Jan. 08--Three Chicago restaurants landed on the inaugural list of 38 essential restaurants in America from the national food website Eater.
The website's roving restaurant critic, Bill Addison, chose Fat Rice, Alinea and Topolobampo as "indispensable restaurants across the nation right at this moment of our culinary history."
Unlike many arbitrarily assembled "best of" lists, this one merits attention, if only because the writer actually ate at every one of these restaurants, 263 total in 29 cities.
I was party to one of Addison's marathon nights out in August, when we ate three complete dinners over a nearly six-hour stretch. I'm still sweating Iberico ham fat from that experience. What's incredible is the man does this five days a week and he's remarkably svelte. Here's the Q I did with Addison shortly after our eating adventure.
kpang@tribpub.com
Twitter @pang
