Have you tried Lawrence restaurant in Montreal or Animal in Los Angeles? Segue Lepage of Montreal’s Le Comptoir Charcuteries et Vins has, and he endorses them. Lepage is one of 400 chefs featured in this guide to Where Chefs Eat (Phaidon). Also along for the ride are René Redzepi, Daniel Boulud, Heston Blumenthal and Ben Shewry, who share their favourite late-night chomp stop, their preferred breakfast nook and the best bargain joint, among a list of other top spots they love.
Behind the scenes, Joe Warwick — U.K.-based restaurant journalist and co-founder of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards — edited the tome. Here he shares his musings on compiling the 700-page guide to the best eats in the world.
Why did you decide to conceive this book?
It came out of a conversation with the publisher, who was interested in doing a chef-curated guide. I’d worked on something similar on a much smaller scale [about] 100 restaurants in London.
Which Canadian chefs and restaurants are mentioned in the book?
We asked a number of Canadian chefs what their favourite restaurants are, including Michael Steh, Lee Cooper, David Hawksworth, Brad Holmes, Normand Laprise and Ted Anderson. There are 75 restaurants featured in the book from Canada, [with] a nice selection from Vancouver, Toronto (including great noodle places in Chinatown), Montreal and a few off the beaten path, like Basho and Bonavista Social Club — Jeremy Charles highly recommends the moose burger — both in Newfoundland.
What are your favourite chef selections?
I connected with the smaller, quirkier, more casual places — hotdog stand and herring wagons in Stockholm, [Sweden], ‘wet burgers’ [that] sound really messy in Istanbul, [Turkey], fried-chicken shops in Harlem, [New York], as well as congee joints and crab restaurants in Hong Kong.
How do the choices relate to the state of the industry across the globe?
In terms of the composition of the guide, which [names] about 2,500 places, the majority are casual places. That reflects the way people eat now. Haute cuisine will never die, and there will always be a place for formal gastronomic temples, but eating out well and the focus of the restaurant scene is increasingly on casual dining.
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