Best Restaurants

Luxist Awards' Winners for the Best in Fine Dining

Filed under: Dining

Auberge du Soleil is nominated for a Luxist Award for Most Romantic Restaurant.

Luxist readers nominated and voted for the restaurants that they believe are the best of breed. Below, are their favorite places to wine and dine within such categories as Best Steakhouse, Best Seafood, Best Romantic, Best Domestic and Best International restaurant.

Best Romantic Restaurant: Auberge du Soleil (Rutherford, Ca.)
Enjoying a glass of wine at sunset in California's Napa Valley is one of the best ways to start an intimate evening, and the restaurant at Auberge du Soleil offers a chance to do just that.

Founded in 1981 by San Francisco restaurateur Claude Rouas, the eatery helped spawn the wave of popularity currently enjoyed by the entire Napa area. In 1985, Rouas and business partner Robert Harmon opened the inn---in French, auberge---to host visitors to the California wine country. He envisioned both the restaurant and the inn as a tribute to his beloved Provence, and, true to form, both continue to be exactly that.

Guided by executive chef Robert Curry, the restaurant remains one of America's most delicious---and most romantic. The best way for lovebirds to enjoy the seasonally-changing menu is at La Pagode, the restaurant's private dining area for two. Here, the evening begins with a bottle of champagne, followed by a dozen oysters and a four course dinner, with wine pairings included. This type of romance comes with a $1,495 per couple price tag, plus an optional $550 for two hours of solo guitar accompaniment.

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Le Bernardin Wins the Luxist Award for Best Seafood Restaurant

by Carrie Coolidge (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Le Bernardin in New York is nominated for a Luxist Award for Best Seafood Restaurant

A world-renowned New York restaurant that has received numerous awards, Le Bernardin, is also the winner of the Luxist Awards' Readers' Choice Award for Best Seafood Restaurant.

A seafood restaurant with French roots, Le Bernardin is known for its understated elegance. The mid-town Manhattan restaurant is beautifully and tastefully decorated: the restaurant reportedly spends $12,000 a month on fresh flowers. Its menu is extensive and includes such delectable dishes as warm lobster carpaccio, smoked yellow fin tuna, "prosciutto", bread crusted red snapper, crispy black bass and whole red snapper baked in rosemary and thyme salt crust. There are several tasting menus from which to choose, including Le Bernardin's Tasting Menu, which costs $138 per person, or $225 with wine pairing, per person. The prix fixe dinner costs $112 per person.

Gallery: Le Bernardin in New York

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Strip House Wins the Luxist Award for Best Steakhouse

by Carrie Coolidge (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Strip House in New York is nominated for a Luxist Award for Best Steakhouse

Strip House, the famed New York steakhouse that opened in 2000 on East 12th Street just off of Fifth Avenue, is the winner of the Luxsit Awards' Readers' Choice Award for Best Steakhouse.

The restaurant's name is a double entendre that relates to both the delectable strip steaks as well as its seductive, yet sophisticated decor. The interior was designed by David Rockwell and offers a clubby yet striking atmosphere with deep red leather booths. The walls are adorned with black and white images of women that pays homage to the female form. The collection was photographed by Studio Manasse in Vienna in the early 1900's.

Gallery: Strip House in New York

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Most Romantic Restaurants in the U.S.

by Carrie Coolidge (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

One if by Land, Two if by Sea is nominated for a Luxist Award for Most Romantic Restaurant

Luxist readers nominated the restaurants that they believe to be the most romantic spots in the country. From Napa Valley and Orleans to New York and a quaint little town in Virginia called Washington, here are their top five favorite places to wine and dine their significant others (in alphabetical order):

Auberge du Soleil (Napa Valley, Ca.)
Enjoying a glass of wine at sunset in California's Napa Valley is one of the best ways to start an intimate evening, and the restaurant at Auberge du Soleil offers a chance to do just that.

Founded in 1981 by San Francisco restaurateur Claude Rouas, the eatery helped spawn the wave of popularity currently enjoyed by the entire Napa area. In 1985, Rouas and business partner Robert Harmon opened the inn---in French, auberge---to host visitors to the California wine country. He envisioned both the restaurant and the inn as a tribute to his beloved Provence, and, true to form, both continue to be exactly that.

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The Five Best Restaurants in the U.S.

by Carrie Coolidge (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Luxist readers nominated the restaurants that they believe to be the best and most luxurious restaurants in the country. From Napa Valley and Las Vegas to Chicago and New York, here are their top five favorite places (in alphabetical order):

Charlie Trotter's (Chicago)
While most top chefs boast degrees from the traditional powerhouses of the culinary world, Charlie Trotter is an exception. The chef of the Chicago restaurant that bears his name never had a former education in the world of food---but that hasn't stopped him from turning his eatery into a Luxist nominee in the best domestic fine dining category.

Charlie Trotter became a foodie in college after learning a few cooking tips from his roommate. Fascinated by the culinary arts, he took a year off from earning his degree in Political Science at the University of Wisconsin's Madison campus to read every book he could, including a ton of tomes on cooking. After graduation, he went into the catering business, eventually deciding that he wanted to run his own restaurant.

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James Beard Award Winners 2010: Marea, Daniel, Craft and French Laundry

by Carrie N. Culpepper (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining, Events

It's no surprise that New York and Napa Valley restaurants dominated the top spots at Monday night's James Beard Awards held at Lincoln Center. Foodies of every stripe -- from Food Network stars to French Laundry chefs -- were in attendance at the black-tie event. A red carpet was even set up in the new courtyard outside Avery Fisher Hall so the truly food-obsessed could catch a glimpse of chefs like Wolfgang Puck, Lidia Bastianich and Alton Brown, the evenings co-hosts. (Pictured above is Brown, JBF president Susan Ungaro, Bastianich and Ted Allen arriving on the red carpet.)

The big awards of the evening went to New York's Marea for Best New Restaurant; Tom Colicchio of the Craft restaurants (and a regular "Top Chef" judge) won the Outstanding Chef Award; Daniel Boulud won the Outstanding Restaurant Award for Daniel, another New York restaurant; the Outstanding Pastry Chef award went to Nichole Plue of Redd in Napa Valley; and Timothy Hollingsworth of Napa's famous The French Laundry, won the Rising Star Chef of the Year Award.

Backstage, talk turned to to food trends -- something fine-dining chefs don't look kindly on -- and the seemingly omnipresent locavore movement. And we even found out where these top chefs are excited to eat.

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Top 100 Hotel Restaurants

by Nicole Weston (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Dining

Using decor and service, as well as food quality and taste, the Zagat guide has compiled a list of the 100 best restaurants found in hotels across the United States. Most of these hotels use their restaurant not as money making ventures, but as a way of enhancing the reputation of the hotel, giving it an added layer of luxury by offering some of the finest dining in their city. Looking at the whole list, twenty of the top restaurants are in California and thirteen are in Massachusetts, followed by Nevada , Texas and Florida, with eleven, eight and six, respectively. The Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas actually has four restaurants on the list. Most of these fine dining experiences come with a high price tags, but the outstanding service, ambiance and, of course, the food, are well worth it. The full list is available here, but these are the top ten: