up Wentworth was the much- heralded- by- the- food- cognoscenti opening of Tony Hu’s latest, Lao Hunan. This is not the strip mall Hunan of my youth, the cuisine here is as revelatory as a first trip to Lao Sze Chuan, though these bold and exciting flavors skew salty, sour, smoky, and a range of spicy hotness attributed to the use of a variety of unique chiles. My favorite dish is actually comprised of two special fresh chiles- Famous Hunan Chiles, a deceptively simple affair of fried chiles with garlic in a black bean sauce. Like the chile dish, the Ground Pork with Preserved  Sour Bean has been written about extensively and is worth the hype- exotic, yet homey, the flavors are huge and addictive. One pitfall I’ve made at Lao Hunan is ordering too many intensely flavored dishes, so be aware that a less assertive choice will help round out the aggressive stuff. Heading over to the mall and starting on the west end, Minghin offers refined Cantonese seafood and BBQ’d meats. The dining room has a highly polished veneer complete with marble surfaces and jade curios. Though I’ve only been once, I was impressed by pristine whole steamed fish and Macau style pork belly with layers of melt in your mouth fat capped with a crackling crisp pig skin. Tony Hu also opened an upscale spot as part of his Lao empire with Lao Ju You, although the menu has yet to attract me to this glitzy lounge. Also dressed up (perhaps a bit inappropriately even) is the clubby izakaya spot, Lure, another favorite of mine of this new bunch.  Opened by a pair of veteran fine dining chefs, the cuisine here is refined yet adventurous and I have yet to sample a dud in their sprawling menu of small plates. I’m especially fond of their air dried fish offerings that are grilled over hard wood on a special grill imported from Japan. Succulent and smoky, this is some of the best fish in town. Other seafood is great too such as the mussels in a coconut, miso, butter broth that is a rich and satisfying flavor combination that compliments the very high quality of the seafood. They are open late and seem to be aiming for a club-like atmosphere and I wonder if this is to blame for a seemingly always more-than-half empty dining room. Perhaps they are not aiming to serve a food-obsessed demographic that should otherwise be flocking to this place. It’s a shame, do yourself a favor and go eat there. On the cheap rent side of the spectrum is a stall in the Richland food court, Snack Planet that serves dirt cheap street food. Their “shashlik” menu consists of a sushi-menu like checklist of various veggies, seafood, and meats that are freshly poached in a spicy oil. Standouts include the quail eggs, wood ear mushroom, and other veg offerings. The seafood does not fare as well. The best dish that I’ve tried there is an ample $3 serving of Laganma beef, which consists of thin slices of cold, tender beef topped with a salty, spicy, and Szechuan peppercorn buzz- inducing spice paste. Our Chinatown has it all and I often surprise native Chicagoans when I take them on a tour to sample the embarrassment of riches that just seems to keep getting more interesting and diverse.

5. Detroit

I fell in love with Detroit on a recent visit for a variety of reasons. The grassroots movement toward urban renewal by the arts communities there is incredibly inspiring. I experienced a lot of hope in my brief trip. There is a frontier-like quality to Detroit – complete with urban pheasants- that feels as though anything is possible. Pardon my naïve outsider perspective though, the decay and blight of Detroit is palpable and it does not seem like an easy place to get by.

Food-wise I was really excited by both the undeniably Midwestern traditions and melting-pot- like quality of its neighborhoods. Let’s start with Lafayette Coney Island, a national treasure. Those grill men are true masters of their craft, serving the masses at all hours. I fucking love Coney dogs (almost more than Chicago dogs, shocking, I know). I love the assertive smokiness of the snappy, natural cased pork dogs. And that rich and spicy Coney sauce, topped with onion and mustard, this is the ur-chili dog. From the old school Greek diner vibe of Lafayette Coney Island to the also- Greek diner vibe of Dearborn’s Cedarland Lebanese restaurant to the tavern feel of the Polish Village in Hamtramck, every place we ate at were totally authentic working class eateries serving up huge portions of hearty grub. Cedarland was particularly awesome- it was exciting that both the food blog set and my Detroit- native friend alike esteem this place as the best. Super fresh, well dressed salads, the best baba ganouj I’ve had, and surprisingly good chicken shwarma were the highlights of the feast we enjoyed there, which supplied doggy bags that fed us for days afterwards. I am excited to return to Hamtramck, where around the corner from the old Polish neighborhood is a South Asian neighborhood with Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi restaurants serving cuisines I have never tried.  I’ve heard great things about a little sandwich counter called Mike’s Famous Ham Place, another great reason to get back to Detroit, asap.

4. London

I hadn’t been to London since I was a poor student and could only afford the train fare down from Nottingham to enjoy its free museums. I had never really done it right there. I was definitely interested in food back then, in fact my year in the UK taught me a lot about cooking, exposing me to new cuisines and an everyday approach to grocery shopping. I didn’t find the English food very exciting then, but I was aware that things were brewing in the dining scene. I remember reading an article in the Guardian about recently opened St. John, ground zero for nose to tail eating- I was totally captivated and curious about what I read. It took me fifteen years to get there- finally this past year. I had to start with Anthony Bourdain’s death row meal of Marrow Bones with Parsley Salad, which was a compelling, beautifully composed dish of frank simplicity. Turns out that head-to-tail, while still cool, has given way to a fancy for local game. The menu was heavy on meats with unfamiliar names and at the bottom even read “game dishes may contain buckshot”, cool! I had to try wigeon, a wild duck that came with a warning from our server of the fishiness of its flavor profile. True enough, this piece of meat was somewhat challenging- with an aquatic gaminess unlike anything I’ve tried. We also saw plenty of wild game hanging at the Borough Market, which is by far the most glorious and expansive outdoor market I have ever seen, populated primarily with local products that were dizzying in their diversity. Local cheeses served cut off the wheel in all shapes and sizes, wild mushrooms, caught-that-day shellfish. Prepared food vendors sold curries from giant cauldrons, raclette cheese scraped onto toast from their custom griddles, and some of the finest full English breakfast at Maria’s complete with bubble and squeak, fresh baked baps, and blood pudding! The highlights of the trip were street food bites- my first (and consecutive second) salt beef beigal on Brick Lane- essentially thick cut, falling apart tender corned beef on a fresh chewy bagel with a smear of Coleman’s mustard- familiar tastes in a new form, I would love to eat one of these in Chicago. My good pal Chris Powers, who was living in London for a few years while his girlfriend was in cobbling school, took us on a mini- tour of his neighborhood of Clapton Pond. We ate at his local Kurdish kebab shop, Neden Urfa, where we were greeted like old friends (Chris ate here several times a week). In this tiniest of shops we witnessed the boys (three brothers) roll out fresh pita for lamacun and our kebabs, meanwhile manning a lump charcoal grill loaded with hand formed kofta kebabs. A chopped salad rounded out this best kebab I have ever eaten. Needless to say I do not need to make any tired jokes about British cuisine.

3. Pleasanthouse

I have a huge crush on Pleasanthouse. And as evidenced in the continual shower of praise bestowed on them by Chicago’s food writers both professional and amateur, the opening of this modest café in the Bridgeport neighborhood is one of the most exciting things on our culinary scene to happen in quite awhile. They do everything right. Let’s start with the neighborhood, anchored on the corner of Morgan and 31^st, the development of this little zone, instigated and nurtured by Ed Marszewski (PH’s landlord and my good friend) consists of three independently run businesses- Bridgeport Coffee Shop, Maria’s bar (owned and run by Ed and family) and Pleasanthouse. On that corner you pretty much fulfill all of life’s basic needs. It is a lovely corner, with two diagonal streets on either side of the Maria’s and PH, on a sunny day, there is a openness to the streets that feels somehow small town- like. And these businesses operate in praxis of firstly serving their communities. Amongst the hipsters and foodies snapping photos of their pies, all of whom Art, Chelsea, Morgan, and co. treat with the warmest hospitality possible, there is real evidence of a neighborhood following. You’ll see many of the same faces on that block and the familiarity and conviviality with which the PH staff interact with the regulars lets you know that this is a community- oriented project. Conversation always abounds at PH and when I step into the shop I relax- part of the experience for me is chitchatting with Morgan about dub podcasts or foraging. I’m in no hurry to grab my food, eat, and get out of there. And somehow, even on the busiest days, Art always finds the time to stop by the table and talk food politics with me. I sincerely count these guys as friends. Sure I am another foodie fanboy, but I always feel like I am treated like part of the crew whenever I hang out there. Art has been plenty generous to me, he hosted my class for a lunch, lecture, and tour of their operation that nourished and inspired my 15 School of the Art Institute freshman- who could not stop talking about the experience for the rest of the semester. What other restaurant has a commitment to pedagogy? The deep commitment these guys have to stewarding not only their neighborhood in a social sense but also in an ecological sense is undeniable. Morgan Kaberloh, Chelsea’s brother was brought up from Florida to serve as their farm director. Morgan grows a great deal of the produce they serve right in the Bridgeport neighborhood utilizing polytunnel techniques and intensive crop rotation to maximize yield according to the temperaments of the season. Just a few weeks ago- at the end of December mind you- I had the pleasure in eating the year’s last salad greens, amazing. Oh I could gush on and on about their English countryside cooking, but you should go eat this as-lovingly-made-as-possible grub for yourself. Ultimately, I love the politics of Pleasanthouse- in a way a reversion to an older, simpler model- before corporations took over our structures of consumption- a family run business specializing in a small set of products made artisanally from scratch working with other small local producers and serving their immediate community. But I also think there is an urgent contemporaneity about this approach- an ultimate commitment to sustainability of community, the earth, and an optimistic vision of the future with people of a new generation of small business owners doing things their own way, the right way.

2. My Butchers

Meat is hot. Maybe too much so in the restaurant world. However, the return of the neighborhood butcher, with a new focus on sustainability, is teaching us to re-evaluate our relationships with meat. I’d like to celebrate two butchershops with different locales, customer bases, and styles but a shared ethos of serving local, sustainable meat. Meet my two butchers- Tony, and Tina Larson and family run Montello’s Meat Market in Holland, MI. I have been sourcing our meat from them since 2006 at Ox-Bow. They have always had a commitment to supplying local meat, as well as dry aging their beef. But in the past two years they have stepped up their game by selling hormone and antibiotic free meat and grass fed beef. In a region that, despite a wealth of local producers, Sysco is still a necessary evil to fill in the gaps, having access to quality meat is a true blessing. They also do a bit of charcuterie- they make killer bratwurst and even produce a few specialty items specific to the Dutch heritage of much of the local population- such as balkenbrij- a scrapple-like breakfast meat composed of pork liver and grain and boerewors, a South African mildly spiced beef sausage. I buy all of our red meat exclusively from them and their charm and hospitality have more than a little to do with why I think they are a fantastic business. My other butcher opened with much fanfare exactly two doors down from me on Milwaukee Ave. Rob Levitt, chef of Mado, one of my favorite restaurants in Chicago left the grueling hours and cut throat business of the restaurant industry and rumor spread fast that he was to open a butcher shop.  Good stuff. I was even more excited when I learned that they were planning on opening in my neighborhood, Noble Square. When an opening date was released I began peaking into papered shop windows all around my neighborhood. I was completely stunned one night when I spied Rob posing for a photo shoot in the empty storefront at 1030 N Milwaukee. You might think that my meat consumption has been at an all time high since, but quite the opposite is true. It’s the only place I buy meat now and like Montello’s, their product costs what it should, way more costly than a chain supermarket’s industrially raised, commodity meat. So I buy and eat less meat at home, but only locally raised, organic, and ethically raised meat. This means one chicken a week and a treat or two on the weekend like pork collar, blood sausage, or a nice ribeye steak. These guys, when they’re in a good mood, are a wealth of information. Its built into their mission to inform their customers and even educate them- through a series of demos they host- how to prepare meat at home. Every time I stop in there, they can fill oddball requests like ground beef heart and also usually send me home with something I wasn’t expecting, like a smoked pig trotter. Its awfully handy when in the middle of a catering job I can just run next door and get an extra few pounds of headcheese. Did I mention they serve up whole animal, nasty bits and all? Small, family owned, sustainability- minded butchers, yes please!

1. Collaborative cooking

So, cooking in any professional kitchen is collaborative by nature, a labor that requires a chain of specialized workers- from the dishwashers to the chef, all cogs in a collective endeavor. At my job its especially collaborative, more of a family or rock band than a machine- with a democratic approach to cooking where all five of us are called chefs and we plan menus together.

So full disclosure about this post- I started a collaborative cooking project this year, E-Dogz (that you may have heard of if you read this blog)- and I felt like it was a conflict of interests to flat out list my own project as my favorite thing about food this year. But working with my co-collaborators truly has been the greatest joy I’ve had from cooking this year. Starting with Jonathan “Z-Dog” Zaragoza, aka Goat Boy, Intl. In May for my thesis show at Northwestern we began to develop a new approach to cuisine that is somewhat like call and response. I like to call it mongrel cuisine or Fusion 2.0. The starting point is street food- humble, typically hand held meals enjoyed globally by the mobile urban population. I pitch ingredient ideas and then the collaborator develops recipe ideas and sometimes the process works vice versa. Z-Dog and I clicked immediately. We met at his family’s restaurant, Birrieria Zaragoza (see last year’s top 10 #3) and immediately became friends through our mutual love of food and shared south side sarcastic senses of humor. Z had a dream about this torta at the top of a pyramid. Dream cuisine, yeah that has a place on E-Dogz. We stuffed a bolillo roll with his roast goat and smothered it in a spicy red sauce, ahogada style. Promoting eating with one’s hands is part of my agenda, so I loved the idea that people would have to pick up a sloppy, saucy beast of a sandwich. We also did ceviche with Asian carp, grow room mushroom tamales, and more. The food promoted new ideas in eating while adhering to traditional technique and tasted fucking amazing. Z is forever on the crew and helped out for the International Hotdog Forum as well as impromptu cooking sessions at Roots & Culture. Also of note, Z is buddies with Rob the butcher and they collaborated on a birria sausage called the “Little Johnny”. I’d say it’s been a creative, fruitful year for the 1000 block of Milwaukee. The summer brought a few informal collaborations- one of note was refining my buddy Siebren Versteeg’s al pastor sausage recipe to which I topped with grilled pineapple and chipotle ketchup. I also riffed on an already established mongrel cuisine tradition by serving up Ed Marszewski’s famous “Kimskis” Polish sausages topped with kimchi. I made my own kimchi for an event at Maria’s and then again at the MDW fair. It struck me how not only were Korean and Polish cuisines being fused, but there was also a bit of my own German heritage by the marriage of sausage with fermented cabbage. I worked with my friend and artist Alberto Aguilar on his project in October at Roots & Culture for which he concocted an epic, surreal mole and I helped prep side dishes. The big event in the fall, though, was the International Hotdog Forum which was inspired by a conversation with Diego Leclery about the monstrosity that is a Brazilian style dog- complete with mashed potatoes, shoestring potatoes, and green peas. I put out a call on Facebook and compiled 11 recipes of street food hotdog recipes from around the world. Six of the recipe contributors actually cooked with me on the trailer that day. This was the first collaboration with my good bud and Kansas City artist Sean Starowitz (of KC Bread! Fame) who improvised an artisanal version of an obscure Kansas City style hotdog recipe, hauling up his own baked sesame rolls in his suitcase and home made sauerkraut. A minor catastrophe happened that day, which demonstrated to me the true camaraderie of collaboration. A pot of nearly boiling water fell off the counter onto my left foot, soaking the shoe and sock. By the time I ripped my sock off, gone was the top layer of dermis. Fuck. I got the foot in a bucket of ice water, but was mostly rendered useless by the injury. My crew was incredible, self organizing and making the show go on without me. Z and Sean manned the front with ease and swagger and Sam Davis, Lauren Anderson, and Rafael Vera were diligently working the prep line. Despite being scared to death about my foot, I was totally stoked about the outcome of the day and I could not have done it without my team.