With so many wonderful dining experiences this year, the struggle was real when it came to narrowing them down to just a few especially memorable ones.
I hope my picks inspire you to try some new places or to revisit ones you haven’t been to in a while.
Here are my Top 10 eats of 2025, in no particular order:
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Paso Robles, CA — Six Test Kitchen made history in 2021 — becoming the first Michelin-starred restaurant in San Luis Obispo County. It has held that honor ever since.
It’s a true achievement for Chef-Owner Ricky Odbert, especially when you realize his 12-seat restaurant’s very humble beginnings.
Odbert had worked at some of the Bay Area’s most acclaimed restaurants, including Postrio, Spruce, Masa’s, Aziza, and the Restaurant at Meadowood. But he wasn’t even making enough to afford a cab ride home at the end of the night after work when MUNI had shut down its lines or curtailed them.
So, in 2015 he moved back to his parents’ house in Arroyo Grande. It was there he got the notion to start a restaurant of sorts in his parents’ garage. Fortunately, his father, who built commercial kitchens for a living, was all in on the idea and helped trick out the space.
Odbert’s underground supper club — all six seats of it — took off. That is, until someone complained to the authorities, and he had to shut it down until he got the proper permits for what he then promoted as a “test kitchen” with “cooking classes.”
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Do you fantasize about being an assistant to a celebrity chef?
Read “Care and Feeding: A Memoir” (Ecco), of which I received a review copy, by Laurie Woolever and you will probably have second thoughts.
Woolever is a writer and editor who has written about food and travel for the New York Times, Food & Wine and GQ. She also was an assistant to the late-great Anthony Bourdain and to the now irreputable chef Mario Batali.
No surprise, Bourdain comes off as a thoughtful and professional boss while Batali’s antics are as lecherous and unseemly as you imagine.
But when it comes to telling all, Woolever doesn’t spare herself, either. Indeed, her writing is raw and unflinching as she describes this period in her life, where drugs, booze, and extramarital affairs nearly did her in.
Thankfully, as the title implies, she finally learns the importance of taking care of herself first, and in so doing, emerges as the respected and successful writer she was meant to be.
He is one of the most storied restaurateurs in the country, having opened such iconic New York establishments as Tribeca Grill, Nobu New York City, Nobu Next Door, Batard, and Montrachet.
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What would the holidays be without a glass of sparkling? Not nearly as festive, of course.
The 2023 Bloodroot Petillant Naturel ($48), of which I received a sample, will get the party started in lively fashion.
Not only is it the palest of blush in color, but it’s made entirely of the little-known Trousseau Gris, a French varietal that is grown in small amounts in eastern France and was once widely harvested in California as Gray Riesling. Healdsburg’s Bloodroot, so named in honor of the “blood” of the vines being nourished by its “roots,” makes this particular wine from Russian River Valley-grown grapes.
It is produced in the petillant naturel method, in which the unfiltered wine is bottled before the first fermentation is completed, trapping the carbon dioxide for natural carbonation.
It has a soda pop-type bottle top, and extremely lively effervescence to match. Pour it into a glass and the bubbles will foam up immediately like a just-opened soda.
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The dress that droops like a sad sack on the hanger but is transformative when slipped on. That plain cookie you reached for last that is surprisingly the most scrumptious of the bunch. And that quiet, nerdy guy you initially dismissed who turns out to be the love of your life.
Yes, looks can be deceiving.
“Long Beans Amatriciana” is proof of that.
Using Chinese long beans, otherwise known as yard beans or snake beans, in place of bucatini might seem virtuous and the ultimate no-carb, gluten-free hack. But in the hands of Chef Jeremy Fox, it is decidedly decadent, loaded with crispy guanciale, and finished with butter.
And wow, is it ever dangerously delicious.
This clever recipe is from his newest cookbook, “On Meat” (Phaidon), of which I received a review copy. It was written with his wife, Rachael Sheridan, a writer and actress.
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