Tis the season! Ya eat out all year; now comes time to figure out who did what the best. Personal opinions, to be sure. Your mileage may vary.

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RESTAURANT OF THE YEAR
Black Bottle.

Consistent execution of a worthy goal: Good, inexpensive and unpretentious fare, several notches above pub grub but not so fancy or fussy that it requires tablecloths, waiters who fawn, or sommeliers who frown. A year and a half after opening, they're adding great dishes (pork belly with kimchi, lemon-squid salad) and perfecting long-time favorites (grilled portobello with butter beans, chocolate cupcake with vanilla gelato).

Used to be, co-owner Chris Linker and chef Brian Durbin had to go into a long explanation about the gastropub/izakaya concept; no more. Umi Sake House and Wann Japanese Izakaya have come along in the past year to validate the concept. Fortunate we are to live in Belltown.

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BEST PROMOTION OF THE YEAR
Brasa, for its unique "Life of a Pig" dinner. In case you missed it, chef Tamara Murphy began by blogging her weekly visits to Whistling Train Farm. For two months, she reported on a growing litter of piglets, following them from birth to humane slaughter, then into her kitchen and onto the table for a full house of grateful diners. Nothing better to bring home the connection between our generous land, the animals it sustains, and the hungry humans it nourishes.

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MOST IMAGINATIVE
Mistral, which no longer gives its guests a printed menu, but sends out one creative dish after another. Still remember flavors from a dinner there in February, especially the kitchen's famous brown-butter and parsnip soup, which came with an orange crescent of carrot foam alongside a seared scallop.

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BEST BAR
Once again, Cascadia. The signature Alpine Martini now costs $4.50 during happy hour, but it's still a bargain. Mini-burgers are a buck, salmon-burgers two bucks. Can't ask for a friendlier barman than Michael Candelaria.

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NEWCOMER OF THE YEAR
Casting my vote here for Whole Foods. Sure, there's a lot of concern that its organic produce is costly, that it's wrongheaded not to stock traditional brands loaded with preservatives. (If you really wanna buy crap like that, go to Safeway, for crying out loud.) Whole Foods is what it is: an alternative chain store.

With three delicious eat-it-here cafés, too.

Runner up: get the feeling I'll also be seeing a lot more of Lisa Nakamura at Qube this coming year. The bar, run by Angel Aguilar, promises exciting cocktails, too. Edgy Asian flavors, classical French techniques.

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DISTURBING TRENDS OF THE YEAR
Where'd all the freakin' pizzerias come from? (Exceptions: Serious Pie, La Vita e Bella.) Why are there suddenly six (seven?) sushi parlors along Second Avenue? Which leads me to &

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COMPLAINT OF THE YEAR, AGAIN
What Belltown really, really needs: A noodle parlor. (Don't tell me about Noodle Ranch; I know Noodle Ranch, and it's, well, the Dan Quayle of noodle parlors.) I mean a genuine Vietnamese Pho joint with lemongrass and weird chunks of meat and basil and jalapenos and tables surrounded by families with their faces in the steaming bowls of noodle soup.

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DISPATCHES FROM ITALY This cheese stands alone In the grassy plain of the Po, between Piacenza and Bologna, a quarter million grass-fed cows on 5,000 dairy farms contribute their milk to 500 artisanal producers of a very specific cheese, Italy's finest: Parmigiano-Reggiano.

In batches of 1,100 liters, the combined morning and afternoon milkings (the amount produced by some 40 bovines) is transformed: Cream skimmed, casein starter and rennet added, curds cut into rice-sized granules, boiled for 10 minutes in a copper steam kettle under the watchful eye of a master craftsman, then drained, divided in two, wrapped in cheesecloth, formed in traditional 100-lb. molds, salted for three weeks, aged for a year, inspected and graded, then aged for another year or two. At the end of the process, the cheese emerges as genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano.

The best, stravecchio, sells at the dairy for 13 euros a kilo, about $9 per pound. In restaurants here in Parma, the menu gives you the cheese's full pedigree: name of dairy, month of production. The real thing, when you can find it in the States, is around $20 (try Seattle Cheese Cellar or Whole Foods). And is it ever worth it. Dense, crumbly, it isn't sliced but stabbed into little pieces.

Nutty, fruity, sweet (despite the salt that helped create it), with a remarkable complexity and depth of flavor, it's a treat on its own (with a dash of balsamic vinegar, perhaps) or grated over pasta (nothing like the packaged soap flakes sold as "Parmesan" by Kraft!"). Here and only here: The product of its unique place, always hand-made.

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Hamming it up around Parma
Tolerant, easy-going, swarming with bicycles, Ferrara could be a sister-city to Seattle. In 1492, after King Ferdinand kicked the Jews out of Spain, the Duke of Este, on his own initiative, invited them to settle in Ferrara (where he was but the legate, appointed by the Pope). There was already a thriving Jewish community under the Duke's enlightened administration: he knew that the Jews were educated: To undergo Bar Mitzvah, a Jewish lad has to read and write. (His Catholic subjects, by contrast, were largely illiterate.) Out of Ferrara's population of 30,000 in the 15th century, 2,500 were Jews who maintained six synagogues.

So the Iberian Jews came to Ferrara, started a seventh, Sephardic synagogue, and prospered for almost 500 years. An establishment that lasted until the shameful betrayal of Italy's Jews in the 1930s. (Bassani's 1965 novel and De Sica's 1971 film The Garden of the Finzi-Contini are set in Ferrara.) Parenthetically, the Jews who settled in nearby Venice were required to live in a dingy industrial neighborhood, Cannaregio, site of the city's foundries. The local term for slag-heap: ghetto. Today? Well, Ferrara's historic medieval ghetto is its liveliest neighborhood.

And here, as throughout northern Italy, one is served a great variety of salume (cured meats) ranging from the delicate culatello cured along the foggy banks of the Po to the fine prosciutto cured in the mountain air of the pine forests. Would gladly have stayed on.

More tasting notes and culinary dispatches are at www.cornichon.org, Recently named one of the Internet's "Top Ten Food Blogs" by About.com..