Elite Traveler May-June 2015

INSPIRE 100 TOP RESTAURANTS

Left Josh Skenes loves growing his own produce. Right An infusion from the menu at Saison

56 Auberge du Vieux Puits Fontjoncouse, France Head chef: Gilles Goujon 2014/51 57 Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville

66 L’Arpege Paris, France Head chef: Alain Passard 2014/68 67 Arzak San Sebastián, Spain Head chef: Juan Mari Arzak 2014/63 68 Tantris Munich, Germany Head chef: Hans Haas 2014/65 69 Sushi Saito Tokyo, Japan Head chef: Takashi Saito 2014/92 70 Toqué! Québec, Canada Head chef: Normand Laprise NEW ENTRY 71 Dal Pescatore Mantua, Italy Head chef: Nadia & Giovanni Santini 2014/64 72 Attica 73 Les Prés d’Eugénie Eugénie-les-Bains, France Head chef: Michel Guérard 2014/77 74 Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud Dublin, Ireland Head chef: Guillaume Lebrun 2014/67 75 Restaurant Andre Singapore, Singapore Head chef: André Chiang NEW ENTRY 76 Schloss Schauenstein Fürstenau, Switzerland Head chef: Andreas Caminada Melbourne, Australia Head chef: Ben Shewry 2014/56

Lausanne, Switzerland Head chef: Benoît Violier 2014/73 58 Saison San Francisco, US Head chef: Josh Skenes NEW ENTRY 59 Roberta Sudbrack Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Head chef: Roberta Sudbrack 2014/48 60 Ledoyen Paris, France Head chef: Yannick Alléno 2014/75 61 Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons Oxford, UK Head chef: Raymond Blanc 2014/30

10 MINUTES WITH… Josh Skenes, head chef at Saison (58) On appearing in the Elite Traveler 100 We cook for a lot of reasons, but one of the most important is our guests. It’s the public who fill your restaurant and put asses on seats, so it’s great. On a love of cooking I used to watch shows like Great Chefs, Great Cities in the Eighties. I remember being in the woods, playing alligators and snakes, and fishing, camping and building fires, so it’s also a kind of a nostalgia for smell and memory. On inspiration We’re all inspired by things indirectly – the sights, smells and the things we experience. So for me, it’s looking at the product, saying “what can we do to it?”, trying to understand it and cook it to make it taste the best. On his stand-out dishes Like most great restaurants we create all of our food from things from our location in the Bay Area. To do that we have to go back and redo all of our standard rota items, such as soy sauce which we make using inoculated grains, rather than soy beans. We grill the grains instead of putting them in raw so that it has a real Saison stamp. And we make our salt from seawater brought to us by the local fishermen. On farming We have our own farm in the mountains about 45 minutes from the

restaurant. We have cows so we can make all our own butter, crème fraîche and ice cream. We have ducks, chickens, pigs, all that stuff. And the vegetables we serve are very exciting. Everyone should have a farm. You pick the lettuce, you serve the lettuce – that’s what makes it taste good. On his favorite meal It would have to be Matsu Kawa in Tokyo, because of the delicateness, the balance, the subtlety. One of my favorite things about eating in Japan – and I’ve only been there once – is the sense of restraint. Here [in the USA] we have a tendency to commodify things because we’re afraid that people need more flavor, more spice, more this, more that. I want to cook the opposite – light but full of flavor and depth and nature. On the direction of dining I have a yearning to get back to the woods; I have had for years. I would love to get some land and just pick the lettuce, serve the lettuce. It would be nice to see restaurants, especially in America, become less about commodity and more about earnest, honest food. On the future We certainly haven’t arrived in the final resting place for Saison. Over time I always wanted the restaurant to become smaller and more hand crafted. So, we’ll see where that road takes us. And I’m opening another restaurant this summer – a hand-pulled Chinese noodle joint about a mile from Saison. EM

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62 DiverXO Madrid, Spain Head chef: David Muñoz NEW ENTRY 63 Martín Berasategui San Sebastián, Spain Head chef: Martín Berasategui 2014/53 64 Tetsuya’s Sydney, Australia Head chef: Tetsuya Wakuda 2014/60 65 Coi San Francisco, US Head chef: Daniel Patterson NEW ENTRY

2014/79 77 Benu

San Francisco, US Head chef: Corey Lee NEW ENTRY