Travel

I totally get what you mean about good meals being harder to find as your skills grow; it happens in much compressed form with everybody who goes to culinary school - after a few months, you have an understand of what's going on and you start to think about how you'd do it differently. Eventually though, once you've done it for a while, you do begin to realize that, at the really good places at least, the changes you might have done yourself would actually detract from the quality of the dish.

I think it comes when you've reached the level where you can not only think of this-or-that but be able to mentally picture, taste, how the final, integrated dish is going to come out, which to be honest is a level very few amateur cooks ever get to - not necessarily for lack of skill but because very few amateur cooks ever get into creating dishes from a blank plate. A lot of cooks don't either though, it's what separates chefs from the line. I've been in kitchens 18 years, really gung-ho for 4, and I'm just beginning on that trek.

The point of all this though, one of the best meals I've ever had, definitely in my top 5 was at August. We were known to the souschef in charge that night which did help us get a multi-course tasting with a couple of offmenu items, but regardless. I know in my limited skills that there's nothing I could have done differently or better. Maybe Keller or Dan Humm could have improved on the menu but I sure couldn't have.

Cochon and Cochon Butcher are also right up there..