Best meals of 2011

Some of them are unrepeatable, like the subtle Indian feast a friend cooked or the dinner for more than 100 outside at one long table in front of a historic chateau in France. Or the wild crayfish that a Rioja producer pulled out of a pond next to his winery and cooked up for lunch. The number 10 doesn't begin to cover the best meals I've had this year. After making lists and then other lists, here's my attempt to recount the year's most memorable, in no particular order.

Roast chicken dinner at Farmshop. Sunday nights at Farmshop are devoted to fried chicken, pretty much the same recipe as was served at Ad Hoc when chef-owner Jeffrey Cerciello was Thomas Keller's right-hand man. It's the best. But the bird I'm nominating as one of the 10 best meals is Cerciello's organic roasted chicken. As the centerpiece of one late-summer night's prix fixe menu, it was served family-style on a handcrafted black platter. Golden and crisp, the flesh dense yet moist, each bite was better than the last. It came with roasted heirloom eggplant and an emerald salsa verde studded with pistachio. As a first course, he served rustic chickpea hummus garnished with whole fried garbanzos. Dessert was a round of dreamy lemon custard with crumbly pistachio shortbread. And since Farmshop had just added a la carte options, we ordered a billowy meringue filled with lemon crème fraîche with dark fuchsia huckleberries spooned over the top. We drank a terrific Gamay and sat at the communal table, serving ourselves, lost in talking and eating. It was one of the most relaxed — and delicious — meals I had in a restaurant all year.

Burgers at Short Order. A Saturday night in November, only days after the late Amy Pressman's Short Order finally opened and it was a 45-minute wait (for a burger!). After leaving a cellphone number, we headed over to Barnes & Noble at the Grove as fake snow fell. The phone summoned us back to two seats at the counter inside, where we watched the mixologists at work. Short Order is a grown-up burger joint with serious cocktails, a great soundtrack and a fresh, modern look. The burger to get is Nancy's Backyard Burger (that would be Mozza's Nancy Silverton, who was involved in the project with her old friend). The two of them tested and tested and tested the buns, the beef, the sauces and the fixings, and the result is just about perfect. The shiny brown bun holds its own against the juicy, coarsely ground beef patty loaded up with bacon, Comté cheese, avocado, tomato, onion, iceberg lettuce and spicy mayo. Some of the burgers feature grass-fed beef. There's a pork and a turkey burger too. Short Order spuds, small potatoes smashed just enough to crack them open before they're deep-fried, are like crack potatoes, to dip or not in a sticky delicious aioli. Dessert could be a coffee malt shake or, for just a couple of bucks, a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. Killer.