Restaurants: The best dishes of the year

Critic Rick Nelson reminisces about his favorite dishes of 2012.

January 2, 2013 at 9:52PM
<b>Hail Caesar </b>
<p class="noteText">There isn't a Caesar salad at the <b>Kenwood</b>. Not explicitly, anyway. Instead, there's chef/owner Don Saunders' idealized version of the classic, and it's a doozy. At its center are hearts of romaine, grilled until the outer leaves begin to wilt and take on a slight char, and the stove's heat begins to loosen the lettuce's succulent, girdled ribs. Then comes the one-two finish, the yin being a white wine- Dijon vinaigrette against the yang of
From Caesar salads to pie, a look at the year's best dishes. (Nicole Hvidsten — Special to the Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

It would help if I could read my own handwriting. I guess that's the downside of sneaking off to the restroom to hastily toss off a few written-against-the-wall notes.
Rarely organized enough to carry an actual notebook, my version of note-taking frequently relies upon any usable slip of paper that I've tucked inside my wallet: a dry cleaning voucher, a Target receipt, a half-filled Post-it Note, a dollar bill.
One particular set of chicken scratchings would have challenged even the most seasoned Egyptologist, but I finally decyphered what I'd dashed out so many months ago, and it reads something like, "Wow, best dish I've tasted this month." I amassed quite a few reactions like that in 2012. Read all about them:

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RICK NELSON, Star Tribune