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John Sconzo

@docsconz

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Enthusiast of culinaria & life.
Rascal + Thorn Worldwide Gastronomic Experiences.
Small group private tours @rascalandthorn

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One of my favorite people, who also happens to be one of my favorite chefs came to NYC to do a dinner with one of his former chefs. No way was I going to miss it!

Chef @rgborago of @boragoscl came to bring his famous Patagonian “Lamb à la Inverse” to Brooklyn, specifically to @cafebarjf and Chef @franciscotcastilloa for a collaboration dinner, which turned out to be not just a dinner, but a wonderful party too!

The approach to the restaurant, which is located in the space that formerly housed Llama Inn. As we were walking, we couldn’t help but notice the intoxicating aroma of roasting meat!

Lamb from The Hudson Valley roasting head up “à la inverse” on the patio in front of the restaurant.

A typical site in Williamsburg…not!

The menu was served family style.

New York Sour

With our great, great friends, and frequent NYC dining partners @joeyand @dsb243 .

We ran into many friends here for the same purpose, including chef/owner of @nuyores , @olorenzzi10 who graciously shared their lovely bottle of Burgundy.

A delightful 2019 Gevrey Chambertin!

Spectacular bread course to start.

Panera cultured butter
last tomatoes of summer pebre
Milcao
Tortilla al Rescoldo with Luche
Grilled Potato Bread

Just when I was starting to lose interest in tomatoes, we had as wonderful a tomato dish as I have enjoyed all summer!

Tomato “a la Brasa”
kellof broth, chile perlita, coriander seeds

Fresh and totally refreshing…

“Green Salad”
haricot verts, romano, fava, and lima beans smoked cilantro dressing

Did I say that I had been starting to tire of tomatoes? Nonsense! I just needed tomatoes like these!

Tomato Salad
mara des bois strawberries, cipollini onions summer vinaigrette

A symphony of textures!

Seasonal Leaves lovage and totu

…beet sauce coated the bowl.

An excellent and reasonable wine list.

A novel and delicious approach to a Cesar salad…

Turnips & Anchovies tokyo turnips, celery, parmesan

Pomme Purée with Fig Leaf chanco cheese - superb!

The star of the show! Portions were generous with seconds offered (and accepted)!

A delicious dessert on the savory side.

Summer Squash
tamari caramel, sobacha, saffron

Yours truly with the two headliners! It was a f taken in Cafebarjf by @docsconz

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6 days ago

20 years ago tomorrow was one of the most significant days of my life. It was the first day of the first ever International Chefs Congress in NYC from @starchefs and I got a press pass to cover it for @egulletx and cover it I did. If you’re interested, you can still see my coverage of that life-changing experience (for me) on eGullet.org via the link in my bio. It contains a lot of detail and many more photos.

I managed to go to and photograph each and every @starchefsicc until they fell victim to the Covid pandemic along with so many other great things. The two principals behind the ICC for all those years were @antoinettebruno and @will_blunt . So much talent flowed through that organization and through the conferences themselves, starting with this very first one.

#tbt I owe a great debt of gratitude to my long-time great friend, @joeyb_eats for first bringing this opportunity to my attention. taken in Chelsea, Manhattan by @docsconz

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13 days ago

Another summer is just about over. The nights are now crisp and leaves are beginning to turn. We didn’t cook at home a lot this year, but we are blessed with some excellent local farms. Here are the tasty dishes and wines that I actually photographed.

Fireworks from Lake George Village.

Bought a box of fresh Iberico pork from @eat.campogrande and so far, so great! This grilled pimenton and cumin rubbed presa was the single best thing that I cooked this summer. Despite it being slightly more cooked than I was hoping for, it remained incredibly juicy and absolutely delicious! Served with simple grilled broccolini.

A Spanish wine for Spanish pork!

The raw presa

Rub-a-dub-dub.

On the grill with @combustion.inc thermometer.

Simple, superb tomato salad with Spanish olive oil and sherry vinegar.

Don’t see halibut cheeks available too often, so I jumped on this monster when I saw it at the market!
Grilled and served with fresh tomato and onion sauce and grilled caraflex cabbage - best fish dish that I cooked this summer.

The cheek was rubbed with dried chipotle, salt and cumin. Yes, I ❤️ cumin!

A beautiful, old California Pinot Noir. Drank beautifully!

After taking the shells off, I dried them in an air fryer then infused them in the olive oil that I used to cook the shrimp. This step adds a wonderfully rich and deep shrimp flavor to the dish. Would be even better if I had the shrimp heads!

Roasted and vinegar peppers to go with great local pork chops and grilled zucchini.

Received this lovely wine as a retirement gift.

Used Montreal steak seasoning for this tender and flavorful cut of Wagyu Beef. So good! Didn’t get a photo of the side of Romano beans in fresh tomato sauce or late season corn on the cob..

I love the 375ml format, but don’t have many left. This was still delightful!

My wife’s terrific peach tartlets made the most of the area’s summer peach haul. taken in Adirondacks by @docsconz

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14 days ago

Mushrooms can be absolutely beautiful even when they cannot or should not be consumed, like this toxic North American Fly Agaric (amanita muscaria). Even though I don’t touch these, I do enjoy finding and seeing them. taken in Adirondacks by @docsconz

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a month ago

August turned into a month of beautiful surf side visits with close family and great friends.

First up was my first ever visit to the #jerseyshore - specifically the town of Bay Head, where we had a family event…

To celebrate a milestone birthday for my lovely sister!

It was supposed to rain all weekend, but we got lucky. Even better was that it rained at home, where we desperately needed it!

The flowery landscape was gorgeous…

…as were the sunsets.

We ate well, of course…

The Grey Owl, a stellar goats milk cheese from Quebec, CA!

Sunrise was kinda pretty too. Sadly, it was time to leave our family…

Happily, we got to visit with our great friends, Joe & Donna…

…where we once again, enjoyed weather far better than the forecasts predicted…

A much welcomed opportunity to step away for a moment from the sad realities raining down all over the world.

Old school, freshly fried, Chinese- American egg roll from Best Taste made a great pre-beach snack.

Serenity

Joe is the best non-professional cook that I know.

Young chickens from Iacono Poultry Farms are just off the charts delicious!

Sadly, our shore excursions, August and the summer are mostly behind us. What is to come? by @docsconz

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a month ago

NY and Mexico Cities are two places that I don’t get to enough as it is, and the idea of putting even more restaurants on my #mustlist for those cities is laughable, but now, thanks to the one night residence of Mexico City’s @plonk.mx from Chef @flor.camorlinga atNYC’s new @cafebarjf from Chef @franciscotcastilloa and partner Juan Correa, I have done just that!

Cafe Bar JF is the successor to the critically acclaimed Williamsburg restaurant Llama Inn, exchanging its clearly defined Peruvian cuisine for a South American taverna vibe. The two principals are originally from Chile and Peru, respectively.

A lovely, open space.

Tasty Pet-Nat from NYS offered as a welcome beverage.

To ignore their cocktail list is to miss a valuable part of their offering. The same is true for their wine list.

The cocktails we had were beautifully balanced and delicious. The Pisco Sour was a good as any that I have had, and the Martini and Gimlet were also superb.

I typically prefer raw oysters with just a squeeze of lemon, rather than composed presentations or fancier toppings, but this one was truly terrific and stunningly delicious! It was as delicious a composed oyster as any that I have ever had!

A worthy signature from JF.

Arturo is Flor’s partner and owner of his own wine bar in CdM. The Arno Roberts was a perfect bottle for the entire menu.

Flor’s cooking is Mexican, but with a lot of international influences taken from her time working and traveling around the globe, including Chile, where she met Pancho (Francisco) while working together @boragoscl , Japan, Korea and India.

Such a fabulous dish! I have never had star fruit presented in a better way. It was an ideal complement for the pristine scallops.

The main protagonists of the kitchen.

Dynamite Mexican/Middle Eastern combination! Every facet of this dish marvelous, but the salsa matcha with the hummus was swoon worthy.

Delightful throughout, the chopped cashews were a lovely surprise.

Great head-on prawns and an unintuitive, but brilliant treatment of the udon made for a wonderfully memorable dish.

On the surface this looked like a tasty, but relatively mundane steak dish, but the inclusion of sichuan pepp taken in Cafebarjf by @docsconz

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a month ago

It had been 8 and a half years since my wife, our son and myself traveled to Montreal, where we visited the restaurants of @davidmcmillanmtl including, on March 7, on their first day open, @vinmonlapin . @maquereaufrappier was, as he is now, the chef and @vanya.filipovic was the wine director of the entire restaurant group. Fast forward to 2026 and we returned to celebrate our son’s birthday at the very same restaurant. Mon Lapin is now owned by the husband and wife team of Marc and Vanya, with the restaurant having doubled in size and accolades piling up over the years including having been ranked as the No. 2 restaurant in North America by @theworlds50best in 2025 and No. 5 in 2026.

The food is grounded in French technique, but adventurously creative, beautifully constructed and delicious! The wine program is absolutely top notch and as creatively skillful as the kitchen. This is one of those rare restaurants where one can go to have food to go with the wine just as much as wine to go with the food. All of that is coupled with a tremendous energy, fabulous vibe and wonderful hospitality! taken in Mon Lapin by @docsconz

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a month ago

Finally!

It has so far been a horrible summer for mushroom foraging in the southeastern Adirondacks of New York. It has simply been too hot and too dry. I hadn’t found anything that I would dare eat since some morels in May. I wasn’t even finding much of anything else, but thanks to recent rains and cooler temps, the tide has started to turn.!

This golden chanterelle was the first “choice” mushroom that I found since the aforementioned morels. It was gorgeous and so were a couple others that I harvested. I left a few small ones unbothered.

Black trumpets may be my favorites to forage. They are very difficult to confuse with anything bad. These were the first that I spotted. I ultimately found a number of others starting to grow in my favorite black trumpet spots, but most were still too small to pick.

Another first of the season, the hedgehog, also difficult to confuse thanks to its distinctive gill pattern that gives the mushroom its moniker. taken in Adirondacks by @docsconz

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a month ago

It was 10 years ago today, that I arrived for the last time at #lambstock the legendary “Woodstock for Chefs” annual multiday food celebration thrown by @milepost197 at his southwest Virginia sheep farm, @bordersprings . It was an event filled with great individual and communal live fire cooking, copious quantities of a wide range of beverages and a bountiful supply of bonhomie. Easily the most delicious camping experiences of my life, they left me with so many great memories!

This is my first of what will be occasional looks back at some personal highlights, especially of favorite events or restaurants that either no longer exist or were particular milestones for me.

#tbt

The food and people (mostly, but not exclusively from the southeastern USA) the draw, but camping in the gorgeous expanse of the farm’s rolling hills was a big part of the fun!

@growgatherpreservecook was my first foraging mentor and it began here.

Chanterelles! taken in Patrick Springs, Virginia by @docsconz

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2 months ago

We went to @langdonhall for the reunion barbecue, but we stayed to experience the #grandtastingmenu (GTM) from @chefbangerter and his team and I’m glad that we did. While the name of this menu - “Grand Tasting Menu” was a bit intimidating, suggesting that we might be destroyed by a never-ending parade of rich and deadly dishes, the reality is that this is a well thought out and crafted luxury meal that is beautifully constructed, lovingly presented, delicious to eat, and satisfying without becoming overly burdensome on the belly.

My pet peeve with many meals featuring luxury products is that they are often done more for ostentatious show, than because they make culinary sense, especially when several luxury products are combined in the same dish. Chef Bangerter’s skill, though, is such that while he utilizes plenty of luxury ingredients and often combines several in a dish, he does so without creating conflict, and still manages to have them actually belong where he has put them.

The GTM at Langdon Hall is unapologetic in its role as a luxury meal. It doesn’t try to be overly creative or to break boundaries or perceived culinary rules. It’s sole role is to create pleasure for the diner’s eyes, palate and soul, and it succeeds quite admirably! taken in Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa by @docsconz

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2 months ago

A perfect summer afternoon and evening…

… in the spectacular setting of the kitchen gardens of @langdonhall in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada for a cookout, but not just any cookout. This one was a reunion of what turned out to be an outstanding kitchen crew from @aubergedupommier - 21 years later. Hosted by @chefbangerter who was the chef/mentor of the crew 21 years ago, the event featured @theworlds50best chef @chefvickycheng from @wingrestaurant_hk and @vea_hk , @chefhorne , @patrickkriss , @coulsoncooks and @chefaray with each chef contributing a passed canapé, a starter served family style and an open-fire cooked main. Deliciousness was in abundance throughout!

This extraordinary event was organized by @idmg_culinary as part of the @visaca Infinite Dining Series.

#infinitedining #infinitediningseries taken in Langdon Hall Country House Hotel & Spa by @docsconz

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2 months ago

As promised, here is a post of the plates from my most recent meal @restaurant_pearlmorissette by Chefs @daniel_hadida_ and @_eric.robertson_ .

This was a tasting menu that hit my sweet spot with outstanding seafood, gorgeous, seasonal produce and meats that still have me drooling!

While the entire menu was extraordinary, I would like to highlight three dishes in particular.

The opening Dungeness Crab from British Columbia set the bar ridiculously high. It was an extremely generous portion of crab topped with seafood garum pearls, greens and a layer of heavily extracted mussel stock. A fabulous play on flavor and texture, I would happily eat this anywhere at anytime.

The vegetable Terrine was so delicate, delicious and delightful that it is a serious candidate for my “dish of the year!” This layered composition consisted of a variety of vegetables from their garden over a crisp focaccia painted with a tomato lacquer that managed to preserve the individuality of each component within a harmonious whole. This dish contained the essence of summer within it as well as just about dish that I have ever had. The shocker though, is that my wife and I were actually the first customers to whom this had been served!

The Gargouillou from Michel Bras remains one of the greatest and most influential dishes from the latter part of the 20th Century. While I have been fortunate to enjoy a number of stellar versions, none were more delightful than the Crudités served here. The sheer visual beauty was spectacular on its own, but the playful deliciousness of each bite being unique, put this over the top.

Somehow, RPM keeps getting better and better! I can’t wait until my next visit, which can’t come soon enough! taken in Restaurant Pearl Morissette by @docsconz

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2 months ago