Restaurants that Changed My Life, Part 3

From NYC to Lyon, Madrid and Florence, these experiences shaped who I am today.

Here’s my continued list of restaurants that changed my life.

These are the places that made an impact on me as a child — places I dined at with my parents or friends that influenced me greatly.

I had so many selections that I split it into a few parts: Here’s Part 1 and Part 2. Read Part 3 below.

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Tenryu, New York City, 1973-78

One of my best friends is Japanese. When we were growing up, his father, who LOVED food, would take us out almost every Sunday to a restaurant called Tenryu. I was always at their family’s house on weekends and those meals have stuck with me forever. A parade of small dishes, platters of sashimi and then sushi, and usually some shared larger plates like sukiyaki or donabe pots.

No big deal now, but as a 13 year old I was gobsmacked. I had my first taste of chicken sashimi there. Maybe that set the tone for later years, but for sure the idea of eating a properly coursed Japanese food experience led me to understand that different cultures and divisions within those cultures ate in way that were similar AND dissimilar. One size did not fit all. And that was a valuable lesson.

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Restaurant Paul Bocuse, Lyon, France, 1976

When I was 15, I went skiing with my family and friends in Val d’Isere, France. It snowed for 11 days straight and no one was allowed on the mountains to ski for two days after the last flakes landed so they could dynamite the pistes to make them safe for the spring skiers. So my dad rented a giant van and drove us all to Lyon to dine at Restaurant Paul Bocuse. I had never experienced a meal like this before, the first meal of its kind where: