In retrospect, there are better times than a major economic collapse to write a guide to topflight American restaurants. Voracious has a thick section on value meals—it’s hard to discount the beauty of Florent or Vesuvio Bakery, now both closed, both casualties of the recession that caused rents in desirable locations to skyrocket—but the meat of the book came from restaurants where diners paid an obscene amount to eat hedonistic food, with attendant repressed shame serving as seasoning.
