Best Meals Food & Wine Editor’s Had in April

"Within the course of maybe a couple weeks, I ate at Hearth three different times. I suspect I was making up for lost time; their Hearth at Home frozen meal kits sustained me during the early part of the pandemic, but I hadn't sat down at my longtime favorite Manhattan restaurant for unforgivably long. It felt like coming home. The warmth, ethos, and many menu items remained unchanged, but there was a new item that caught my eye: crostini with grass-fed butter, parsley, onion, and Cantabrian anchovies. Simple on paper, but absolutely knee-weakening in execution, because each ingredient was so carefully, specially sourced for maximum impact and pleasure. If it had just been the butter on crostini with a pinch of salt, it would have been perfect. If the anchovies and parsley had a little rendezvous, I'd be sated. The sum of all the parts, however: the limit to my joy does not exist. I ordered it on all three visits and will continue to do so until the sea is drained of small fish and the Earth's strategic crostini reserves have been fully depleted." - Alexandra Domrongchai