Spain

My Favorite Restaurant Meals of 2009

This was the year of El Bulli, the year of Barcelona, the year of Austin, Texas and San Juan, Puerto Rico. In other words: this year was a pretty extraordinary eating year for yours truly, The A.G., maybe my best eating year on record. I’ve gone through my archives and studied all the restaurant meals I’ve consumed and I have a team of doctors and the crew of A&E’s “Intervention” standing by, ready to escort me to intensive decadence therapy once I share with you my Top 10 Restaurant Meals of 2009. Are you ready? Starting at #10, here we go.

Barcelona, A Reflection

Before I left for Barcelona, two weeks ago, I created a three-ring binder of essential information. The first tab said “Hotels” and there I printed out the confirmations for the Hotel Banys Orientals, where we’d stay for most of the trip, and Hotel Coral Playa, where we’d stay when we went to Roses for dinner at El Bulli. (Note: both hotels were great choices, thank you all for your tips.) The second tab said “E-mails” and there I kept all the direct e-mails I received about where to go and eat in Barcelona. Tab three was “Comments” and I printed out all your comments from this post, highlighting the most commonly reoccurring restaurant suggestions, and then, in Tab Four “NYT,” I printed out profiles of those highlighted restaurants from the New York Times Barcelona page. Suffice it to say, I arrived in Barcelona fully prepped and ready.

Pineapple with Molasses & Lime Zest

Mario Batali is my #1 favorite food-world hero: I love his books, I love his old Food Network show “Molto Mario,” and I love his restaurants. When I found out, last year, he was doing a show about Spain, I was delighted. Especially since Craig and I are going to Spain this summer–we leave at the end of next month!–so I expected a lot from “Spain: On The Road Again,” his show with Gwyenth Paltrow and Mark Bittman on PBS.

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