If you go back and reread the awards from 2007, 2008, or 2009, you'll notice these aren't exactly traditional: we try to avoid hackneyed categories like the "Best Italian Restaurant". We draw more inspiration from Esquire's bygone "Dubious Achievement Awards", and so spend as much time deflating the overhyped and shameless as we do lauding the worthy. (And if an award is too snarky even for my rather-indulgent editors to publish, it ends up here.)
Anyway, the biweekly Stuff Magazine, which focuses on Boston nightlife, fashion, food and drink -- and where I also write the recurring Food Coma column on Boston fine dining restaurants -- is the only publication I know that would let me recognize both the fanciest, most expensive new French restaurant in town and a modest, slightly mysterious, out-of-the-way Haitian restaurant on the same page. Our friends at publications like Boston Magazine ain't doing a Lady Gaga of Plating Award, or a Biggest Balls Award, a rare recurring category of which I'm especially proud.
Ruth and I always have a blast pointing out both the most notable and notorious chefs, bartenders, dining trends, restaurants, dishes and stories from the past year of Boston's great little dining scene. Hope you enjoy it, too!
