The Restaurant at Meadowood - St. Helena, CA

Dinner - Saturday, June 16, 2012

We arrived at Meadowood with high expectations after a smashing dinner at Manresa the previous night. Since it's recent renovation, the restaurant has done away with fixed tasting menus (and also eliminated their shorter prix fixe option), and now "customizes" the meal to seat each table. As usual, we gave the kitchen free reign to design the progression as they saw fit.

Forage - Salt Lake City, UT

Dinner - Saturday, June 9, 2012

Chefs Viet Pham (pictured at right) and Bowman Brown were part of Food and Wine's Best New Chefs awardees last year. Despite the accolade, there's been a relative dearth of information (aside from a post by the ulterior epicure that caught my attention) about their shoebox restaurant - a converted house in a quite Salt Lake City residential neighbourhood.

With only one night in town, we knew we would spend it here. The space is sparse but comfortable, seating ~30 covers. A $74 prix fixe menu is served to everyone, with options being limited to beverage choices. We opted for the non-alcoholic pairing of juices and infusions, which turned out to excellent.