Category: travel

where my mouth has taken me…

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

twelve days of christmas: save the dates…

~ Last November, I helped gather six, exciting chefs in Kansas City to cook for the James Beard Foundation. One of them was Christopher Kostow, chef of the three Michelin-starred The Restaurant at Meadowood at Meadowood Napa Valley, a Relais & Châteaux property in St. Helena, California. For the past four years, The Restaurant at […]

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twelve days of christmas: save the dates…

~ Last November, I helped gather six, exciting chefs in Kansas City to cook for the James Beard Foundation. One of them was Christopher Kostow, chef of the three Michelin-starred The Restaurant at Meadowood at Meadowood Napa Valley, a Relais & Châteaux property in St. Helena, California. For the past four years, The Restaurant at […]

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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 […]

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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: two score…

~ My parents are getting old. When they were young, they used to cart us kids all over the world with great ambition, covering an amazing amount of ground with diapers and carriages in tow. I don’t know how they did it. But recently, when we asked our parents where they wanted to go for […]

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travel: two score…

~ My parents are getting old. When they were young, they used to cart us kids all over the world with great ambition, covering an amazing amount of ground with diapers and carriages in tow. I don’t know how they did it. But recently, when we asked our parents where they wanted to go for […]

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: rule of thumb…. (château eza)

~ As I sped along the coast to Nice from Monte-Carlo for dinner one night, a page out of paradise popped up: Eze. This Medieval town, preserved almost to the stone, juts out on the Corniche Moyenne, a rocky rise with a breathtaking view of the Côte d’Azur, which sprawls at its feet. I pulled […]

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review: rule of thumb…. (château eza)

~ As I sped along the coast to Nice from Monte-Carlo for dinner one night, a page out of paradise popped up: Eze. This Medieval town, preserved almost to the stone, juts out on the Corniche Moyenne, a rocky rise with a breathtaking view of the Côte d’Azur, which sprawls at its feet. I pulled […]

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: at the metropole… (joël robuchon monte-carlo)

– Is the moment of innovation more exciting than the period of enjoyment thereafter?  What happens when zeitgeist changes and context fades? Although I am old enough to have eaten at Jamin, Joël Robuchon’s first restaurant in Paris, I never did.  And, even if I had, as a toddler, I wouldn’t have appreciated the revolutionary […]

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review: at the metropole… (joël robuchon monte-carlo)

– Is the moment of innovation more exciting than the period of enjoyment thereafter?  What happens when zeitgeist changes and context fades? Although I am old enough to have eaten at Jamin, Joël Robuchon’s first restaurant in Paris, I never did.  And, even if I had, as a toddler, I wouldn’t have appreciated the revolutionary […]

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 […]

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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