“One of the great things about traveling and doing projects in other areas is not only meeting new people and experiencing a new environment, but you get to sample the food. We like to find places that are local and unique. There’s more out there than club sandwiches. There are alternatives to chains.”

Thankfully.

So says Damian Pascuzzo, foodie and avid amateur chef who is more readily known as a protégé of the late course designer Robert Muir Graves and the first name in the golf architectural firm of Pascuzzo+Pate. Pascuzzo has traveled the all over designing, looking at and playing courses, and he always takes along a jones for what’s good on a plate, but estimates that business partner and PGA Tour-winner Steve Pate might have him beat for worldly stops and forks lifted.

Yet Pascuzzo might make a lousy interview on the television show, The Best Thing I Ever Ate, rattling off a buffet full off great eats when asked for just one, from barbecue in Midland to pulled pork and fried chicken in coastal Carolina to “most anything” that rolls out of a kitchen in Vancouver, British Columbia, and particularly the seafood.

His ardor, however, is to be admired.

We decided to hunker down, dig out old notes and boxes of credit card receipts, and pull together a “best day on the palate” from our golf-related travels, with one item for each course.

Thankfully, unlike our design friend, it was easy narrowing down each field to a single candidate because we can always publish an entirely new list in the next issue.

Bon appétit.

FIRST ROUND — APPETIZER
Merriman’s Pup Taster, Kapalua, Maui, after playing Kapalua Plantation
A dozen island chefs two decades back cooked up “Regional Hawaiian” cuisine, a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that amalgamation of slow-food terrestrial inputs, the bounty of the Pacific and a massive dollop of the U.N.-like diversity that is the 50th state. At the risk of slighting Bev Gannon or Sam Choy or Alan Wong or the others, on this island visit the nod goes to Peter Merriman and his four-part starter. That Merriman’s Kapalua hugs a sea-shrouded promontory jutting out toward Molokai is just an added bonus.

The platter tags each base: indigenous and introduced, exotic and local, sea and land, basic and creative. Artisanal goat cheese romps with strawberries and sweet (what else on Maui?) onions. The mandatory kalua pig comes quesadilla-wrapped. Avocado and tomatoes native of Mesoamerica tier in a salad with Big Island spiny lobster. The ahi is sashimi-style. It would be easy to make a meal of this starter.

SECOND ROUND — SIDE DISH
Grown Up Mac ’n’ Cheese, Fairmont Chateau Whistler in British Columbia
Mac ’n’ cheese is more prevalent than golf commentators bestowing cybersubmissiveness upon Tiger Woods. While most of that was tired tired tired long long ago — on both counts — let’s not kick the former to the curb simply because every menu thinks it has gourmet-comfort wired.

This Grown Up Mac is both comfort wired and gourmet wired. Orecchiette is the delivery device, Southern Italy’s small, ear-shaped pasta. We love the shape because it can be consumed with one-at-a-time finger-pointed politeness or scarfed en masse. And it looks so much more adult than elbows, and being all growed up makes sense given that the pasta conveys something more divine than Bechamel dolled up with a little cheese. Lobster, pancetta and gruyere are in play, a succulent-sweet, salty-savory, nutty-earthy triple treat that spells anything but k-r-a-f-t.

THIRD ROUND — MAIN
Whole roast free-range chicken pour deux, Balthazar Restaurant, New York, after playing Bethpage State Park, Black Course
Being omnivores, we relish the endless food persuasions across the globe that stand right up there with Pro V1s, fermentation and indoor plumbing as humankind’s greatest inventions. And in that great omnikitchen does any single style resonate more deeply and easily as good ol’ ... bistro fare? Let D.C. and the hayseeds wax ignorant about the French, those people flat-out know how to cook, and there’s nothing effete about it.

Manhattan’s Balthazar is a bustling active brasserie, which we realize is a redundancy since a brasserie is nothing more than a big busy bistro. Everything on the menu is commendable, and the play-36-daily crowd certainly would do well fueling up on a rare USDA Prime steak dappled in maitre d’hotel butter and sided by a cone of the world’s greatest fries. Or the sautéed skate. And the braised short ribs fall apart more readily than Van de Velde. The simple rich pleasure here, as at any bistro, is a majestic whole roasted chicken, carved tableside for two. Perfect skin, moist despite no saline injection, the rich meat flavor and texture lacking in the grocer’s shrink-wrapped breast tenders; Thomas Keller of French Laundry and Bouchon fame puts poulet rôti in his go-to rotation, too.

Buy the cookbook.

FOURTH ROUND — DESSERT
Banana cream pie, Sissy’s Uptown Café, Lompoc, Calif., after a round at La Purisima
If it looks like an overstuffed pillow or a Hollywood starlet’s lips, it’s not banana cream pie — it’s vacuous fluff. If it’s syrupy-sugary, it’s not banana cream pie — it’s a bag of Halloween candy. (Same goes for green key lime pie; if it’s green, it’s not key lime pie.)

But if it’s deeply silky with a hint of the tropics and a cloying peck of sweetness, welcome to “banana cream pie heaven” at the southern end of California’s central coast.

Peel off Highway 101 and do yourself a double favor: Tee it up at La Purisima — known as The Piranha locally because it has teeth hidden within all those lovely live oaks — and fuel it up at Sissy’s, where jazzy American comfort fare and impeccable local wines tally birdie-birdie right before dessert alters everything you previously and erroneously presumed about pie.

THE TURN — ON-COURSE EATS
The “burger dog,” halfway house, Silverado Resort, Napa, Calif., after playing the North Course
Johnny Miller recently brought Silverado’s North Course back to relevance — significant relevance, as in bring-a-big-event-here relevance (and we’ll be looking into that in a future issue). But there’s another reason to pay a visit: the burger dog.

If you can take a staid staple item — two, actually — that remains a staid staple item no matter how much outward embellishment is applied, and then somehow render it unique while keeping it simple and true, you’re a genius, and Steve Parish and his dad are geniuses.

Started at Olympic Club by his dad, Parish’s fits-in-a-hot-dog-bun burger is a thing of sheer beauty, culinarily and ergonomically. Parish reminds us that a burger is a steak in disguise — or it can be when done as it is at Silverado. The packaging saves our overpriced miracle-fiber golf shirts. And don’t miss the red chile condiment if you’re looking for that extra kick.

www.merrimanshawaii.com
www.fairmont.com/whistler
www.balthazarny.com
www.sissysuptowncafe.com
www.silveradoresort.com