Grub Street picked up the latest issue of Gentlemen's Quarterly only to discover that Alan Richman, the most awarded food writer in history (14 James Beard Awards!), put his esteemed foot down in the SF vs. NYC restaurant war. It seems that, according to the GQ food scribe, once you get past David Chang's dude shtick, New York restaurants can't measure up to San Francisco and the Bay Area. Not by the longest shot. Richman writes:

"New York hasn't had much of a century once you get past David Chang...At each moment in history, there's a city or region that chefs have to visit to learn what's going on in American cooking...Right now it's San Francisco, where restaurants of ambition and imagination are opening."

A few restaurants he cites are Mission Chinese Food ("staggering"), Benu ("innovative, cerebral, and ambitious"), Manresa ("startling" and "Eurocentric"), Atelier Crenn ("a delight, if a somewhat inexplicable one"), Commis ("severe and standoffish...[yet] more refined, more mature, much lighter, and very artistic") and Commonwealth ("wildly inventive...remarkable prices"), just to name a few.

He goes on to call New York restaurants "predictable."

Of course, Richman sums up what many of you have known for eons -- namely, the Bay Area reigns supreme when it comes to shoveling stuff down ones throat. Period.

[via Grub]