Mike Winston’s Best Meals of 2015

Yes, I know this year-end list is beyond belated. Actually, I’m probably over a month late. Normally, I’m not one to make these kinds of excuses, but my life has been pretty hectic lately.

As you may or may not know, I’m getting married in a couple of months, so my time has recently come at an extreme premium and I haven’t been able to commit as much attention as I’d like to this little publication obsession. With that being said, over the next couple of months, I’ll be playing around with post style and formatting a bit in an attempt to find new ways to rapidly pump out awesome food articles with fewer publishing limitations on my end. Please feel free to give me feedback on the new content — I’m planning to review this little experiment in a few months and we can take it from there.

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A Perfect Day of Eating & Wine Tasting Across Paso Robles

To celebrate my lovely girlfriend Amy’s redacted birthday, we planned a glorious weekend getaway to the Paso Robles wine country. We had heard excellent things about the remote region’s beauty and density of high-quality wineries so it seemed like a great way to spend a couple of days and the perfect way to mark the occasion.

On the Friday of her birthday weekend, Amy drove down from San Francisco to pick me up from work in Sunnyvale before we headed off into the beautiful, winding, south-of-SF countryside only to stop quickly in Moss Landing for dinner before reaching Paso Robles at around 11 PM.

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Outstanding Sustainable Seafood on the Sausalito Waterfront at Fish.

It may be October, but Summer is still in full swing in the Bay Area. When I get a particularly warm and sunny day, nearly every time I just want to be outside to enjoy some fresh seafood with a cold beer. Since we have a car, taking a short drive north over the Golden Gate bridge to Sausalito is not a big deal and Fish. is the perfect solution for this sunny weather scenario.

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Rincon Taqueria in Norwalk, CT Has a Thing or Two to Teach You Northeasterners About Mexican Food

WOAH YEAH. Who’d a thought you could find super-legit Mexican food in Eastern Connecticut? I certainly didn’t. But there I was, sitting on the SoNo waterfront (South Norwalk for all you out-of-towners) searching for a solid lunch spot and when I stumbled across a little taqueria on Yelp with only a few reviews, but every single one of them was utterly ecstatic about the place. It was settled, Amy and I were going to drive across town to Rincon Taqueria in Norwalk to see what all the people were buzzing about.

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Fast, Casual, Waterfront Seafood at Phil’s Fish Market in Moss Landing

For Amy’s birthday weekend we had booked a cabin in the Paso Robles Wine Region. From San Francisco, it would have been a four hour drive so we knew we needed a Friday night pit stop for dinner half way there. A bit of web research illuminated the fact that there were very few viable options between Los Gatos at the south edge of Silicon Valley and our ultimate destination without heading into Santa Cruz or Monterey, which we wanted to avoid for traffic purposes. But there was one single place that did seem to be well regarded and worthy of a pit stop — a fish shack on the waterfront in the tiny town of Moss Landing called Phil’s Fish Market.

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Solid Dim Sum without the Push Carts at Tai Pan in Palo Alto

Transport yourself to Hong Kong. And you don’t even need to leave the cushy confines of Palo Alto, California. Just a block off the main drag on University Avenue, there’s a massive dim sum parlor that would be all too easy to miss while walking by. Despite its enormous front signage, there’s nothing about its appearance that would actually draw a pedestrian inside to experience an authentic Hongkongese dim sum meal.

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Eat Killer Fish Tacos in a Burlesque at Nick’s Crispy Tacos in Russian Hill

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Have you ever had the desire to eat tacos in a strip club? Nah me either, but at Nick’s Crispy Tacos in Russian Hill you can do just that without all the… you know… herpes. And you’re going to want to do it too because these are some seriously awesome tacos.

You know what kind of place this is? It’s the kind of place where a waitress could be mistaken for a hooker. It’s the kind of place where DJs spin deafening EDM mixes so loud that conversation is practically impossible and dancing is unavoidable. It’s the kind of place where the sun isn’t even close to setting but someone’s already puked in the urinal.

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