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"FacebookPinterest\n\nWe understand why you might like a restaurant that opened last week: Sometimes a man has to eat what no man has eaten before. We don\u2019t mind something trendy, but we also like places that endure. We think fine restaurants get better with age.\n\nHere\u2019s a list of restaurants that have been serving good, sometimes memorable food for at least ten years. Some are fancy, others plain. Some are unfamiliar, others gaudy with acclaim. They all deserve your everlasting respect, to say nothing of your patronage. If you pass them up, you\u2019re missing a taste of history.\n\n1. Commander\u2019s Palace\n\n New Orleans, LA\n\nThe Creole cuisine of New Orleans was practically invented here, and for that matter, so was Emeril Lagasse, the ecutive chef from 1982 until 1990. This is a huge, eye-catching restaurant, particularly on weekends, when jazz brunch is served: You get a Bloody Mary, an egg Sardou (a poached egg with creamed spinach and hollandaise sauce on an artichoke bottom), lacquered quail, bread-pudding souffl\u00E9. Named for Emile Commander, the original owner, Commander\u2019s Palace dates from the \u201980s\u2014the 1880s\u2014and in all that time it has never served Cajun food, no matter what tourists might think.\n\n2. The French Laundry\n\n Yountville, CA\n\nYou can\u2019t eat any better. It\u2019s impossible. There\u2019s heartier food. There\u2019s fancier food. There\u2019s even\u2014hard to believe\u2014more expensive food. Nobody, however, matches Thomas Keller\u2019s exquisite ability to uplift the classics. Eleven years ago, the French Laundry was a mundane Napa Valley spot\u2014I remember dining on an entr\u00E9e that tasted like supermarket chicken. Then Keller took over, and now everything is upscale, inspired, and even clever, like the amuse-bouche of salmon tartare in a tiny, crunchy cone, inspired by Baskin-Robbins. Often called the best restaurant in America and occasionally the best in the world, the French Laundry is the perfect blending of American sensibilities, French technique, and human obsession.\n\n3. Sparks Steak House\n\n New York, NY\n\nI like steak. I don\u2019t like steak houses. They\u2019re either too glittery and expensive or too crude and dumbed down. It\u2019s easy to make a lot of money selling steak\u2014that\u2019s because the boys come in hordes and order Cabernet Sauvignon by the tub. Sparks is an exception to the rule that steak houses don\u2019t have to be smart. The sirloin strip is consistently the best in the city. The service is polished (when the place isn\u2019t frantically overcrowded). The wine list is wonderful, with some of the best Bordeaux bargains in America. That\u2019s probably the lure that doomed Paul Castellano, longtime Mob boss and budding wine connoisseur. Twenty years ago, he was famously shot down outside the front door.\n\n4. Matsuhisa\n\n Beverly Hills, CA\n\nBefore there was Nobu in New York, there was Matsuhisa, our most beloved fusion restaurant, opened in 1987 by Nobu Matsuhisa. His black cod marinated in miso was the first cooked Japanese food that Americans took to their hearts. His yellowtail sashimi with citrus sauce and slivers of jalape\u00F1o pepper is the most brilliant variation on raw fish ever conceived.\n\nAsk for grilled Kobe beef and grilled toro tuna, side by side. These days Nobu Matsuhisa is challenged for the title of America\u2019s most respected Japanese chef by Masa Takayama of Masa in New York\u2019s Time Warner Center, but even he can\u2019t equal Nobu when it comes to interpreting Japanese food.\n\n5. The Inn at Little Washington \n\n Washington, VA\n\nUntil the French Laundry came along, this was the small-town restaurant everybody talked about. And where style is concerned, it still beats the French Laundry at emulating the Michelin three-star countryside-dining experience. But if the feel is French, the food is mostly American, the most elegant native cuisine around. Home-schooled chef Patrick O\u2019Connell likes to rely on local ingredients gathered from his charmed location in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The service is astounding, the wine list is dazzling, and your meal will seem like a relative bargain if you stay the night in one of the incredibly expensive, amazingly detailed guest rooms.\n\n6. East Coast Grill &amp;amp; Raw Bar\n\n Cambridge, MA\n\nThis place defines culinary mayhem. At the very least, your food will be grilled, seasoned, and topped with salsa. That\u2019s if you don\u2019t want too much done with it. The rooms shudder with turquoise, orange, and blue. The menu encourages patrons to buy drinks for the kitchen staff, which seems none too sober at best. (Ask for the \u201Ckitchen beer appreciation special,\u201C $12 for a six-pack of Bud.)\n\nChef-owner Chris Schlesinger has mastered barbecue, is mad for spices, is held captive by condiments. East Coast Grill is your basic neighborhood restaurant grown bigger than life, and it keeps getting younger, louder, and better. Schlesinger will go down in history as the man who made fine dining insane.\n\n7. Arthur Bryant\u2019s\n\n Kansas City, MO\n\nArthur Bryant was born in Texas, America\u2019s greatest barbecue state; made his way to Kansas City, America\u2019s greatest barbecue city; and pretty soon became the proprietor of Arthur Bryant\u2019s, America\u2019s greatest barbecue restaurant. Barbecue\u2014meat slow-cooked over woodsmoke\u2014is our finest native cuisine, and for more than a half century, no other establishment has done so much of it so well. Other spots might turn out nice ribs or beans, but everything at Arthur Bryant\u2019s is great except the sanitary conditions. Bryant accurately called his place a \u201Cgrease house,\u201C but it\u2019s way more than that. It\u2019s practically the Statue of Liberty where American food is concerned.\n\n8. Al Forno\n\n Providence, RI\n\nThis is the East Coast equivalent of Wolfgang Puck\u2019s original Spago: designer pizza (although here it\u2019s famously wood grilled), casual ambience, and desserts that lean toward pure Americana\u2014 root-beer floats, ice cream sandwiches, a Grand Cookie Finale. Now a quarter-century old, Al Forno is credited with being the cultural force behind the renaissance of Providence, but unless you live in Providence, why would you care? Love it for changing the face of pizza, for leading the way in Italian-Mediterranean cuisine, for championing open-fire cooking, and for doing much to advance the neglected cause of made-to-order desserts\u2014 I always return for the hot-out-of-the-oven cookies.\n\n9. Boulevard\n\n San Francisco, CA\n\nThis is the place that convinced me, way back, that female chefs were gutsier than the guys. (Nothing I\u2019ve eaten by male chefs since then has changed my mind.) Nancy Oakes\u2019s epic dishes, beautifully prepared, include such heavyweight favorites as duck (two ways) accompanied by mashed potatoes (three ways). Boulevard has a few Belle Epoque decorative touches and is located in a historical pre-earthquake (of 1906) building, but it\u2019s the New American cuisine\u2014sensible food with unconventional touches\u2014that has made Oakes one of the signature chefs of San Francisco.\n\n10. Michael\u2019s\n\n Las Vegas, NV\n\nIf Bugsy Siegel were still alive, and that\u2019s unlikely, considering how many bullet holes he had in him when last seen, Michael\u2019s might be the only Vegas restaurant he\u2019d recognize. It opened more than twenty years ago, modeled after the style of the Candlelight Room in Siegel\u2019s original Flamingo Hotel. Tucked away in a corner of the Barbary Coast Casino, this undersized, overly posh spot is bursting with stained glass, velvet, roses, and wingback chairs. The carefully ecuted food, which includes scampi fra diavolo, chateaubriand bouqueti\u00E8re, Dover sole, and cherries jubilee, appears to have been flown in from the mid- twentieth century. If you have to ask what it costs, you\u2019re not on the casino\u2019s comp list."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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