The Best New Restaurants Aren't In Connecticut: Magazine

CONNECTICUT — Condé Nast Traveler has been publishing its "Hot List" of the top new hotels for a quarter century. This year the magazine extended the scope of its honor roll to include restaurants, transportation and destinations.

Unfortunately for our estimation of the magazine's editorial board, the book failed to find any worthies among the latest batch of Connecticut eateries. They could not have been looking very hard if they missed Toro Taberna in West Hartford, but we're not here to judge.

The magazine's top five choices were in Chicago, Miami, Hong Kong, Las Vegas and New Zealand, all of which violated our Prime Directive for restaurant road trips of not paying more for gas than the meal. A "casual gourmet vegan" in Copenhagen, a new Peruvian-Chinese in L.A., and a farm-to-table housed in a 16th-century Capuchin monastery in Switzerland were all really, really, tempting, but again: that Prime Directive got in the way.

That left just two "Hot List" restaurants arguably within driving distance of most parts of Connecticut, if you like driving: Brooklyn's Cozy Royale, and Laser Wolf in Philadelphia.

Cozy Royale is the brain child of the same team who brought The Meat Hook, a whole-animal-to-butcher shop, to Brooklyn, so no gourmet vegan there, we'll guess. Instead, Condé Nast Traveler raved about the restaurant's Appalachian cuisine (who knew?), and the pickled bologna in particular. The editors also promise that Cozy Royale serves up the "finest version of a pepperoni roll you can find," and we've found plenty, so Brooklyn will be our first stop.

Then it's down to Philly where we'll dine at our first "shipudiya." That's the rough equivalent of a diner or burger joint, if we were in Israel, which we won't be, we'll be at Laser Wolf in Philly's hipster Kensington neighborhood. The restaurant is the second Philly hot spot from culinary wunderkinds Steven Cook and Michael Solomonov.

According to Condé Nast Traveler, "The soaring interpretations of Israeli cuisine the duo introduced at their first restaurant, Zahav, have made it one of the most coveted reservations in Philly since it opened in 2008. Laser Wolf sees the restaurateurs offering a more stripped-down but similarly inspired rendition of their oeuvre, with the cooking happening over live coals."

If you like your oeuvres over easy, you're out of luck, as Laser Wolf leans towards family-sized kebabs poking through slabs of Romanian-style beef, tamarind-slathered trout, and charred eggplant, according to the magazine. There's plenty of hummus and pita, or course, but foie gras, a 50-day dry-aged ribeye steak, and an entire rack of lamb also feature prominently on the menu.

Sure, you'll lay a lot of miles on the odometer for this foodie Odyssey, but neither of these joints is cheap, so don't worry about violating the Prime Directive.

It'll be a good-sized road trip, so make sure you take the time to line up the proper tunes along with the right friends who can appreciate it all.