Sherry's Sweet Market

JEREZ DE LA FRONTERA, Spain

Dad's gateway drug will be breakfast.

Toast a little wheel of bread, pour a liberal dose of olive oil on top, add a few spoonfuls of crushed tomato and a sprinkle of salt for good measure. Watch the city wake up as you down a café con leche.

Later, have your idea of freshness brought up to date at the Mercado Central de Abastos where you sell fish or play second fiddle.

Perhaps due to most stalls' paintings of Jesus, the big-eyed redfish stare out, looking forlorn and guilty.

All I can think of is following one of these little ladies home so I can see how she cooks her fish.

Mercado Central de Abastos MAP

C/ Doña Blanca

Jerez de la Frontera

Toe-Tapping Sardines and Pork Roast From Heaven

JEREZ, Spain

It’s a wonderful feeling to know you’ll need to come back to a place before you sit down.

Eyes wide and fresh from the plane, we head to Bar Juanito for a crash course of a menu of the good and the local.

We try langoustines and mushrooms in a deep, sherry-laced sauce with bits of shell that give away some of its secrets. Then we dig into a little plate of fried fresh anchovies that, matched with a glass of the salty counterpart-loving fino wine, was toe-tapping goodness.

The bar’s signature artichokes slip by unnoticed - our fault for trying them offseason - but the showstopper is an Andalusian native that arrives with our drinks for free: chicharonnes - bite-sized cubes of pork which are like bits of crispy, fatty pork roast from heaven. My friend who’s on a diet takes one look and groans. I pop another and my heart skips a beat.

Count on 5-15 euros, depending on how peckish you feel.

Bar Juanito MAP
C/ Pescadería Vieja 8-10
11403 Jerez De La Frontera, Spain
956 33 48 38
bar-juanito.com

Hot Pan. Hot Oil.

BARCELONA

When I die, I’m sending friends to scatter my ashes in a couple of my favorite places around the world. Barcelona’s La Boqueria food market will be one of those spots.

I’ve said it before: I’d trade a meal at the market’s Pinotxo food ‘kiosk’ for many a three-star meal in a heartbeat. The world hums at a happier frequency whenever I’m there.

That said, I’ll make sure they keep my ashes on Pinotxo’s side of the market when the time comes.

We checked out Kiosko Universal a while back and though it felt a bit like I was dining with the enemy, a friend had sung its praises and I wanted to see for myself.

One of the wonderful things about the kiosks is how it’s all there for you to see. You sit at the bar and watch the cooks cook up the best the market has to offer. Look left - there’s someone selling fish! Look right - there’s someone cooking fish! There’s flash and bang and life everywhere and there you are in the middle of it all with a glass of Cava to celebrate. If you can’t draw inspiration from a space like this, check your pulse.

You also see when it all goes wrong.

At Kiosko Universal, we ordered Cava and immediately watched somebody’s fresh-cooked lunch get cold on the counter for five minutes before being delivered once a cook finally remembered it. Then we watched a cook work on our mushrooms by sautéing a big batch in a wok. It’s a great idea: blast something fresh with heat and serve it up quick, but there simple rules to sautéing that should be observed, most notably, as a chef once barked at me, “Hot pan. Hot oil.” Heat the pan, then heat the oil and then (and only then) add whatever you’re cooking. Flub up and need more oil? Send a trickle down the side of the pan so it heats up before it hits your food.

Cold oil on cold product leads to mush.

Here, however, we watch the cook pour an extra dose of cooking oil right on the mushrooms.

The cook looks bad, the chef looks worse and we lose our appetite…

…almost. We repent with coffee and dessert at Pinotxo.

Count on about 10-20 euros.

Kiosko Universal - MAP

La Boqueria

La Rambla 91
Barcelona

Berra Pizza Logic

BOSTON

It might be my inner Red Sox fan talking, but the best pizza we found in New York was in Boston.

This is completely unscientific but while in the city, I had to make a choice between burgers or pies and went with the former. Pizza stops were a bonus. Spills and all, Spunto was grand and Lombardi’s had fantastic toppings, but their crust must be an acquired taste.

Seeking a slice in Boston’s North End a few weeks later, we asked a Sox-capped local in front of a packed back street bar where to get a slice. The ‘slice’ part of the request gave him some trouble as he flipped through his mental Rolodex.

“Ah! Il Panino Express.”

Sold.

We ordered at the cafeteria-style counter, sat, bit and stared at each other in amazement.

She said: “This is better than New York.”

He said: “Yeah.”

Crisp crust, sweet sauce, a good dose of good cheese.

We’ll get ‘em next year.

Il Panino Express - MAP
264-266 Hanover St.
Boston
+1 (617) 720-5720

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.

Monks At The Table

MANHATTAN

There’s a lot to notice when we arrive at WD-50. The most outstanding is a booth of guys who look like they could be fraternity brothers, yet they’re silent as monks, paying close attention to what they’re eating; the antennae are up, they love the challenge.

You have to be up for the ride. Chef Wylie Dufresne bristles at the thought of preparing anything leaning toward making standard bistro fare for his customers. He’s just not interested.

What would he rather do? Stuff like floating plump scallops and pine needle udon in a bowl of grapefruit dashi. He deconstructs eggs benedict. He chars avocado. (?!?!) Even if his family is in the business you have to wonder how he thinks of this stuff, but when you put bites in your mouth, the combinations and preparations will stand hairs on end and leave you wondering how no one thought of it before.

Daniel Boulud’s kitchen at Daniel has a beautiful wall of spices sourced from around the world while Dufrene’s wall has pectins, starches and syrups. Yet the adjectives Dufresne cuisine inspires are words like ‘clean’ and ‘clear’ – you leave feeling like you’ve eaten a healthy Japanese dinner. His parsnip tart somehow makes me rethink my understanding of the vegetable. Parsnips!

Some argue the validity of this type of experimental cuisine - they should eat here to join the converted.

Finally, all hail Dufresne for having the confidence to keep and highlight the work of pastry chef Alex Stupak. Instead of a clash of egos (that would usually lead to the latter getting dumped), you just sit there and say ‘wow’ all meal long.

Count on about $65 plus drinks if you go à la carte. The tasting menu runs $140 plus $75 for wine pairing.

WD-50 – MAP
50 Clinton Street
New York
+1-212-477-2900
www.wd-50.com

Full disclosure: I ate at the restaurant while working on an upcoming story about Dufresne and his collaboration with chef Daniel Boulud. That said, Dufresne didn’t realize we were in the restaurant for dinner until dessert was over and the check was paid.

Fork Slapping Goodness?

MANHATTAN

I lied. I said there was ‘one’ NYC restaurant I’d really like to go back to eat in and, well, like I said…

Even at brunch a short while back, you could tell the new Le Pescadeux is a spot to watch: there’s a perfect smoked trout omelette and a steak and eggs that might stop your heart for multiple reasons at prices that won’t. And that’s not even counting Champagne and chats with Chuck.

Dinner’s what I’d really like to try, preferably with a partner for footsie. The restaurant’s fish-focused Quebec cuisine (harking back to owner Charles Perelmutter’s origins) is on display – and he’s breaking his new chef’s back to please by offering dinner ‘duets’ - a pair of half-sized portions – a great way to showcase what you can do and get a good new restaurant’s good name out there. Perelmutter chalks it up to “culinary A.D.D.”

I checked in with Perelmutter to find out about a chef change – the impressive Matthew Ridgway left and has been replaced by Adriano Ricco (clever poaching on Chuck’s part as Ricco’s done stints at BLT Fish and Tabla) – here’s what Chuck had to say about the ‘duet’ concept.

Even if I am in a great Seafood restaurant I get bored with my fish halfway through, and look to see what I can 'mooch' from others, usually with no success (people don't share anymore). I decided I would not be bored again and now I, and my guests, can enjoy 2 different half orders of fish prepared 2 different ways without getting their reaching fork slapped away.

Note the capitalization of Seafood.

Right now, I’d take the grilled octopus and Wild Rock bass with a little neck nage … kick the tires on a fun concept and see what the new chef can do.

Le Pescadeux - MAP
90 Thompson St
New York
212-966-0021
lepesca@yahoo.com

Egging for More

Now that I’m back home and typing up a bushel of NYC blogs, the one place I really want to go back to is Brooklyn’s Fort Defiance. Not only are the drinks top notch, chef Sam Filloramo wowed me while, thanks to some sort of new restaurant timing/shipping glitches, he was still working from a half-empty* kitchen.

His deviled eggs were so good, I went home and told my mom about them and if that wasn’t enough to get me to want to go back, the ever-changing menu they now post on their Web site does: rabbit and chorizo hash, oysters Rockefeller, pan-fried catfish … my word.

Apparently, they even do breakfast and all I can do is imagine the possibilities.

I’m interested to see how the combination of a serious drinks bar combined with chef who’s making his mark pans out. It can only be good.

Fort Defiance - MAP

365 Van Brunt St

Brooklyn, NY

+1 347-453-6672

www.fortdefiancebrooklyn.com

*Apparently, in mid-September, after the equipment arrived, a health inspector stopped in to check the kitchen and found gas equipment without gas service - like a car with an empty gas tank - and decided the restaurant would be better off closed for the week until they got the pipes hooked up… go figure.

Click here to see my Boston Globe Travel story, “Small Wonders” - featuring an interview with Fort Defiance owner and drinks expert St. John Frizell.