The Best Things We Ate in 2024
Burgers, Pizza and So Much More
2024 ended with both a bang and a whimper. The bang came courtesy of Lisbon’s annual fireworks display and the whimper was due to our long awaited covid vaccinations. To be clear, we’re good. The down time gave us time to reflect on our unremarkable travel year… or so we thought.
Upon reflection, 2024 was one of our best years of eating since we left the states nine years ago and maybe ever. We didn’t eat a lot of crazy foods nor did we eat at any bucket list restaurants like Noma or the French Laundry - been there, done that. Instead, the year was all about simple food - a rediscovery of cuisines that we thought we knew but, in reality, had yet to fully experience.
Sure, we didn’t place a lot of new pins into our virtual travel map - there were no safaris, cruises or epic press trips. Instead, we ate great meals in places we’ve visited and lived throughout our lives plus a few new-to-us cities. In the process, we realized that there’s usually a great burger, bagel or sandwich just around the corner from wherever we are. We also remembered that there’s something utterly satisfying, from the first crunchy bite to the last layered morsel, about eating a great croissant.
We gained a further understanding of Portuguese food, one of the world’s simplest yet least understood cuisines, by cooking dishes like Bacalhau à Brás and Shrimp Açorda at home. And we ate pizza - lots of pizza, mostly of the Neapolitan genre, in six countries on both sides of the pond. While that pizza style remains king around Europe, we’re happy to see new pizza ideas and styles emerge in Paris and even in Italy.
We scored impossible reservations at restaurants so overwhelmed by popularity that the pursuit of the meal outweighed the experience - we’re looking at you 4 Charles. We dined with feather light crowds in a pre-Olympics Paris that was surprisingly accessible. We ate paella, the king of all Spanish plates, in its home city of Valencia. We ate oddities like squid and eggs for breakfast in Barcelona and Welsh - the ultimate Flemish bar indulgence - in Lille. And, of course, we drank wonderful wine and beers along the way.
On the travel front, we experienced plenty of city nooks, picturesque Spanish marshlands, sulphur baths, the geolithic center of Portugal and what may be Italy’s weirdest city. We still have a large chunk of world to explore but these experiences provided many lifetimes worth of memories and constant new thrills for our palettes.
With that, these are some of the best things we ate in 2024:
Tasty Texas Barbecue in Europe
When Daryl first ate Texas BBQ in Austin decades ago, he almost entered a state of shock over how delicious it tasted. Fast forward a a couple decades and the barbecue style is now approaching world ubiquity in the same manner as pizza and smashburgers. While the genre is still best when eaten in Texas, it’s now entirely possible to find great versions in NYC as well as in Europe. This past year, we found and ate excellent Texas BBQ at Kau Barbecue in Lisbon and Melt in Paris. Both will keep our taste buds happy until we get back to the yellow rose state.
Creamiest, Most Interesting Ice Cream
The Azores, Portugal’s Atlantic Ocean island chain and dairy capital, produces great cheeses, wonderful butter and, most important, magnificent ice cream. Quinta do Açores ice cream comes in great flavors like Dona Amelia (based on the famous pastry) and local melon. The cooperative even has a flavor with a mix of salty, cheddar-like São Jorge cheese and chocolate. After eating scoops on two islands - Terceira and São Miguel, we found a shop that sells the frozen stuff just a few blocks from our pad in Lisbon.
Banging NYC Burgers
2024 may be the year that smash patty burgers completed their worldwide invasion, yet our favorite burger was the big, thick steakhouse beauty we ate at Red Hook Tavern in Brooklyn. If we had to pick a favorite New York City smash patty burger, that honor would go to the one we ate George Motz’s Hamburger America. Other tasty burgers include Motz’s patty melt and 4 Charles’ Au Cheval reminiscent burger. Surprisingly, the smash patty burgers at Shake Shack still hold their own despite the fast food chain’s plethora of worldwide locales. We ate those burgers and more during a multi-day NYC hamburger crawl.
Most Satisfying Salad
Salads aren’t sexy except when they are. The unwedgelike romaine wedge salad at Brooklyn’s Red Hook Tavern, topped with a gorgeous slab of Nueske’s bacon, looked special the moment it arrived at our outdoor table. It tasted even better thanks to a dressing packed with tangy pickled mustard seeds, funky blue cheese and buttermilk. Now that’s a sexy salad!
Most Decadent Bar Food
You probably know about Welsh rarebit, the famous toast topped with a cheese and mustard sauce. But do you know about the rarebit’s cousin, the Welsh, that’s served at local taverns called estaminets all over the city of Lille? This French/Flemish beauty is made with melted cheddar, mustard, boiled French ham, bread and beer. We ate our Welsh with fries and Flemish style beer - a winning combination that we plan to limit due to arterial respect.
Best Paella That’s Not Actually Paella
Paella in Valencia is fantastic but it’s not the best rice dish we ate during our week-long visit. That honor goes to oven rice - a meal that’s served in a wide cazuela (the round earthen casserole found in many Spanish dishes) after it’s cooked in the oven along with a mixture of proteins like chicken and blood sausage along with tomatoes and whole roasted garlic cloves. Although we ate fabulous oven rice at the old line, downtown Valencia restaurant La Riua months ago, the dish’s regional flavors still reverberate through our brains.
Cantonese Food That Scratched Our Itch
While we drove to Chinatown to eat Chinese barbecued meats like duck, char siu pork and soy sauce chicken over rice at Great N.Y. Noodletwon, we’d gladly walk from the Bronx or take the subway to eat it again. Commuting from Portugal is an entirely different matter. Why don’t restaurants like Great N.Y. Noodletown in Chinatown exist in Lisbon?!
Sweetest Dessert
Naples has a long tradition of baking (and frying) excellent pastries like the sfogliatella, the graffa, the baba and the struffoli. The same goes for the rest of Campania. However, the best Neapolitan dessert we ate last year was the delizia al limone, a simple dessert in which a disc of limoncello-soaked sponge cake is topped with simple lemon cream and filled with lemon curd or cream - depending on the version. Going forward, we plan to eat a sfogliatella for breakfast and delizia a limone for dessert every time we return to Naples.
Tastiest Food Festival
When a friend invites you to Central Portugal to attend the Feira do Enchidos, Queijo, e Mel (Sausage, Cheese and Honey) Fair, you don’t ask any questions. You book a coach bus to Vila de Real ASAP. At least that’s what we did when our friend Christine extended an invitation. This particular fair features a range of Portuguese products like chouriço, farinheira, a whole world of honeys and all kinds of cheese. We sampled all those things plus we listened to modern Portuguese pop music and ate our weight in churros. Note: The party never ends at this and other Portuguese festivals. When we were waking up at 8am, many of the locals were packing it in for night (or should we say morning?).
Most Surprising Cheesesteaks
We grew tired of cheesesteaks when we lived in Philly. However, once we moved away, we gained a strong appreciation for the American sandwich icon. Now, in an unexpected twist, cheesesteaks have gone global. They’ve been in London for almost a decade and now, at the excellent Delphi Cheesesteaks in Lisbon, they’re making a big splash in Portugal. Coincidentally, 2024 is the year that we created our own cheesesteak recipe with unbelievable success. Assuming favorable playoff results, we’ll be serving awesome cheesesteaks at a Super Bowl party next month. Go Eagles!
Pizza Pizza Pizza
2024 was a great year for pizza. We ate pizza in so many cities including Caserta, Cascais, Barcelona, Lisbon, London, Milan, Naples, NYC, Paris, Philly, Porto, Salerno and Valencia but three stood out from the pack. In Naples, many pizzaiolos are making white pies topped with mortadella and pistachio but Diego Vitagliano’s “Pistadella” pie knocked our socks off with the thinnest slices of mortadella, pistachio pesto and locally sourced fiordilatte. The shockingly good Confine in Milan served us the sausage pizza of our lives curiously titled (in english) Once Upon a Time There Was the Yellow Cherry Tomato. That pie was topped with a blend of ground sausage, pork, spices and dabs of concentrated yellow piennolo tomato sauce. Finally, at Oobatz, pizzaiolo Dan Pearson dazzled us with a magical vibe worthy of Paris through his vivid, artistic sourdough pies.
Most Epic Veal Chop
Before eating lunch at Rataná in Milan’s Isola neighborhood, we had to pre-order the restaurant’s legendary costeletta (bone in veal cutlet) 24 hours in advance. When we inquired about the dish and were told the price (€46 at the time), Mindi balked and Daryl immediately said yes. Two days later we were rewarded with a thick, juicy bone-in mother of a cutlet breaded with panko and topped with crunchy bits of fried sage. The chop was so massive that we temporarily contemplated whether we should eat again that night or even that week.
Best Shopping Discovery
We didn’t realize how much the world of instant noodles had exploded until we embarked on our instant ramen project a few months ago. As we quickly learned, Asian markets now sell varieties of Chinese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and, of course, Japanese noodles in a massive range of colors, flavors and textures. We may never be bored by lunch again.
Most Bizarre Destination
When we told our B&B host in Salerno that we were headed to Caserta for a couple days to eat pizza, a look of horror emerged on her face. Apparently the Campania town, just an hour train ride from Naples, is known, aside from its famous palace, for attracting characters of ill repute. As Ian MacGregor said in an interview, its “palace is in the middle of the biggest shithole you’ve ever seen.” That being said, Caserta’s palace is an eighteenth century marvel and Francesco Martucci’s pizzas are world famous. The curious Italian town is worth a day trip with a pizza lunch, a palace visit and nothing more. If you go, you may notice more than a few people with New Jersey accents. That’s all you need to know. Also, stay away from the tasting menu at Martucci’s pizza joint but eat all the pizza you can.
Best Place to Eat a Big, Fresh Fish
Matosinhos may be the best place to eat seafood in Portugal. The town, just a metro ride from central Porto, sports dozens of seafood restaurants serving a large variety of product that’s ‘just off the boat’. During a wonderful lunch at Palato Restaurante with our friend Nelson, we ate a giant rodovalho (turbot or brill in English) that was just caught that morning. The grilled and excellently served fish had a wonderful flaky texture and a distinct, slightly meaty flavor. Daryl declared it to be the best fish he’s ever eaten.
What’s Ahead
We’ll resume our ‘regualar programming’ next week. You can look forward to more food and travel stories as well as more dishes of the week, more drinks of the week and more links we’re liking. We know you love those links and we love sharing them.
Until next week,
Daryl & Mindi