travel: meet-ups and eat-ups…

~ Aaron and Chrissy are getting married! In Tahoe! I didn’t have time to go home between the Bocuse d’Or training session and the wedding, so I headed straight from The Greenbrier to San Francisco. It should have been an uneventful ride. Unfortunately, there followed an unscheduled, overnight layover in Detroit due to a faulty […]

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travel: meet-ups and eat-ups…

~ Aaron and Chrissy are getting married! In Tahoe! I didn’t have time to go home between the Bocuse d’Or training session and the wedding, so I headed straight from The Greenbrier to San Francisco. It should have been an uneventful ride. Unfortunately, there followed an unscheduled, overnight layover in Detroit due to a faulty […]

Continue

travel: peripatetic…

~ I apologize for my silence. I’ve been on the road. In the last month and a half, I’ve crossed this continent four times, bouncing between New York and San Francisco, San Diego and Burlington, Vermont, with trips to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and Lake Tahoe on the side. I crossed the border to […]

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travel: peripatetic…

~ I apologize for my silence. I’ve been on the road. In the last month and a half, I’ve crossed this continent four times, bouncing between New York and San Francisco, San Diego and Burlington, Vermont, with trips to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and Lake Tahoe on the side. I crossed the border to […]

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review: cab ride to crazy town…

~ It’s not every day that one gets kidnapped on the way to dinner, as I was on my way to Jungsik. Afterwards, I read Pete Wells’s review of that restaurant in the New York Times and realized that my strange, “cab ride to crazy town” was foretold (fourth graph, last sentence). Thankfully, with some quick […]

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review: cab ride to crazy town…

~ It’s not every day that one gets kidnapped on the way to dinner, as I was on my way to Jungsik. Afterwards, I read Pete Wells’s review of that restaurant in the New York Times and realized that my strange, “cab ride to crazy town” was foretold (fourth graph, last sentence). Thankfully, with some quick […]

Continue

review: acid and heat…

~ “This tastes like Jean Georges, but Italian.” I was looking at a pair of shrimp in a buttery, roasted garlic bath, but talking to Alex Talbot, one-half of that brilliant blog, Ideas in Food. Perhaps that’s because Tony Conte had worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten. I didn’t know that until Alex told me. But, the […]

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review: acid and heat…

~ “This tastes like Jean Georges, but Italian.” I was looking at a pair of shrimp in a buttery, roasted garlic bath, but talking to Alex Talbot, one-half of that brilliant blog, Ideas in Food. Perhaps that’s because Tony Conte had worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten. I didn’t know that until Alex told me. But, the […]

Continue

travel: chasing authenticity…

~ I was midway through my latest trip, a multi-city, multi-country episode involving both business and pleasure, when this conversation between Francis Lam (editor at Gilt Taste) and Eddie Huang (chef and all-around funnyman) lit up my Twitter feed.  Their exchange was spurred by an article Lam had written for The New York Times, which […]

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travel: chasing authenticity…

~ I was midway through my latest trip, a multi-city, multi-country episode involving both business and pleasure, when this conversation between Francis Lam (editor at Gilt Taste) and Eddie Huang (chef and all-around funnyman) lit up my Twitter feed.  Their exchange was spurred by an article Lam had written for The New York Times, which […]

Continue

kansas city: save the date…

Over the past few years, I’ve helped organize two annual fundraising dinners in Kansas City, both of which are hosted by Debbie Gold, executive chef of The American Restaurant. My involvement in these events has afforded me the privilege and honor of helping to bring some of our country’s finest chefs to Kansas City to […]

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kansas city: save the date…

Over the past few years, I’ve helped organize two annual fundraising dinners in Kansas City, both of which are hosted by Debbie Gold, executive chef of The American Restaurant. My involvement in these events has afforded me the privilege and honor of helping to bring some of our country’s finest chefs to Kansas City to […]

Continue

travel: more dots to connect…

~ New York in May.  It’s always a feast. I’ve attended the James Beard Awards, which is held annually the first Monday of the month, for the past six years. For the past two, I’ve had the privilege of photographing the event for All-Clad Metalcrafters (a sponsor), which was the primary purpose of my latest […]

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travel: more dots to connect…

~ New York in May.  It’s always a feast. I’ve attended the James Beard Awards, which is held annually the first Monday of the month, for the past six years. For the past two, I’ve had the privilege of photographing the event for All-Clad Metalcrafters (a sponsor), which was the primary purpose of my latest […]

Continue

travel: the final frontier…

~ Asked to draw the United States, would your map look like this? If so, listen up, this post is for you. Once the frontier to European immigrants migrating west, the stretch of mountain and meadow between our country’s coasts is, once again, the frontier. Finally, we, the middle, the easily forgotten, the hardly noticed, and […]

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travel: the final frontier…

~ Asked to draw the United States, would your map look like this? If so, listen up, this post is for you. Once the frontier to European immigrants migrating west, the stretch of mountain and meadow between our country’s coasts is, once again, the frontier. Finally, we, the middle, the easily forgotten, the hardly noticed, and […]

Continue

review: the new colossus… (torrisi italian specialties)

– Nothing dulls my appetite more than hype. It makes me suspicious, for example, when members of the press tweet weekly (nightly?) from a restaurant’s table, raptured to the point of incoherence. I suppose the enthusiasm is endearing. But what could be that good? I take no issue with the media doting on its darlings. […]

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review: the new colossus… (torrisi italian specialties)

– Nothing dulls my appetite more than hype. It makes me suspicious, for example, when members of the press tweet weekly (nightly?) from a restaurant’s table, raptured to the point of incoherence. I suppose the enthusiasm is endearing. But what could be that good? I take no issue with the media doting on its darlings. […]

Continue

review: cooks turned curators… (next elbulli)

– When I last left our hero, David Beran, he was in Belle Époque Paris rescuing Auguste Escoffier from growing obscurity. I never wrote about that meal at Next Restaurant in late May of 2011, which took my friends and me back to 1906 in a duck press. But I’ll tell you now: it was […]

Continue

review: cooks turned curators… (next elbulli)

– When I last left our hero, David Beran, he was in Belle Époque Paris rescuing Auguste Escoffier from growing obscurity. I never wrote about that meal at Next Restaurant in late May of 2011, which took my friends and me back to 1906 in a duck press. But I’ll tell you now: it was […]

Continue