So you've settled into your seat at Acorn or Oak at Fourteenth, and you're looking over the menu as your drinks arrive. Look carefully. What you're holding isn't just doing what most menus do — laying out the options and listing ingredients to help you decide what to order. After you've eaten as many meals at these restaurants as we have, you begin to see the menus for what they really are: culinary haiku. Okay, so dish descriptions don't have exactly seventeen syllables, but the way the ingredients come together on your plate is nothing short of poetry — and chef-owner (and 2015 James Beard Foundation semi-finalist) Steven Redzikowski is the reason why. Like any good poet, Redzikowski is a master of juxtaposition, putting together cuisines, spices, flavors and textures in invigorating, unexpected ways. Take carrots, for example. Who else would pair these root vegetables with burrata, blood oranges and chile-almond jam? Or sprinkle togarashi over shaved apples and kale? With an eye to the seasons and a global curiosity, Redzikowski dreams up the food we long to eat, with numerous dishes so good, they've become the standards against which others in town are measured.
Readers' choice: Jennifer Jasinski