170: Brian Dunsmoor, Hatchet Hall (Los Angeles, CA)

Food can make you feel at home, no matter where you are, and when I walked into Hatchet Hall, located in Los Angeles, I immediately had a sense that this was my kind of place. The best Grandma parlor decor with a hefty dose of taxidermy, hearth cooking, good whiskey, food cooked from a sense of history, and you know, one helluva whole fish, and suddenly I forgot about the thousands of miles I was away from my front door. Chef Brian Dunsmoor, a Georgia-born cook who studied at Johnson & Wales, delves deep into history to create something distinctly forward thinking; he’s striving to build a fuller and more broad idea of what we consider “American food.” And he’s doing it without modern equipment, just modern thinking.