I had always been a particular eater – rolling paper napkins to make dividers on my dinner plate (a phase which nearly drove my mom mad), shunning breakfast (with the exception of egg whites scrambled into oblivion), loving gelatinous Vienna sausages in their odd sized tin, and loathing anything that was sweet and warm (hot chocolate & warm apple pie never made it to my hit list).
With just 39 seats, a farm to table modernist approach to food, and an ethos that suggests it wants to be something more holistic than just a restaurant – there is good reason that Alma was named Bon Appétit’s Best New Restaurant of 2013, and the chef lauded as one of Food Wine Mag’s Best New Chefs of 2013.
I had 48 hours in Boston, and having never been, scouting out an unmissable restaurant was exceptionally high on my culinary totem pole. I had read about Neptune Oyster in a couple places, and then read Alinea‘s Grant Achatz & Chef Ming Tsai describe the buttermilk johnny cake with smoked trout tartare, honey butter, and caviar as “one of the best things [they’ve] ever had.
Have you ever become fixated with a restaurant to the point that you pull every string, call every hour, wait for cancellations, and sit with bated breath by your phone, wishing-hoping-thinking-praying that they call?
With only one night in DC, I was determined to have a dinner for one that would leave me feeling equal parts satiated and inspired. That’s a tall order – especially on a Monday night where most restaurants are dark.