Hi everyone, I just joined on to egullet today, and was surprised to see a whole discussion on enRoute's Best New Restaurants feature, which I wrote. In reading the threads I found many interesting comments. There are a few things I want to set straight. There are no judges for the Best New Restaurants. There's just me. Here's how it works: We have 20 professional foodies (people like Bonnie Stern and Chef Michael Smith) from across Canada research and send in their top five picks of the year. (Lesley was actually a panelist last year so I don't know why she didn't correct that statement.) Then we at enRoute do further research and narrow down the list. Since I'm doing all of the eating in a month (better for straight ahead comparisons and fairness), we must limit the restaurants to about 5 in each city. I'm the only one who eats at all of the restaurants (with friends) and I'm the one who makes all of the decisions. I told enRoute when I did this last year, and again this year, that if it should happen that the top 10 are all in Montreal, Toronto or Vancouver, so be it. I'm not out to make friends. However, this did not prove to be the case. In what looks to be a suspiciously nice spread, there is, in fact, great food across the country. On a similar but different note, enRoute pays for all flights. Air Canada doesn't own enRoute, a publishing company called Spafax does. In fact, some of the flights I took this summer weren't even on Air Canada planes. Also, I did eat at Brunois and Rosalie (the full list is at the enRoute site). But I digress... It's a big country, it was a big job, and very filling to say the least. But what my choices boiled down to were general deliciousness, and the best overall dining experiences: basically what I think most people would be looking for in a great night out and a memorable meal. If that means organic blue corn tacos piled high with fresh caught salmon and mango salsa in the wilds of Tofino, so be it. Everyone's dining experiences are different. Different tastes and different strokes. Plus, on some nights a restaurant can be "on" and others, not as much. We all know this; especially at new restaurants. Finally, these choices aren't in fact proper reviews. They're informed snippets that show you what's new and great out there. The winners were my favorites, culled from over 50 restaurants, and I'm proud of them and stand by them.
