Updated by: May 11, 2026
The Best Restaurants I’ve Ever Eaten In
They don’t have Michelin stars. They don’t have reservations. Most of them don’t even have menus.
The best food I’ve ever eaten has come from three women.
My wife, whose French cooking — aided by her trusty Thermomix — has ruined me for most restaurants. She makes things quietly and without fuss, and somehow, they are always exactly right.
Her mother, who is better. I say this with great respect for my wife, and I say it because it’s true. There is a quality to her cooking that I suspect comes from decades of feeding people you love — a depth that technique alone cannot produce. No Thermomix required.
And then there is my Nonna.
She is 97 years old. Italian. Calabrian to the bone. And for as long as I can remember, at Easter and Christmas she would prepare an entire table of food. Not a meal. A table. Dishes arriving in waves, each one made from scratch, each one carrying the kind of flavor that only exists when someone has been cooking the same thing for seventy years and still cares deeply about getting it right.
My wife was a vegetarian for years. She loved my Nonna’s food anyway — couldn’t get enough of it. It was only years later that she discovered my Nonna had been slow cooking the sauce in meat the entire time.
My Nonna knew exactly what she was doing. She always does.
There is something about food made by someone who loves you that cannot be replicated in a professional kitchen. The ingredient doesn’t appear on any menu. You can’t order it. You either have it or you don’t.
I have it. Three times over.
And I am grateful every single day.
Paul Mercuri
Wake Up Here Founder
