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On September 27Larry Stone answered the question:
What are your favorite restaurants?
In New York, I love Daniel and Bar Boulud — both are a lot of fun to visit, as well as Corton and Babbo. In L.A., I love Patina in the Walt Disney Concert Hall downtown. I like all of the Nobu restaurants, and the Morimoto restaurants. Morimoto in Napa is just a fantastic restaurant. In Sonoma, I like Cyrus. And of course in my backyard [Napa], there’s French Laundry by Thomas Keller.
In San Francisco there’s so many! There’s RN74, one of Michael Mina’s projects with Rajat Parr. RN74 is a great marriage of food and wine in a more casual environment. Then there’s Shelley Lindgren’s SPQR, a Roman-style trattoria that is a little more casual and sedate than the restaurant she has in the Marina District on Chestnut Street, which is A16. But I like A16 very well too. Finally, I like the nuanced Vietnamese cuisine of The Slanted Door by Charles Phan.
I could give you a list of hundreds, maybe thousands of restaurants because so many people are out there doing great things. It’s hard for me to choose where to go. I just ate at Quince, Michael Tusk’s place. And it was phenomenal. It was perfectly run, with great service and great food. They also have David Lynch, one of the best sommeliers in the country for Italian wine.
And if you are in Seattle, you should go to Salumi, which is owned by Mario Batali’s father. It’s a sausage place that makes sandwiches in the Pioneer Square district. It’s incredible. People stand in line to get them. The sausages and sandwiches are so well made. I also love Canlis in Seattle. -
On September 27Tony Abou-Gamin answered the question:
What are your favorite restaurants?
I would say that if I were going to the box tomorrow, I’ve got a list of five favorite restaurants. I would have the steak pomme frites at Bouchon in Napa Valley or here in Las Vegas. I haven’t been to the one in Los Angeles, but the one in Napa would probably be my first choice, only because I could ride up there on my motorcycle. The Bouchon here in Las Vegas at the Venetian is equally as wonderful. I had my 50th birthday party there. They put a little table card up that featured my favorite drink. You know, it’s just special little things that make you want to go back. I have a place in San Francisco that I’ve gone to ever since I moved there in 1985. It’s called Le Central. It’s a French bistro that’s been there forever. The front room is kind of where all the ‘who’s who’ of San Francisco would lunch. Willy Brown would be in there, the late Herb Caen. There’s a plaque over his table now. I always had the same thing. I have a Negroni and an escargot. -
On September 27Todd English answered the question:
What are your favorite restaurants?
There’s was a restaurant right outside of Lyon called Chez Tante Paulette, where people like Patricia Wells and Alice Waters were inspired to do the chicken with a hundred cloves of garlic. You had to make a reservation, and there were four tables and you sat and a simple salad came out with toasted garlic all over it, and then the next course was chicken with a pork roast and garlic, and it was the breast of chicken, and then it was also roasted potatoes with garlic and duck fat. The ultimate garlic meal. -
On September 27Todd English answered the question:
What are your favorite cities?
Paris, Istanbul, Rome, New York. Istanbul is one of my new favorites — I love the culture, the Turkish food. In a city with 18 million people there’s just so much going on. Paris — It may be the hopeless romantic in me. The French just do it big. <br/><br/>And Rome is up there too, they just get it right. There’s history, there’s culture. <br/><br/>And that’s what’s cool, getting to know the local restaurants, the local market. There’s just an aesthetic there, a lifestyle, and it’s a great walking city. I love New York — what I’ve found is that, when I first started cooking in the city, it was kind of the Upper East Side and everything else and Midtown, and now it’s more about downtown in so many ways. You’ve got SoHo, which has become too much in a few ways, and Meatpacking is getting to be that way but it’s still cool. I love the Lower East Side and the Alphabet City. I’m finding that New York just grows on you — every time you think you’ve seen it all, something happens and you’re like, ‘Wow, that’s so cool.’ -
On September 27Larry Stone answered the question:
What are your favorite cities?
I’ll start with Vienna, because of the music, the food and the art. I also have family and wonderful memories there. It has a great market and it’s also physically beautiful. I studied there in college — I lived there about a year and a half and studied German.
Paris, for all the obvious reasons: food, beauty, art, the people.
Hong Kong for food, the business, antiques, the culture. I wish I had more of a chance to get into Mainland China. I’d love to go to Shanghai. I grew up in a very integrated community, and I have a great appreciation for the cultures of China and Japan. Hong Kong overall is very fascinating and bustling.
I love Tokyo too, and Japan in general. People should go to Kyoto and visit the various temples there. Mount Hiei is also worth a visit; it’s near Kyoto. It has a very beautiful monastery that was a founding one for Japanese Buddhism.
And I also love Vancouver, British Columbia — just to walk around, it’s very beautiful.
I don’t even look at New York as a leisure place for travel, I go there frequently for business. But it’s just so awesome in every respect. New York is unbeatable.
Finally, I go to Hawaii almost once a year to relax. I stay at the Kapalua Resort on Maui. -
On September 27Larry Stone answered the question:
What are your favorite cities?
I’ll start with Vienna, because of the music, the food and the art. I also have family and wonderful memories there. It has a great market and it’s also physically beautiful. I studied there in college — I lived there about a year and a half and studied German.
Paris, for all the obvious reasons: food, beauty, art, the people.
Hong Kong for food, the business, antiques, the culture. I wish I had more of a chance to get into Mainland China. I’d love to go to Shanghai. I grew up in a very integrated community, and I have a great appreciation for the cultures of China and Japan. Hong Kong overall is very fascinating and bustling.
I love Tokyo too, and Japan in general. People should go to Kyoto and visit the various temples there. Mount Hiei is also worth a visit; it’s near Kyoto. It has a very beautiful monastery that was a founding one for Japanese Buddhism.
And I also love Vancouver, British Columbia — just to walk around, it’s very beautiful.
I don’t even look at New York as a leisure place for travel, I go there frequently for business. But it’s just so awesome in every respect. New York is unbeatable.
Finally, I go to Hawaii almost once a year to relax. I stay at the Kapalua Resort on Maui. -
On September 27Tony Abou-Gamin answered the question:
What are your favorite cities?
I would have to say that number one is San Francisco. My formative years were spent there. I’m a motorcycle guy, and the motorcycle riding in and around San Francisco is fabulous. I think it’s a city that offers a little bit of everything. People are great. The restaurant community is fabulous. Chicago — if we could have spring and summer year-round, I’d be sold. I love Chicago. Again, a great restaurant community, a great bar community. There is, I think, a true love for our profession and the overall hospitality industry in Chicago. There are no prejudices, no arrogance. It’s just really fun, and the people are really real. I love Las Vegas, I really do. I love the desert. I mean, it could be 115 and I can be happy. I’m also a big bicycle rider, so I just actually came back from a 30-mile ride under the Red Rock Canyon, which is absolutely stunningly beautiful this time of year. And I would say New York City. What’s not to love about New York City? Today, I’m a partner at a restaurant called Babbo Ristorante e Enoteca, so I’m in New York a fair amount. What’s happened in the bar industry in New York City is now spread through the entire United States. There’s probably not a major city in the United States that you cannot find a good cocktail bar in. I feel very excited and proud to be a small part of that. I think we’re all drinking better because of it. The next stop for me is Maui. I’m a warm weather guy. My retirement plan is to look for a nice little cocktail bar in Maui who is looking for a part-time bartender a couple nights a week who can make a pretty good Negroni, weave some tales, tell some stories, do what I love to do. -
On September 27Larry Stone answered the question:
What are your favorite cities?
I’ll start with Vienna, because of the music, the food and the art. I also have family and wonderful memories there. It has a great market and it’s also physically beautiful. I studied there in college — I lived there about a year and a half and studied German.
Paris, for all the obvious reasons: food, beauty, art, the people.
Hong Kong for food, the business, antiques, the culture. I wish I had more of a chance to get into Mainland China. I’d love to go to Shanghai. I grew up in a very integrated community, and I have a great appreciation for the cultures of China and Japan. Hong Kong overall is very fascinating and bustling.
I love Tokyo too, and Japan in general. People should go to Kyoto and visit the various temples there. Mount Hiei is also worth a visit; it’s near Kyoto. It has a very beautiful monastery that was a founding one for Japanese Buddhism.
And I also love Vancouver, British Columbia — just to walk around, it’s very beautiful.
I don’t even look at New York as a leisure place for travel, I go there frequently for business. But it’s just so awesome in every respect. New York is unbeatable.
Finally, I go to Hawaii almost once a year to relax. I stay at the Kapalua Resort on Maui. -
On September 27Larry Stone answered the question:
What are your favorite cities?
I’ll start with Vienna, because of the music, the food and the art. I also have family and wonderful memories there. It has a great market and it’s also physically beautiful. I studied there in college — I lived there about a year and a half and studied German.
Paris, for all the obvious reasons: food, beauty, art, the people.
Hong Kong for food, the business, antiques, the culture. I wish I had more of a chance to get into Mainland China. I’d love to go to Shanghai. I grew up in a very integrated community, and I have a great appreciation for the cultures of China and Japan. Hong Kong overall is very fascinating and bustling.
I love Tokyo too, and Japan in general. People should go to Kyoto and visit the various temples there. Mount Hiei is also worth a visit; it’s near Kyoto. It has a very beautiful monastery that was a founding one for Japanese Buddhism.
And I also love Vancouver, British Columbia — just to walk around, it’s very beautiful.
I don’t even look at New York as a leisure place for travel, I go there frequently for business. But it’s just so awesome in every respect. New York is unbeatable.
Finally, I go to Hawaii almost once a year to relax. I stay at the Kapalua Resort on Maui. -
On August 24Todd English answered the question:
What's Todd English's newest project that he's devoting the most time to?
I spend a lot of time at my Food Hall in New York City. I love the diversity of it, like we designed a pasta station, and you sit at a 40-foot long, 12-foot wide slab of Carerra marble, and on that marble slab is a pasta machine with rollers and with cutters, like the ‘R2-D2’ of pasta makers, and it spits out all these pastas. And next to it is all the stuffing that goes along with it, so you pass it down and then the next process is obviously the cooking and the saucing and the plating, so you see the whole process right in front of you, and it’s pretty cool. So that’s in New York and we’re expanding the Food Hall in New York, but we’re also going to do that at our new Food Hall in Chicago. -
On August 24Todd English answered the question:
What’s on Todd English's travel playlist right now?
I like alternative stuff, so I like Foo Fighters. I also like John Legend and some more classic stuff. I like Black Crowes, Jack Johnson, so not just one genre. I also like classical, so some different concertos, I’m a big Mozart fan. -
On August 24Todd English answered the question:
What is the best trip Todd English ever took?
When I was taping my PBS TV show in South Africa, I went on the safari at Penda. It was amazing because I had my kids with me, and it was really unbelievable. I also took a trip to Spain, where we went to places like Madrid and we had some of the best food, really classic Madrid. And then they took us out to the country, and that’s when I experienced some San Sebastian food, and also a restaurant in Segovia, which is this big farmhouse restaurant, and I forget the name of it. But you sit in the dining room, and there are wood-burning ovens all around you — probably 20 of them — and they’re filled with these little pigs that they roast for four or five hours. So the food came out and we had that, some baby lamb, and all sorts of potatoes and salads and things like that around it — it was unreal. -
On November 12, 2011Todd English answered the question:
What would Todd English serve at his ultimate dinner party?
There would certainly be white truffles, and caviar in some capacity. I also feel like I’d have to put a meatball somewhere in there— I love meatballs and my mom made me meatballs when I was a kid. So yeah, I’d have a kilo of caviar, a bucket of fried chicken, and a 1952 Dom Perignon. -
On November 12, 2011Todd English answered the question:
Is Todd English ever inspired by wine to create a dish?
Always. I’m very much about doing wine dinners. Early on in my career, I took a wine tasting class where you learn about the components of the wine, so basically what you do is you get a tray of all these little tastings and figure out, ‘what is blackberry extract,’ ‘what is smoke,’ ‘what is chalk,’ And you taste all of these components and you learn all these flavor profiles, and how your palate reacts to certain things. And your nose holds the best memories of food and scents, so when you smell these you’re like, ‘Oh, that’s what elderflower smells like.’ And you can answer, ‘what is in that wine,’ and pair foods that represent that, and bring out or highlight or feature those things, and I love that. -
On November 12, 2011Todd English answered the question:
What does Todd English bring home from his travels?
I try not to accumulate anything. I find that you can usually find it in the U.S., unless it’s something really unique like a painting or a one-of-a-kind.
HomeTastemakersTodd English
Todd English
Tastemaker
Chef
New York
Todd English is a celebrity chef, restaurateur, author, entrepreneur and television star based in Boston and New York City. The four-time James Beard Award winner has published four critically acclaimed cookbooks, created the popular houseware line The Todd English Collection and hosts the Emmy-nominated PBS travel series Food Trip with Todd English. Todd English Enterprises includes more than 20 restaurants spanning the country. English's flagship Olives restaurant, located in Charlestown, Mass., has expanded to New York and Las Vegas. His recent restaurant openings include Todd English P.U.B. in Las Vegas' CityCenter and two in New York, The Plaza Food Hall by Todd English at the famed Plaza Hotel and Ça Va, a French-inspired brasserie in the Theater District.