"esquire magazine" news and stories

The December issue of Esquire has a gift guide for the person who plans on giving meat to friends and family this Christmas.

The first choice is an obvious one, and a familiar one to fans of The Late Show With David Letterman: Lobel's, in New York City. The mag calls it "the best steak in America," and I bet there are some places in the South that would want to argue that point. They also list the Best Ham In America, The Best Sausage, The Best Barbecue, and even the Best Wine to go along with your meat gifts.

Warning: You probably shouldn't wrap the meat early and put it under the tree until Christmas. Not only will that make for a very funky Christmas morning, your dog will probably ravage the gifts to find out what the hell that smell is. And don't put any meat in the stockings either. That's just wrong.

I look forward to annual lists like this, Esquire's Best New Restaurants of the Year. Sure, I never go to 99.5 of them (OK, probably more like 100% of them), but I like reading about new places that have opened, what various chefs around the country are doing, and I'm intrigued when there are places around Boston mentioned. I just gotta get off my ass and visit some of them.

This year's list includes two Boston restaurants, Om and Sorellina. Other new spots making the grade including A Voce (NYC), Ecco (Atlanta), Acadiana (Washington, D.C.), Country (NYC), Proof On Main (Louisville, KY), Guy Savoy (Las Vegas), and Cut (Los Angeles), which was also named The Restaurant of the Year. There are also a few other categories, including Chef of the Year, Best New Design, and Four Chefs To Watch.

Take a look at the list and let us know which restaurants you'd add to the list. Make sure you name the city and why it's so good.

Esquire's Chuck Klosterman has gone to a lot of bars, and he lays down the rules on the five things that every bar should make sure they don't have.

• Natural light
• Patrons who are reading
• Loud music
• Dogs
• 22 year-old female bartenders who "just wanna party"

I'm completely with him when it comes to the loud music. I don't go to a bar to listen to music,  I go to a bar to drink and have conversations (side note: and could some bars realize that not all of us want to watch sports on TV? You have 15 televisions, could you turn one or two of them to the news or something?). But I think it's OK for bars to be well-lit, and any 22 year-old females I meet that want to "party," well, I'm open to that.

What else should every bar not have?

Veteran cocktail guru David Wondrich lists the best bars in the United States in the June issue of Esquire (the one with Tom Hanks on the cover).

The magazine looked at several criteria, including great bartenders, beautiful women, no TV, jukeboxes, really expensive, really cheap, weekdays perfect and weekends too crowded, great for daytime drinking, a little rowdy, rowdy in a different way, good conversation, and war-zone location.

Some of those things are quite random, but it's an interesting list, from The Office Bar in Hoonah, Alaska (population 900) to The Double Down Saloon in Las Vegas to No. 9 Park in Boston, the magazine gives a nice mix of bars across the country. And it lays it out in a helpful West Coast to East Coast format.

The magazine realizes that they might have missed a few bars, so they want readers to write in their favorites as well.