Eleven Memorable Dishes, and Not Even a Full Year

[lsanderson]

Clockwise, from top left: oyster pan roast at the John Dory (now closed); pommes aligot at Minetta Tavern; maple budino at Locanda Verde; duck meatloaf at Buttermilk Channel.
By SAM SIFTON
Published: December 30, 2009

THE best dishes of the year? We’ll get to the roasted unicorn in dwarf-fairy reduction sauce soon enough. But perspective is everything. For much of 2009 I was not the restaurant critic of The New York Times. I was the newspaper’s culture editor, with little access to the sort of food that ordinarily appears in articles like this one. More