A tale of new seasons (VI).

Belcanto**, #25 World's 50 Best Restaurants (2023)

My second trip to Belcanto occurred in early January 2024. Instead of dinner, we went for lunch. This timing has personally always been my preference, as I like a) natural light and b) early bedtimes. Unlike my first visit in 2022, where I experienced a set best-of menu — see link below — instead, we received something of a hybrid degustation, consisting of a lot (!!!) of food, mainly from the current season (with a few additional dishes to try). Total run time for the meal? Five hours (and yes, that’s about 2 hours too long for me).

As pleasant as the Belcanto team is, to start, dishes are slow to get started. Our seating was at 12:30 PM, with an actual true beginning at 1 PM (due to members of our team being late and through no fault of the restaurant). We first receive a tray of four snacks, similar to our Encanto experience the previous night. I’m unsure if this presentation is intentional, but I think the restaurants could do more to separate themselves or have fewer redundancies…