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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When my husband told a friend at the gym that he was going to dinner at a restaurant where a whole chicken costs more than $100, the response was:
“What?!? Does it lay golden eggs?”
Not quite.
But Cafe Vivant, which opened in late October in downtown Menlo Park, is definitely not your average fast-casual rotisserie or fried chicken joint.
Instead, this unique upscale restaurant specializes in heritage-breed poultry. If you remember decades ago when heritage turkeys started to be all the rage, despite a price tag multiple times larger than your average Butterball, then you get the gist of how these chickens differ.
These breeds, which existed before chickens became an industrial commodity, take longer to raise, are harvested when they are older, and not surprisingly, are in much smaller supplies. The results are chickens raised more purely, with more pronounced flavor and texture.
The restaurant is owned by revered sommeliers Jason Jacobeit and Daniel Jung, who also run Somm Cellars in New York City, which specializes in rare and collectible wines. They have partnered with farmer Rob James of Corvus Farm in Pescadero, who raises a couple of the specialty breeds.
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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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Paso Robles, CA — When you live in the Bay Area, it’s almost automatic that a visit to Wine Country typically means a jaunt to the Napa or Sonoma regions.
Paso Robles Wine Country, on the other hand, may be in the opposite direction. Yet it really isn’t that much farther away in driving distance, especially if you live in Silicon Valley. Even better, it possesses a charm all its own.
I was reminded of that earlier this month when I was invited as a guest of the newly opened The Ava Hotel in Paso Robles. It’s part of the upscale Curio Collection by Hilton.
The location can’t be beat. The Ava is just steps from downtown Paso Robles, which reminds me a lot of Sonoma, with its boutiques, tasting rooms, and restaurants surrounding a central public square.
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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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