Buckle up for a two-hour “Mise en Place” marathon where we takes you behind the scenes at seven Michelin-starred restaurants
Since 2019, Eater’s Emmy-nominated video series Mise En Place has been pulling back the curtain and giving viewers an inside look at how the world’s top-tier restaurants are run. Among these restaurants, many hold coveted Michelin stars, and today, seven of those spots come together in a two-hour Mise en Place marathon highlighting Michelin-approved restaurants — of varying styles — in New York City, D.C., and London.
The marathon starts in New York with the iconic three-Michelin-starred French restaurant Le Bernardin. Helmed by chef Eric Ripert, Le Bernardin has made a name for itself serving incredible seafood prepared with the freshest ingredients — it got its first Michelin star back in 1976. Next up is the much newer Francie in Williamsburg. Opened in the middle of the pandemic by chef Christopher Cipollone, Francie scored itself a Michelin star just months after its debut. Mise then turns its attention to Essential by Christophe on the Upper West Side, where executive chef, partner, an in-house butcher Christophe Bellanca creates simple dishes with meticulous French culinary techniques. Finally, fried chicken hotspot Coqodaq closes out New York City: The second concept by the team behind Korean steakhouse Cote, Coqodaq dares to ask the question: “Can fried chicken be fine dining?” The answer: yes.
After exploring some of New York’s top dining destinations, Mise en Place heads to D.C., where Minibar by José Andrés awaits. A two-Michelin-starred restaurant, Minibar is known for its theatrics and avant-garde dishes. Finally, Eater takes a trip across the pond to London to visit Ikoyi, headed by chefs Jeremy Chan and Iré Hassan-Odukale, and A. Wong, lead by chef Andrew Wong. One of London’s hottest restaurants, Ikoyi is best known for its dry-aged beef dishes, while A. Wong, London’s only two-Michelin-starred Chinese restaurant, ambitiously serves two separate menus every day.
Watch Mise en Place: A Michelin-Starred Marathon for an inside look at what it takes to capture Michelin’s attention.
No one asked to be part of your content
The conversation was easy and lively, the way it always is when the four of us are together. We sat in the bustle of a packed brunch at Pastis, sipping our masala chai at the Dishoom pop-up, the restaurant moving with the grace and bang of a Broadway number. We weren’t just eating, we were part of an organism of service and communion. That was the point.
And then, a light, and an instinctual squinting that interrupted the hum. The table next to us had whipped out a handheld LED light, which at the moment was shining directly at our table. As they whirled it around to photograph their meal, the light shone on other neighbors, and to the mirrored wall behind them, reflecting the beam back on the dining room. Oh how we wanted to ignore it. What happens at another table is none of my business, after all. But the light kept coming, kept roaring into our eyeline as they stood and shimmied around the table, capturing their eggs from every angle. It was impossible to look away. Maybe that was what they wanted.
This obviously isn’t the first time I’ve observed this. Sometimes it’s happened at my own table (I work in food media after all). But two weeks later, in Kansas City, I ate dinner while an influencer a table over had his phone stand and ring light set up for the entire meal, shining across the dining room. I cannot abide by this. If I have any power as a food writer to influence behavior, then I’ll use it now: Put your lights away and let us eat in peace.
It feels quaint to call something “rude” in 2024, as if every callout of a social transgression needs to have some loftier justification. But shining an LED as bright as a car headlight into the eyes of fellow diners just because you want a clean shot of the butter plate is rude. It interrupts the hospitality a restaurant has meticulously planned, and it plain sucks to be in the middle of a bite or a conversation and have everyone stop and turn to see where the hell that light is coming from.
I realize I am increasingly in the minority opinion here, especially among my own food media colleagues, who believe there is a way to use LED lights responsibly. But in my experience, many light operators tend to underestimate how disruptive their behavior is. Or they see it as a temporary but necessary annoyance. Content creators may argue that their jobs depend on beautiful photos and engaging videos, which just aren’t possible to create in dim restaurants without control of a light source.
Some of the onus to curb this behavior is certainly on the restaurants, many of which invite influencers and their digital setups into the dinner rush for promotion. But if Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives were filming at your spot, surely you’d warn your customers. I don’t know what restaurants should do to balance the needs of the internet economy they may rely on and the rest of their clientele (influencer-only hours?), but allowing someone to livestream an entire meal with their own lighting rig seems a bit much.
What makes it particularly icky is feeling like you’re now involved in someone else’s work. When making a reservation, you consent to being a part of the business of the restaurant, paying what’s necessary and acting in a way that doesn’t disrupt those around you. In exchange, you receive a meal and also all that hospitality brings. You do not consent to suddenly becoming a studio audience.
Of course, take your food photos. Most of us live our lives at least partially online now, and there is joy in documenting the moment, creating a keepsake of a meal and a day with cherished company. And flash can be fun for artfully ugly shots, as long as you’re not taking a ton of them. But everyone is there to experience the whole, not be made to watch as you selfishly man a literal spotlight. So once again, I’m beseeching: Put it away and let us eat in peace.
The herb’s hardiness means it’s tough to kill — and a challenge to use up
We’re all probably guilty of buying a bunch of mint for a drink that calls for just a sprig or two, only for the rest of it to end up a week later in the kitchen garbage bin, that graveyard of well-intentioned food purchases.
After years of tossing out decomposing mint and coriander, I have finally embraced the South Asian kitchen ethos, where you batch-cook, freeze, pickle, preserve, or transform — in other words, do anything to avoid food waste. And mint is one ingredient that encourages this approach. Its versatility and hardiness allow you to use it across life stages and forms, which means you can preserve it with as much or as little effort as your lifestyle allows. Your mint storage can be done several ways (or you can skip straight to the part about my favorite desi condiment — chutney).
Mint is suspiciously hard to kill. I speak from experience, as the herb once overran the backyard of one of my London house shares to the point where it felt less like an abundance and more like an invasion. When I lived in Istanbul several years ago, it was the only plant in my garden that survived a summer hailstorm. So it follows that you don’t need any special skills or tools to easily replant potted mint in your garden.
For those of us living in flats, I suggest you avoid the temptation to toss mint into the fridge with its original packaging, which can lead to slimy leaves and eventually mold. Instead, find a narrow tumbler — I use an old plastic protein shaker — fill it less than halfway with water (so that the leaves won’t get wet), add the mint, and leave it in the fridge. Stored this way, the mint can last for weeks, so long as you replace the water every few days so it doesn’t grow too rank. Alternately, you can loosely wrap the mint in a damp, wrung-out paper towel and store it in a food-grade wax, silicone, or plastic bag in the fridge; this method will also give you fresh mint for weeks.
When you’re prepping the mint for the fridge, I highly encourage grabbing a dozen leaves and rinsing and patting them dry for mint ice cubes. Just add a leaf, and maybe a lemon slice for a twist, to each ice cube mold before filling it with water. Ice trays are also an excellent way to preportion and store blended mint (or coriander).
Frozen blended mint or coriander cubes are very easy to prep — you just have to power through the tedium of plucking, washing, and drying leaves before blending them with as little water as possible. Add some oil to help keep them fresh and portion the blend into an ice cube tray. Think of these as flavor bombs: You can add them to the blender for a frozen marg or for ayran, a salty Turkish yogurt drink. I frequently add them to raita, the queen of condiments, which goes rather brilliantly with biryani, chili, samosas, and wings. I let the cube soften as I whip some yogurt with salt and garlic and then add it to taste.
But my favorite use for mint is green chutney. Together with fresh coriander (aka cilantro), it makes up the power couple that goes into the staple desi condiment. When I was growing up, there was always a jar of homemade green chutney right next to the mustard and ketchup in our fridge, and more in the freezer. There are a hundred ways to make it and no one correct recipe; instead, you use your taste buds as your guide. As such, I suggest following basic tips:
Work the ingredients in batches in the blender, adding the minimum amount of water required to make the blades function. Taste, adjust ratios to the desired heat, salt, and pungency levels, then continue blending and tasting throughout. The next time I make chutney, I plan to add some grated fresh coconut and see where that takes me. Some people lean heavier on mint for more freshness, while others prefer a more coriander-heavy flavor profile. There is no one way to do it.
Decant the chutney into a jar and refrigerate. Chutney will last for weeks, so long as you never use a dirty or wet spoon to serve it. You can also freeze it; if you do so, my move is to usually add olive oil or vinegar or lemon before freezing as a low-key preservative.
One of my chutney endeavors this summer was inspired by Lapis, an Afghan restaurant in Washington, D.C., and a craving for a chutney sandwich. Much like pesto, the restaurant’s green chutney relied on nuts for texture, and it got me thinking: Why not transform chutney into pesto for... focaccia?
If you deconstruct a good chutney sandwich, it’s chutney, a layer of something rich and fatty, and really good bread. So I took half of my chutney mise en place, swapped the pomegranate seeds for sunflower seeds, and added generous glugs of Palestinian olive oil to make a chutney pesto. I then incorporated the pesto into my focaccia dough, and prayed to my oven not to fail me. The result? My less-than-perfectly baked focaccia is now the bread for my new, more intense chutney sandwich; plus it makes a mean Bombay toastie.
Weeks after I used, prepped, and stored the mint I got for the chutney focaccia, I discovered some wrapped in paper towels in a wax bag. It was dried out but still alive. I sprinkled it over some harissa chickpeas, smug as hell in the knowledge that I was not just embracing the Pakistani kitchen no-waste ethos, but also evolving the desi legacy of stretching and preserving ingredients by adding new ways to make the most of humble, everlasting mint.
Halima Mansoor is a breaking news editor who sees the kitchen as a revolutionary space. In addition to documenting food, she is on a mission to trace her food heritage, explore immigrant cuisine, and initiate more people into the Marmite club.
Dilek Baykara is a Turkish American illustrator, print designer, and adventurous gastronome living in Brooklyn, New York.
It also happens to be gluten-free
I’m grateful the talented recipe developers at Bob’s Red Mill didn’t catch wind of the fact that many Americans detest the word “moist” before slapping the “Magically Moist Almond Cake” recipe on millions of bags of their Super-Fine Almond Flour. While they have made an addendum to the recipe online, adding “a.k.a. Amazing Almond Cake,” they haven’t updated the packaging. And rightfully so: there’s simply no better way to describe this cake than by attributing some sort of wizardry to it. Somehow, its crumb is simultaneously airy and dense, delicate and sturdy, light and rich, elegant and gritty. “Amazing” simply does not cut it.
This recipe first came into my life in 2019 in the form of a birthday cake. A friend presented a single, unassuming golden-brown layer alongside a bowl of whipped cream and sliced strawberries. The cake wasn’t a showstopper, but the moment I took a bite, I knew it was something special. Since then, I’ve made it innumerable times. It’s luxurious enough you could confidently serve it at a dinner party, but simple enough you could call it breakfast. It would never be out of place alongside a cup of afternoon tea or a splash of amaro at the end of an evening. You can leave it completely bare, dust it with powdered sugar, or serve it with any combination of dairy — whipped cream, creme fraiche, and ice cream work great here — and fresh fruit or jam. If you don’t believe me, just skim the recipe’s comments section and you’ll see countless rave reviews.
While the fine folks at Bob’s do not specify the origins of the cake, it seems likely it was inspired by Spain’s tarta de Santiago, a flourless almond cake that has been welcoming intrepid travelers and pilgrims at the end of the Camino de Santiago in Galicia since the Middle Ages. The fragrant Spanish cake is prized for its dense yet light texture and almond-forward flavor. The twist in this recipe is that Bob’s — the main purveyor of perhaps the world’s greatest selection of alternative flours — also adds coconut flour to the alt-flour party. Combined with the holy baking trinity — eggs, butter, and sugar — the ground nuts transform into a homey, fragrant cake.
An unexpected perk of this cake is that it is naturally gluten-free. Although I regularly consume vast quantities of gluten, I appreciate having a recipe in my back pocket that I can easily whip up for friends who are gluten intolerant. The Bob’s recipe comment section is full of cooks boasting about how they served it to people who had preconceived notions about gluten-free baked goods and how this cake convinced them they could be just as great as their gluten-full counterparts.
The recipe is also keto/paleo/primal low-glycemic-friendly, thanks to its flexible blueprint. Whether you want to replace the sugar with honey, make it vegan by swapping in oil and alt-milks for the dairy, use almond or lemon extract in lieu of vanilla, deploy all-purpose in place of the coconut flour, or pour the batter into cupcake tins, it always works out. Again, just look to the comments section for proof: it’s filled with triumphant bakers touting a myriad of tweaks.
But back to the fateful night in 2019 when this cake I first crossed paths. As I was leaving to go home, my friend handed me a slice of the cake wrapped in foil and told me to stick it in my freezer. She promised that somehow it was even better cold. I followed her directions and it did not disappoint. Because the cake is so moist, a trip to the freezer gives it an almost fudgey texture. While I adore it at any temperature, I’ll admit that sometimes I skip straight to freezing it once it’s been unearthed from the pan. If you follow my lead, you, too, can always have a slice of cake at the ready.
Additional photo illustration credits: cake photo by Kaitlin Bray
Patricia Tanumihardja’s fifth cookbook alchemizes flavor, personal narrative, and sage kitchen guidance
There are those of us who think of cooking as something of a chore — the less time in the kitchen, the better. Then there are folks like me, who relish visiting specialty grocery stores to hunt for ingredients and like nothing better than spending an entire day in the kitchen, nose in a cookbook, learning how another culture cooks.
That’s why I was immediately interested in Mortar and Pestle: Classic Indonesian Recipes for the Modern Kitchen, the fifth cookbook from Pat Tanumihardja. Born in Java, Indonesia, and raised in Singapore, Tanumihardja grew up learning to cook from her mother, Juliana Evari Suparman. Suparman, a native Javan, is a keen cook who turned her cooking passion into one of Seattle’s first Indonesian restaurants, Julia’s Indonesian Kitchen (which she sold in 2011). I’ve appreciated Tanumihardja’s previous works, including The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook, because she writes thoroughly detailed recipes and with a vivid, friendly tone. What better way to dip my toe into a cuisine I knew nothing about than with an author I already trusted?
True to the book’s title, a mortar and pestle is used in nearly every recipe to create bumbu bumbu, the spice pastes that lend a panoply of complex flavors to Tanumihardja’s 75 noodle dishes, soups, curries, and grilled foods. Grinding away on a mortar full of shallots, toasted spices, lemongrass, and galangal is just the sort of kitchen alchemy I love. But Tanumihardja is aware that it’s not everyone’s idea of fun, and suggests employing a mini food processor if pestling isn’t your thing.
That willingness to pivot, simplify, or substitute is woven throughout Mortar and Pestle. As a total newb, I found Tanumihardja’s laid-back attitude reassuring. “I’m the first to admit that Indonesian recipes often require a lot of ingredients. I’m also the first to say that it’s okay to omit the hard-to-find ones,” Tanumihardja writes. No candlenuts? Use macadamias. Don’t have access to kecap manis (the sweet soy sauce ubiquitous in Indonesian cooking)? There’s a three-ingredient recipe so you can make your own. Don’t love frying food? There’s a note about how to use an air fryer.
Tanumihardja is also the author of four children’s books, including Ramen for Everyone. Her playful, encouraging tone carries over in Mortar and Pestle. She describes pandan leaves blended with coconut as “grass clippings,” calls herself out as a spice “wuss,” and teases her father for his love of kecap manis, revealing that he even travels with a bottle of the sweet-salty condiment in his luggage. Tanumihardja relays her wisdom and recipes with a sense of discovery and fun, so although I had trepidation, I was less afraid of messing up, certain that if I tweaked a recipe, all would be well.
I started with the roasted whole fish rubbed with spice paste, an easy win. It was just a matter of making a paste of aromatics in my mini chopper, stuffing the paste into slashes cut into a whole branzino, and roasting the fish in a hot oven. Twenty minutes later, I had very moist fish full of gingery garlic bits, and a newfound confidence with cooking (and eating) whole fish. Smashed chicken with green sambal is another dish I’ll be adding to my repertoire. Essentially a chicken stir-fry finished with a smoky green chile paste, the only effort it required was seeding and roasting jalapeños and grinding them with lemongrass, lime leaves, and a little sugar. (Note to self: Turn on the exhaust fan before you start.) The leftovers served as a brilliant taco filling the next day, just as the headnote promised they would.
Other recipes weren’t quite as quick, but really delivered on the flavor front. The peanut gravy required frying raw peanuts (or using the type you grind in-store) and grinding them with 11 other ingredients. It was a bit of an involved process, but the taste of rich fried peanuts combined with caramel-y palm sugar, funky chile paste, herbal lime leaves, and tart tamarind was so vividly delicious that one of my pickiest friends tried it and declared, “I want to roll around in that.” Another game changer was the Oma’s grilled pork satay. Shellacked in a marinade of palm sugar, toasted coriander, turmeric, and lemongrass, it had the adults at my table arm-wrestling for the last skewer. The headnote tip to buy ultra-thin bulgogi pork slices from a Korean market was worth the price of the book alone.
The only hiccups I encountered were the relative spiciness of some of the recipes and my own lack of familiarity with some of the ingredients and sub-recipes. I ended up bookmarking the pantry section buried in the back of the book to more easily reference unfamiliar ingredients. It’s a minor quibble, but providing English translations of some of those ingredients — air asam, acar campur, sambal terasi — within the recipes themselves would help beginners like me.
As for the chiles, I can now say I’ve learned my limit. While I loved the nuanced combo of lime leaves, tomato, and toasted spices in the spicy eggplant recipe, the recipe also calls for four Fresno chiles plus two red bird chiles. I don’t doubt Tanumihardja’s decision to include them, but no one at my table could handle more than small bites at a time. I ran into a similar issue with the book’s spicy sheet-pan fried rice. Its seasoning mix includes 1 tablespoon of sambal terasi (jarred chile paste with dried shrimp) and I found myself diving for yogurt to soothe my wounded mouth halfway through a plate of it. This was a user error, really. I know better. Moving forward, I’m taking the author’s advice in the introduction to heart: Start with less; you can always add more, but it is harder to take the spice away.
Learning a new cuisine can be one of life’s great pleasures if you’ve got the right cookbook to work from. Mortar and Pestle provides sage cooking guidance woven together with cultural context and personal anecdotes that make it fun to both read and cook from. I’m a long way from understanding a cuisine as complex as Indonesia’s, but as Tanumihardja states in the introduction, practice makes progress.
Ivy Manning is a Portland, Oregon-based award-winning food writer and author of 10 cookbooks, including Tacos A to Z: A Delicious Guide to Nontraditional Tacos. She is a regular recipe tester and editor for Eater as well as restaurants and appliance brands.
Jamón Ibérico at the oldest tapas bar in town, seasonal seafood at the casual sister spot of a Michelin-starred restaurant, fresh churros with chocolate at a bustling neighborhood cafe, and more of Seville’s best meals
With more than 300 days of sunshine a year, Seville has developed a reputation in Spain for its buzzing social scene. On any given Tuesday, you’ll find tons of callejeros, literally “street people,” out and about, sipping ice-cold beers, throwing back modestly priced tapas, and carrying on until the wee hours of the morning. To cater to all these thirsty and hungry revelers, Seville offers more bars and restaurants than any reasonable person could ever experience in one visit.
As the capital of the southern Andalusia region, Seville has acted for centuries as a crossroads for peoples from Europe, North Africa, and Asia. Moorish rule during the Middle Ages had a particularly outsized influence on the city’s architecture and culture. These influences are clear today around town and at Seville’s historic, centuries-old establishments, distinguishing the city from Spain’s other culinary capitals.
Megan Frances Lloyd is a freelance food and travel journalist living in Seville, Spain. You can find her bylines in places like Conde Nast Traveler, Bon Appétit, United Hemispheres, and Fodor’s Essential Spain.
