The Best Meals of 2021

Tresind Studio x Ristorante Lido 84*: a blinding superb lunch showcasing two chefs rising to harmoniously and selflessly maintain continuity through 14 courses. Chef Himanshu Saini (of Tresind Studio) and Riccardo Camanini (of Ristorante Lido 84) play as a team, coaxing the best of each other while graciously passing the baton between plates. Ristorante Lido 84’s spaghettoni with butter and dried yeast re-imagines the Italian childhood experience of spaghetti with butter while showing us that simplification requires focus and a meticulous understanding of each ingredient’s purpose. Cork-like yeast shards pebbled over spaghettoni, glossy with silky butter, channel toasty sourdough notes. It is magnificently understated. Tresind Studio puts a toe into Italian soil with a sublime dumpling-like sweet onion tortellini submerged into a rust-tinted puddle of spoon-lickingly good buttermilk curry. My only quibble? Tresind Studio still does not offer a lunch service on weekends. No, I will not let this go.



Ristorante Lido 84*: months later, Mrs EatGoSee and I drove six hours from our beloved Piemonte in Italy to complete the second act. From an enchanting terrace overlooking the glistening Lake Garda, we felt first hand the incomparable Italian charm wielded by the Camanini brothers. The Fluctuations menu is innovative and well-paced with pleasant surprises. I text “The Food Club” only two bites into the first course. “I could cry. It’s so good.” Lightly poached prawns tip-toe daintily between cooked and raw. Gently acidulated by a bright calamansi vinegar tempered by apricot oil and buttressed with fresh almonds. A toothsome cacio e pepe slowly cooked in a pig’s bladder speckled with black pepper served tableside. It is not an overstatement to tell you this lunch skirts perfection without feeling like they are lifting a finger. The quiet confidence of a team comfortably in its stride. Lido 84 is one of the world’s best restaurants, Italian or otherwise.



Sticky Rice: fine dining happens but Sticky Rice resides in my house far more often. A love affair first requited in the now defunct Food District (RIP). Aromatic heaps of steaming clams which I greedily and shameless suck from their shells. A rubble of spicy minced chicken larb tangled in fragrant mint and basil munched with cooling fresh cabbage. One of the best Pad Thai plates in Dubai. Fight me. The head of the class is the truly addictive sticky tamarind chicken tenders; its gnarly batter lacquered in a fiery, sticky sheen, so shiny, you can watch the joy on your face smile back throught its reflection. Sticky Rice went through the wars with the tragic loss of Mama but her legacy lives on in my house and many others.



Cura: recommended by Pallavi Sangtani, Cura delivered some of the best modern Portuguese food I have experienced in Lisbon. Chef Pedro Pena Bastos challenges pre-conceptions serving imaginative, fastidiously-curated dishes pushing Portuguese cuisine forward. The squid ribboned like tagliatelle with hazelnut, bergamot, roasted seaweed butter and caviar is astonishingly good. One of the best single dishes I had in 2021. The wine menu challenges with exceptional choices like an unfiltered white wine that shares more with a French cider than a stereotypical Portuguese white. The wine menu proves this country is foolishly overlooked by international buyers. Quietly, this could be Lisbon’s best restaurant, in waiting.



La Fermata*: La Fermata single-handedly demonstrates that Michelin starred fine dining can also be comfort food. Modernised, poncified in places, but utterly, gutterly satisfying in the sort of way that only comfort food can achieve. A spoon plunged into a stuffed onion then billows with cheese gentled browned for maximum lusciousness. Gnocchi as soft as angel’s farts cloaked in butter enriched with anchovy umami and shingled with sprightly courgette discs. A hot buttered heap of agnolotti Alessandrini is deeply scented with aged parmesan. Few things soothe like hot parcels of thin pasta stuffed with gutsy red meat wallowing in a bath of emulsified parmesan butter.



The Experience by Reif Othman: Reif Othman featured in last year’s list and, while I enjoy nearly everything that leaves his creative hands, I look back on this omakase Experience with profound fondness. Reif is a man I respect and admire tremendously for his achievements and humility. Seaweed butter was my ah-ha moment of 2021. A scallop nigiri generously slathered in seaweed butter. A deliciously moreish dish that contrasts sweet scallop rounds with unctuous seaweed butter, so rich, you would pay for small pots of it as an undereye cream. A toasted brioche slab brushed with seaweed butter then generously topped with curls of the glossiest ochre uni, brightened by a dusting of lime zest. I have since tried to return twice but on days where The Experience was not available. It is one of the best seats in town.



Jumeirah Zabeel Saray x Ristorante Berton Milano*: my surprise dining experience of 2021. Recommended and joined by my friend Sarah Hammond, our seven courses with wine pairing drew from chef Andrea Berton’s Michelin starred Ristorante Berton Milano. Standout dishes included a bedsheet thin seafood lasagne laced with white and brown crab meat brightened with saffron and an eggplant parmigiana amuse-bouche bursting with the intensely unmistakable taste of those most delish crispy bits around the roasting pan. All washed down with a glass of Ferrari La Perla 2015.



Tresind Studio’s Spice Odyssey: it would not be an annual round-up without Tresind Studio featuring prominently. This is clearly Dubai’s best restaurant helmed by a small, efficient team soaring in stature, capability and confidence. The best is yet to come from this team. Spicy Odyssey showed the learnings from a phalanx of high-calibre collaborations. Tresind Studio’s carousel of chaat courses exemplifies the stratosphere for modern Indian cuisine. The cumin-scented pani puri with lemon preserve is a bright, fresh start that awakens your palate for the journey ahead. The shatteringly crisp courgette blossom millefeuille with pumpkin mash is a standout vegetarian course. An impeccably plated dish purring with mellow spice lifted by tongue-poppingly sharp tamarind. Meat courses can follow, but here, the vegetarian courses – and their plating – are where Tresind Studio really stands head and shoulders above its peers. Bravo.



Petricore Enoteca: recommended by David J Constable, a singularly superb casual dining experience that should be the case study for why less is more and service is king. Just add some of the world’s best wines and a sommelier who treated us like loved family after a long journey. Mrs EatGoSee and I only planned to drink wine (as we often do) but found ourselves snuffling slivers of glistening Calabrian salted anchovy fillets perched on rich buttery crusty bread and the wobbliest, creamy panna cotta where – I am convinced – the cows who provide their milk must also survive on a diet on panna cotta. Tour through a wine menu of truly rare finds where some wineries only make 100 bottles a year. This is not Alba’s most famous restaurant, but it is one of its most enjoyable.



Piazza Duomo***: step forward Alba’s most famous restaurant — and one of the World’s Best restaurants. Service and wine pairings stood out as highlights drinking some superb Piemontesi wine. Who knew an uni carpaccio with pecorino and tomato jam must be served with a Moscato d’Asti? Each course was a revelation. I slip a spoon into a boisterous burnt lemon and Parmesan risotto further dusted with the darkest, lip-puckering burnt lemon ash and a scattering of thyme flowers. Piazza Duomo will be the benchmark by which all future three-star dining experiences will be judged.