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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The Best Pizza in Dallas: A 900° Wood-Fire Oven and a Secret Menu

If I were to tell you about a trendy, hipstery pizza place in Texas serving authentic and innovative Neapolitan-style pies, what city do you think it would be in? I bet your first guess would be Austin, but I’m here to show you that this kind of awesomeness can also be found in the extremely underrated Dallas dining scene if you know where to look. The place I’m specifically talking about is located in the Deep Ellum neighborhood, which is basically the Williamsburg of Dallas. It has a thriving live music scene, loads of dive bars, and plenty of interesting casual dining options to explore.

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Magnificent, Modern Southern Cuisine at Odd Duck in Austin

Another day, another awesome, upscale dinner out in Austin. This place called Odd Duck is the sibling restaurant to chef Bryce Gilmore‘s also amazing, tasting menu-only hot spot Barley Swine which I had visited only a few night earlier. Similar to Barley Swine, the theme of this meal seemed to be small plates with either a pickled element, runny egg yolks, or both.

The menu leans heavily toward Southern gastropub fare with plenty of clean, modern, cheffy flair and even a bit of molecular gastronomy trickery thrown in. The vibe of the decor matches the tone of the food with its use of mismatched country miscellany carefully arranged by an smart, upscale, interior designer’s touch. This restaurant is pretty well known in the Austin food scene as one of the more exciting places to have a meal and it makes sense why. It has such an interesting menu that continues to experiment and evolve over time – the fervor is only going to grow as this place continues to get the industry recognition it rightly deserves like the James Beard Award Rising Star nod it just recieved.

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Mike Winston’s Best Bites of 2014

What a year!! I did something like this last year too, but oh boy was 2014 a doozy. I started off living in NYC, then a started a new job that whisked me off the San Francisco and Silicon Valley for a few months before ultimately relocating to San Francisco permanently. And along the way, I squeezed in a couple of vacations too.

Sooooo, I did a LOT of epic eating this year. And truth be told, I found it particularly difficult to narrow down my list as concisely as last year’s, but I somehow managed. So, without further ado, I present the winners (and runner-ups) broken down by category. I tried to cluster similar dish types together, but really they are in no particular order. Let’s begin!

And if you wanna hear about the 2014’s Best Cocktails, read more here.
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Awesome Comfort Food & an Epic Beer List at Fat Angel in Japantown

Japantown is a really unique and interesting part of San Francisco. It’s a dinning hot spot for just about every kind of Japanese food you could think of – ramen, soba, udon, sushi, hot pot, katsu, and yakitori to name a few. But, if you look close enough, you can find some non-Japanese gems in the area as well such as the wonderful Fat Angel Food & Libation.

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Beachfront Boozing & Wood-Fired Pizza at Bar Bocce in Sausalito

When the sun is shining, I nearly always feel compelled to be outside with a drink in my hand. In need of a place to meet some friends in Sausalito on a Sunday afternoon, we decided on Bar Bocce – a highly regarded bar/restaurant right on the Sausalito waterfront that features plenty of outdoor space including a large fire-pit, narrow beach, and full-sized bocce court.

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Unique Pizza: Beautiful Thin-Crust Bar Pies at Colony Grill in Stamford, CT

I had no idea how much of a dump Stamford, CT was until I visited. I had these visions of nature and colorful foliage, but that’s not what I found in that horrible mini-metropolis. In need of a really good post-wedding hangover meal in the area, we ventured from the Fairfield and Norwalk area over into the heart of Stamford and headed to a place called Colony Grill to see what Connecticut-style pizza was all about.

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There’s So Much More Than Just Pizza at Pizzeria Delfina in Palo Alto

As an ex-New Yorker now living on the West Coast, I’ve been trained to go to Italian eateries with low expectations, particularly if they claim to specialize in pizza. I know I’ve been spoiled by the ease of access to the very best pizza slices in the country, but I’ve already learned that you can in fact find great pizza in the Bay Area in square slice and Brooklyn-style neapolitan form. Still, I didn’t expect much from Palo Alto’s Pizzeria Delfina despite its very positive reputation.

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Winner Winner Pasta & Cocktail Dinner at Zero Zero in SoMa

If you’ve read at all about the SF dining scene, it would be difficult to avoid hearing about Zero Zero. They’ve been written up in just about every major and minor publication for their upscale Neapolitan pizzas and cocktails, but prior to this visit I just never had any reason to head over to that Northeastern part of SoMa for a meal. But one day I found myself in that part of town at around 10 PM hungry and in need of a good cocktail or two, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to see what the hype was all about.

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Everyone Seems to Love Starbelly Except Me

Starbelly is generally regarded as the best restaurant in The Castro so I definitely went into this meal with high expectations. People rave about this place and their renditions of Californian farm-to-table local organic comfort food. I certainly haven’t dined in the Castro enough to be able to confirm or deny if it really is the best restaurant in the neighborhood, but I knew I definitely had to check it out for myself.

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