Steve Plotnicki and Opinionated About Dining are proud to announce the list of Top 100 Restaurants in America for 2012 as determined by the Opinionated About Dining Survey. Over 3,000 people, including many of the top food bloggers in the country, registered for this year’s survey and contributed more than 70,000 reviews.
The Opinionated About Dining approach to rating restaurants relies on tapping into the experience and opinions from diners who are passionate about where they eat and who describe how strongly they would recommend a restaurant and why. The methodology further gives weight to different kinds of restaurants and survey participants based on factors such as price point and number of restaurants reviewed. The surveys that form the basis of the ratings are open to the general public and can be accessed via Opinionated About Dining.
“If these survey results have shown me anything, it’s that 2012 is and will continue to be an incredible year to dine at some of the most progressive and thoughtful restaurants in recent memory,” says Plotnicki. “Take the number one restaurant of the year, Manresa by David Kinch, a perfect example of a chef and restaurant that are pushing the boundaries and encouraging the culinary industry’s creativity and advancement.”
It is Sunday late morning, the North wind is howling outside and the
rain has changed to half inch hail but the farmhouse walls are more than
two feet thick and we are very cozy. We hear nothing, just the sounds
of the wood fire crackling, a knife on the cutting board and two friends
engaged in a lively conversation catching up on many things since our
last visit. We are sitting at a 8 foot long chestnut kitchen table
boning out the leg of a wild boar, removing sinew, fat glands and
chipped bones from the bullet wound. Alain has told all his neighbors of
our visit and one has shot a wild boar for the occasion and foraged for
black truffles. It was long decided before the boar was cold that we
would make a daube just like his mother made for him in his child hood
home in Avignon and it will marinate today and simmer over a wood fire
all afternoon tomorrow. Tonight we are having raclette with charcuterie
for dinner that they brought home from their skiing vacation in the
Alps. Not a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon!
Spending 14-hour days in command of a restaurant kitchen can take a
toll, both physically and emotionally. So when it’s time to move on,
where do chefs go?
It is late Wednesday morning and Candy Sue Weaver is on the road again,
barreling through Arkansas. Her iPod is pumping Henry Gross, Eagles,
and Delbert McClinton through her radio and she is just as pumped. She
can taste victory up the road. Weaver is a sportswoman, and she is on a
700 mile drive in her pickup, trailer in tow, towards a baseball
diamond wedged between a cornfield and a soybean field in northwest
Illinois. But Weaver is not a baseball player. She is competition
barbecue cook.
There are times when I scrutinize my outfit before I leave the
house, and find it absurdly, compulsively over-accessorized. It’s
then, as I grab my keys and prance out with red sneakers, mismatched
bracelets, and a brooch shaped like a turnip, that I’ll find myself
thinking of her. Subtlety, in many things, is often advised; but I,
heeding Anne of Green Gables, rarely listen. If at a dinner party,
after I’ve gone on and on to someone about a book they’ll probably
never read, ignoring every attempt they make to escape me, she’ll just
appear in my mind. And often, when faced with a moral dilemma, like
whether to leave the last bite of pie for the person I’m sharing it
with, or to request that my upstairs neighbors stop rollerblading on
the hardwood floor, I’ll ask myself:
