Auburn’s Best Restaurant: 1856 Turns a Teaching Restaurant into a Flex of Skill
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1856 – Culinary Residence is a teaching restaurant at Auburn University’s Rane Culinary Center, but the food never feels like homework. Chef in Residence Joël Antunes runs the kind of tasting menu that makes Auburn feel cosmopolitan, with dishes like tuna tataki with yuzu ponzu and watermelon radish, plus wagyu short rib with polenta and winter vegetables.
The eight-course version stacks in details like a peekytoe crab roll in coconut broth and an opera cake that lands like a mic drop, and Master Sommelier Thomas Price is the person steering pairings when you want to turn dinner into the whole night.
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