Holiday Feast

Only on a road trip can you go to some of the best restaurants in Louisville, Santa Fe, Oklahoma City and Nashville within the space of a few days. That wasn't the point of our two-week trip over the holidays, but an added bonus that we could dine at Proof on Main, Cafe Pasqual's, Red Prime Steakhouse, and Etch as we made a round trip out to Santa Fe.

Proof on Main, Louisville

It is certainly tempting fate to plan a 4,000-mile road trip in what is expected to be a fairly severe winter, but fate smiled on us with dry, sunny weather as we took I-64/I-70 to spend Christmas with my brother in Wichita, then took U.S. 54/U.S. 56 (generally following the old Santa Fe Trail) down to Santa Fe for a birthday/New Year's celebration and headed back via I-40/I-81. In between, Andrea flew from Wichita to San Jose for her niece's bat mitzvah and then flew to Albuquerque to rejoin me in Santa Fe.

This was a different kind of road trip for us. Usually we load Ziggy into the back and head for scenic routes interspersed with stretches of Interstate, spending each night in a different pet-friendly motel. This time, we were traveling exclusively on Interstate to get from one place to another and mostly staying with family and friends. To make the trip more of an adventure, we upgraded to nice hotels and made a point of finding one close to a restaurant we wanted to try.

First stop was Louisville, where a friend told us the top restaurant was Proof on Main. The restaurant itself happens to be located in a fun boutique hotel, 21c Museum Hotel, which is pet friendly (at a price!). Both were great. I was able to indulge my new-found passion for octopus with a starter of charred octopus with a bagna cauda, followed by a tasty breaded pork cutlet. The waiter recommended an Elijah Craig 12-year barrel proof for a bourbon that might be hard to find elsewhere and it was a treat.

Cafe Pasqual's, Santa Fe

In Santa Fe, the birthday celebration on New Year's Eve eve was at Cafe Pasqual's, a perennial favorite for residents and visitors alike. The restaurant is colorful and quirky in a way best described as "gay" in its original, pre-sexual meaning. The culinary highlight for me was the Conchinita Pibil -- pork slow-cooked in achiote and citrus and served in a banana leaf with calabacitas, fried plantains and habanero-marinated onions.

Red Prime Steakhouse, OKC

In Oklahoma City, we stayed at the classy Skirvin Hilton, a great old-fashioned hotel with large rooms, wood-paneled bar and first-class service. It was only three blocks from the Red Prime Steakhouse, a trendy OKC restaurant billed as something different than the classic steakhouse. The dry-aged steak was truly delicious, expertly grilled and tender and moderately priced for the quality. My bone-in strip was better than Andrea's boneless ribeye, but both were a treat. The ambiance, however, was a fail, as the red neon lights used as room dividers in the cavernous and drafty Buick Building, an historic auto showroom, did nothing to make the space comfortable. Perhaps it is more appealing on a summer evening, with light coming through skylights and windows in the 18-foot-high space.

Etch in Nashville was the restaurant with the highest Zagat rating, 28, on this trip, and it was well-deserved. We shared a delightful ratatouille crudo as a starter -- a delicate carpaccio of zucchini, fennel, carrots, champignons, basil micro greens, garlic olive oil, red bell tomato essence and parmesan. For the main course, I had a lovely moroccan spice-crusted venison with sweet potato guava (ironically the two ingredients in Ziggy's prescription diet), ginger grits, pear butter and cranberry sumac relish. Andrea's porcini dusted pork tenderloin dish featured a chorizo that was out of this world. It was only a minor flaw that on a busy Saturday night, my main course reached me at a little less than ideal temperature.

Etch, Nashville

The holiday was more about celebrating with friends and family than about food, but a good meal is a great boost to conviviality. We enjoyed a perfectly roasted turkey and all the trimmings for Christmas, and a special New Year's Eve meal that ranged from an Iranian chicken dish to wonderful New Mexican hors d'oeuvres of green chiles wrapped in bacon. Santa Fe, of course, offers many wonderful eating experiences, including our current trifecta of Harry's Roadhouse (where I had a great red mole), Counter Culture (lemon ricotta pancakes) and Tune-Up (flatiron steak with grilled green chiles and pico de gallo). The real show-stealer this visit was Sage Bakehouse, where the tasty tartine of scrambled egg and avocado was exceeded only by the crumbly, sugary coffee cake we had for New Year's brunch.

Highway eating opportunities are so abysmal that we picked up sandwiches at Sage Bakehouse before heading east. I won't mention the low points of our other meals on the road, but one happy surprise was Brown's Catfish in Russellville, Arkansas, where the lunch buffet featured not only fresh, hot and fluffy fried catfish fillets, but equally tasty fried chicken and an assortment of sides -- all for 8.99!

We bookmarked the road trip with a great meal at Bistro de Provence to mark the start of vacation and a hearty brunch at our Louisiana Kitchen standby.