Best Restaurants 2009: Married to the Job

I didn’t always have love handles. But four years ago I met my wife, Allison, and I haven’t stopped eating since. You see, my wife gets paid to write about restaurants. And I get to tag along on a nonstop eating escapade that has taken me to taco trucks, steak houses, falafel shacks and diners from here to New York and back.

My life has become a quest-by-association for delicious things to eat. Every weekend it’s “Honey, feel like tortas? There’s a new place in South Park,” or “I’ve just gotta have a shrimp dumpling; let’s head down to Jade Garden before the dim sum rush.” And my palate—unrefined and easily distracted though it may be—goes along for the ride.

Allison’s job is to critique the ambience, the service and the food. My job is to function as an auxiliary stomach, provide shrewd (or at least not nitwitted) observations where I can (“I think I detect a little cumin in that ragu, honey”), and above all, avoid the cardinal sin of blowing her cover as a reviewer. I made that mistake on one of our first “review” dates when, to Allison’s enduring horror, I blurted out our real names to the maître d’ at a high-end eatery. Nowadays, I’ve got the alias du jour memorized before we hit the door: Mr. Jeter? Your table will be ready any minute now.

If I had the slightest ego in matters of eating, I can’t help but think that our courtship would have crashed and burned before it ever got off the ground. When we first met, I was living in Wyoming, subsisting on freezer cuts of mule deer and antelope four nights a week. But it wasn’t long before I was consulting James Beard on the finer points of roasting, finishing my elk backstrap with Valdeón butter and wrestling with the chemistry of a balky sourdough starter. By the time Allison scored the dining-editor gig at this magazine, I had no reservations about dropping the alpha role in our “date” nights out. And it’s a good thing.

There’s something emasculating about being told by your date to stop eating so fast (my sin: scarfing down an eye-rollingly good Manchego and port after dinner at Crush), or which wine to drink with the mussels (even when I know she’s right). And what’s a guy to do when his better half just has to pop into Boat Street (before a full dinner elsewhere) to sample the pickle plate, but all he really wants to do is dive into a dry-aged porterhouse? What any good wingman would do: He orders a dry Sapphire martini up and nibbles on a damned pickle. After all, she’s on the clock, and she’s paying.

I’m quibbling here, of course. For every wispy, overpriced small plate I’ve picked at around town there’s a knockout like How to Cook a Wolf’s cauliflower agnolotti; for every predictable upscale hotel restaurant there’s a wonderfully warm and unexpected experience like the Corson Building.

And in what alternate universe would I ever find myself feasting on fois gras bonbons at Capitol Hill’s Licorous before heading across the street to tackle some steak tartare at Café Presse, and—oh, what the hell—a cheese plate at Harvest Vine to cap off the evening?

Frankly, I don’t have the imagination, or the pocketbook, to pull off that kind of gastronomic hat trick on my own.