Best Bites of 2024

Posole! Pissaladière! Prosciutto!

I never know how to write about a year. It’s too big and unwieldy, and I tumble into clichés when I try to confine it within a paragraph. So instead, I’ll tell you about what I ate — in part because it feels easier, but also because taste memories are (for me, at least) the most evocative, lucid kind. I looked back at last year’s edition of Best Bites several times over the course of 2024 to remember Giorgia’s delicate agretti and Corrado’s meatballs in glimmering tomato and that overflowing, butter-laden lobster roll we ate by the harbor in Maine. And I’m sure I’ll look back on this year’s edition in a similar way. This is a record of delight!

Best Bites of 2024

January

• Greek food in Astoria with our friends Claire and Pat — bright, simple things like grilled squid and fried cheese with lemon

• Ski mountain schnitzel (nothing tastes better than something hot and fried when you’ve lost feeling in your toes)

  

February

• The crispiest suckling pig at Txikito for Valentine’s Day dinner

March

• Snap pea salad with mint, Parmesan, and black pepper at home

• The ever-perfect desserts at Superiority Burger

  

April

• A humble bowl of posole at La Choza in Santa Fe

• Everything we tried at Bread Shop in Santa Fe, but especially the green olive-studded focaccia and hazelnut-dappled brownie

• The memela at Campo in Albuquerque — a griddled masa cake, topped with pork, local beans, and a mountain of quick-pickled red cabbage

May

• Mary’s glorious snack spreads on Fishers Island! Cantaloupe, prosciutto, and lemon is a perennial favorite

June

• Eel Bar’s luscious potato salad with trout roe (Melissa Clark agrees)

July

• Warm blueberry-cornmeal cake — a beloved recipe in Teo’s family and a superlative summer breakfast

• Tomato pizza at Pepe’s in New Haven (Don’t worry, we always get clam pizza, too, but it turns out the tomato pie is gorgeous, albeit austere — just fresh, sweet tomato sauce on dough)

August

• Mắm with new pal Olivia Weiss

• Crispity crunchy zucchini fritters with basil and goat cheese (find the recipe here!)

• Pissaladière at Cafe Mado with Allie

September

• Crab salad with heirloom tomatoes and crème fraîche and farinata with olives at Cafe Kestrel, where very last detail is a delight

• The sardines and the grilled king crab at Bridges! I forgot to take any photos of this meal, so there’s only the bottom right photo of Hannah and Alex eating dessert and drawing with crayons, but I had to include it anyway because this meal was exceptional

October

• All the galettes in Brittany, but especially this classic one with Gruyère cheese, ham, and egg on a sunny day

• My favorite Roman dish at The River Café in London — crisp, juicy puntarelle with a zippy anchovy-garlic dressing

November

• Meltingly tender low-and-slow roast chicken per the November menu

• Julia Turshen’s plush, pillowy sour cream pancakes

December

• The smoked arctic char pâté with charred bread and lemon and the dense, sticky ginger cake at Sailor

Thank you so much for reading this post and for supporting The Dish all year long. This community increased in size by over 100% (!) in 2024, which is extremely cool if you ask me, and I just realized that the next post after this one will be my 150th. 150!!! This year has been a doozy, and some months have made it harder than others to get words on a page and into your inboxes, so I’m taking a moment to feel proud, and to say thank you.

On that note, I’d love to hear from you in the comments or in my inbox about particularly memorable meals from your year, if you’d like to share. Here’s to another year of cooking, eating, and writing about it. 🍾

More soon,

x Phoebe