From tomato salad in Spain to pumpkin rice: Chefs and writers on the best things they ate in 2022

Tomato and Steak Salad

Chet Sharma, Chef Patron, Bibi, London

I took a few days off in June and I went back to San Sebastián, where I was working [in Mugaritz]. I revisited my usual haunt, Bar Nestor, for a tomato salad and rib eye. It's not a fancy place: small, with a long bar on one side and local football club shirts on the walls. As soon as I ate the first bite of the tomato salad, I was transported to a time when I was finding my feet in the world of food. It was a reminder of the quality of something as simple as tomatoes seasoned with salt, olive oil and a little sherry vinegar.

Pumpkin Rice

Olia Hercules, food writer and co-founder, Cook for Ukraine

The Other day, my husband Joe made a pumpkin rice dish, enriched with mashed pumpkin. It was one of the most ambrosial things I've eaten this year. In Ukraine we eat pumpkin puree for breakfast with honey or sugar and evaporated milk, but Joe made a savory ginger version with brown rice. I ate it with pickled peppers. It was deeply familiar and new at the same time. I haven't had much of an appetite lately, due to stress, but that day - maybe there was some good news from Ukraine - I was hungry again, and this dish really hit the mark. It was pure comfort and food.

Coconut Red Lentil Dal

Sarit Packer. chef and co-owner, Honey & Co, London

We have eaten a lot at home this year, trying to avoid all this which is treated as part of the recovery after a long Covid. The best thing we made was a coconut and red lentil dal. We didn't have much in the kitchen: just onions, lentils, carrots and butternut squash. Usually I would go for a lemony Middle Eastern soup, but we fancied something a little different so we added lots of spices - coriander, cumin, mustard seeds, fenugreek - with coconut oil. Then the onion, garlic and ginger followed by the vegetables, lentils and finally the coconut milk, and let it all soften together for about an hour. We have done it again and again. You can make it thick like a stew, or thin it down to be more of a soup, and switch the vegetables around, and it's still good.

Salmon Blini

Merlin Labron-Johnson, Chef-Owner, Osip and The Old Pharmacy, Bruton, Somerset

Newell is a restaurant in Sherborne run by an Australian couple – he cooks alone in the kitchen and she runs in front of the house. They ran the Giaconda dining room in London. Newell looks like a bistro you'd stumble upon on a trip to France, with simple decorations and a blackboard menu. I took a friend who is also a chef, I had been talking to him about it for a long time. Everything was great, but we had the most exceptional starter, thick smoked salmon, accompanied by a huge blini made with buckwheat flour and fried in butter, and a casserole of fresh ice cream and eggs trout, shallots and chives and all the good stuff to build your own blinis. It was superb.

Breakfast udon

Anna Tobias, Head Chef and Co-Owner, Cafe Deco, London

I was really exhausted one morning, just from the toil of opening a restaurant, and I thought, I'm going to get out of the house and do something and not just be here on the couch, exhausted. I went to Koya Ko on Broadway Market [in Hackney, East London] and had breakfast udon. It was the classic miso with pork, ginger and greens. When I took the first sip of broth, it was a truly visceral experience, like new life flowing through my veins. It was so restorative in the exact sense of that word. It was delicious, of course - and affordable too.