Phew!
He gets to come home to his "wonderful" (and stinkin' adorable) family at the end of the day and plan out the next restaurant adventure or when he can get out on the water to work on his stand-up paddling strokes. You can read more about Chris over at his blog http://chris.ly/about/.
Here is Chris Lee's perfect food day (with no particular day parts):
While I'm itching to include flights to San Francisco and Los Angeles, I'm going to stay here in the Valley on this particular perfect food day.
First thing in the morning, I head to Orange Table and will go with a white flannel and a coffee soda. The white flannel is their killer corned beef hash with white onions, mushrooms, chunks of garlic and sour cream. The coffee soda is a wonderful drink with this house-made espresso syrup (reduction of, I think, 40 espresso shots) mixed with soda water. I will top with cream and a bit of vanilla. Probably my favorite drink ever!
Then in order to make sure that I don't stay in Scottsdale the whole day, I'm going to head downtown.
I'll swing by Giant Coffee for a perfect macchiato (and since it's my perfect food day, we'll say that Isaiah just happens to be at the bar pulling shots -- he rocks).
Then I will swing over right at opening time and have a lovely margherita pizza at Pizzeria Bianco. I'm going to have to limit myself to one and not go completely nuts with all the goodness at PB.
As I finish, I'll swing by Nobuo at Teeter House and have a couple oysters with uni in tomato water. As it's my perfect food day (again), let's say that Nobuo has the same amazing otoro I remember from one night at Sea Saw and serves up a bite of seared otoro cheek. This is still quite possibly one of the greatest bites I've had in my life. It was like tuna foie gras.
Finishing there, we'll swing by Rito's and pick up a few of the greatest green chili burros ever for a late night snack. I'll also drop in to Phoenix Ranch Market and grab a horchata at their wonderful aguas frescas bar.
Then I'll head back toward home. By now, I'm getting hungry again so on the way back to Scottsdale, we'll swing by Noca and grab some Wagyu pastrami and a duck egg raviolo.
Then I'll get home for a bit and get ready to go to dinner. As the 5 p.m. hour comes around, we'll swing by Petite Maison for mussels and one single gougere.
Then it's up to ShinBay, and we get the house-made tofu and a selection of amazing sushi from Kurita-san. As others have said, this place is one of the best-kept secrets in the Valley.
After that, we'll head back down to Old Town (near home) and maybe grab a Framboise on tap at Kazimierez while we wait to get hungrier again.
Then we'll head over to FnB for butter, radishes, cashews and honey and the epic lamb T-bones. Luckily Payton Curry is working that night and slips us some of his wonderful pate and foie terrine.
Getting pretty full now, we head over to Posh for their brûléed foie gras for desert. It also happens that for late night, they happen to have the red curry crab mac 'n' cheese, so we have to have some of that too.And for dessert (even though we're near home), we head back up north to Sweet Republic and I have two scoops -- honey blue cheese and date ice creams.
As I drive back home, I look wistfully at Andreoli and am quite sad that we didn't get there for the fried potatoes and leeks, a porchetta sandwich and something off the white specials board.
I'm back home now, and it's quite late. Everything is pretty much closed. I know I said I'd stay in AZ too but since there's nothing else open, I get a wild hair and call up Eric, and we jump in his plane and head over to Vegas. Raku seats until 3 a.m., so we grab some poached egg with sea urchin and salmon roe, some asparagus with crispy rice and a variety of their robot skewers.
