A 2024 year-end list

Cooked, ate, and imbibed

• Hazelnut chocolate pastry from Dayou Patisserie (Paris, France)
• Baguette from Mamiche Boulangerie (Paris, France) - a life changing bread; there's something almost not of the earth with how crackly and burnished and chewy this bread is. You know a neighborhood boulangerie is worth its salt in Paris if people are lining up out the door to get the first taste of fresh baked bread.
• Ramen from Sanjo (Paris, France). I've had a lot of good ramen in Paris, but this one stood out for its simplicity and execution. The tsukemono here was fantastic as well.
• Mole tamale (Oaxacan style) from Yvolina's Tamales (Chicago, IL). Ambrosial, I came here twice in two weeks after discovering this place.
• Duck liver tart and wine at Elske (Chicago, IL). First time trying Pineau d'Aunis and I loved its peppery, salted-plum qualities.
• Pajeon (seafood pancake) at Parachute (Chicago, IL). Sadly this place has closed, but this has by far been the best seafood pancake I've had - lacy, crisp, loaded with scallions and squid.
• Sashimi at 312 Fish Market (Chicago, IL)
• Chilaquiles, a new favorite dish to make. Endlessly customizable and suitable for all meals of the day!
• Seafood broth and chocolate at Sepia (Chicago, IL). We went to this place with my former undergraduate advisor who was visiting for a lecture. I was pleasantly surprised by the refinement of the cooking and it was especially good given the department was paying for our meals!
• Aloo palak
• Mango sticky rice at Tom Yum Cafe (Chicago, IL). Utterly divine. I don't know where one acquires mangoes this good in Chicago...
• Langostine and goat curry at Thattu (Chicago, IL). A really cool restaurant showcasing Kerala cuisine, which is from the state in southern India. I had hardly heard of the place, let alone their food, but Thattu does a fantastic job introducing the flavors and also just being delicious.
• Pomme Dauphine at Dear Margaret (Chicago, IL)
• Pig kidney in chili oil at Tasty Moment (Chicago, IL). I think this place also appeared on my last year's list - another indication of how well they do Chinese dishes not only from Shanghai but also from other regional cuisines.
• Coffee (pastry shown) at Metric Coffee (Chicago, IL). Top 4 roaster/coffee shop in Chicago (Four Letter Word, Dayglow, and Drip Collective - below - being the others).
• Ssam: so easy to make at home and so much cheaper than a KBBQ restaurant!
• Crab etouffee at Virtue (Chicago, IL).
• Mussels (moules frites) and pork tenderloin sandwich at Hopleaf (Chicago, IL).
• Savagnin from Iruai, a really interesting winery out in the really northern (not NorCal) parts of California, trying to grow Alpine grapes such as savagnin. Lovely pristine aromatics and lots of prickly texture.
• Cauliflower and fried chicken at Mama Chang's (Fairfax, VA).
• Fried catfish at Cleoo's Southern Cuisine (Chicago, IL).
• Thai shrimp salad from Serious Eats
• I started getting into cold noodle soups like this one from NYTimes Cooking
• Cherry tomatoes roasted with curry leaves (recipe from Nik Sharma)
• Mussel toast from Apolonia (Chicago, IL)
• Thai fried chicken from the San Bruno Thai Temple! I had no idea that Thai Buddhist temples were serving up such delicious and inexpensive food... makes me with I lived closer to one.
• Raspberry/mango/peach dessert and wine from Chez Panisse (Berkeley, CA). A treat to visit the temple of California cooking and it lived up to most of my expectations. The dessert here was gorgeous and fresh and evocative of perfectly ripe fruit in the way that good desserts can do.
• Pastries from Saint Frank (Seattle, WA). Shoutout to my friend Crystal for providing so many impeccable recommendations for Seattle!
• Bibimbap at Made-in House (Seattle, WA). For such an unassuming dish, I was blown away by the diversity of flavors and texture in this bowl. A perfect example of how to reimagine classic dishes while maintaining the DNA that makes them tick.
• Pizza from Tivoli (Seattle, WA) - gives NY pizza a run for its money.
• Kouign-amann from Sea Wolf (Seattle, WA). Regular readers of this blog will know that I love kouign-amanns and this one did not disappoint (another hit rec from Crystal!)
• Ice cream sundae from Molly Moons (Seattle, WA)
• Egg kulambu: a complex and relatively easy dish that represents to me the best flavors of south Indian cooking.
• Pourover from the Drip Collective (Chicago, IL). It's rare that I'll order a pourover these days in a cafe, but this one blew me out the water. Crystal-clear aromatics and a beautiful tea-like extraction. A perfect combination of impeccable coffee beans and really good brewing skills from the barista.
• I started making a lot more red bean (adzuki bean) soup this year, as it's a simple dessert that also serves as an easy breakfast. I like to add pearl barley, lotus seeds, and peanuts for textural contrast in mine.
• Oxtail curry from Uncle Joe's Jerk Chicken (Chicago, IL)
• Beef tacos from El Torito (Mexico City)
• Seafood tostada, bug tostada, and turkey with mole negro from Casa Oaxaca (Oaxaca, Mexico). Probably one the most exciting meals I've had in a while, brilliant exposition of traditional Oaxacan cooking that didn't sacrifice any flavor for presentation or novelty. The turkey had a luxurious texture which I have no idea how they achieved and the moles beguiling in their complexity.
• Octopus ceviche at Máximo Bistro (Mexico City).
• Tacos guisado from Tacos La Hortaliza (Mexico City). In a city jam packed with the most incredible variety and quality of tacos, these still stand out. I think I heard about this place from the lovely Netflix show Taco Chronicles and these were just so unbelievably unctuous, rich, and savory. The chile relleno (left) and chicharrón (top right) were my favorites, though everything there will remain etched in my flavor memory for a while.
• Coffee from Un.common Coffee. One of the best coffees I bought this year from an Amsterdam-based roaster. Ethiopian coffees still reign supreme in my book even after trying so many others.
• A lovely grower champagne for my mom's birthday, with such a deliciously unctuous texture.
• Lobster rolls (also for my mom's birthday), which are surprisingly labor-intensive (though perhaps I should've guessed cooking and shelling a lobster wouldn't be so facile).

Music

Books

Movies

Vertigo, Monkey Man, Dune: Part Two, Anatomy of a Fall, The Seventh Seal

Papers

• Wang, et al. On the design space between molecular mechanics and machine learning force fields. arXiv:2409.01931. A particularly nice review of the state of machine learned force fields and how they might come to supplant traditional molecular mechanics force fields.
• Jarzynski. Targeted free energy perturbation. Physical Reviews E 2002. A very elegant method for performing free-energy calculations that was completely intractable twenty years ago, but now made possible with neural networks.
• Maynard Smith. Natural selection and the concept of a protein space. Nature 1970. One of those lovely, concise, papers that provides a unique and (later on, influential) perspective on the old idea of protein evolution.

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