There are two ways to visit a place. You can move through it as a tourist hitting the famous sights, eating where the crowds eat, staying in the areas built for visitors, and leaving with the same photos everyone else takes. Or you can experience it more like someone who lives there, getting under the…
There’s a particular kind of misery that comes from a badly planned trip. The frantic mornings, the missed connections, the arguments over what to do next, the growing sense that the holiday is happening to you rather than being enjoyed by you. I’ve had those trips, and I’ve had the other kind the ones that…
The idea of traveling alone can sit somewhere between thrilling and terrifying. On one hand, complete freedom — go where you want, when you want, answer to nobody. On the other, a quiet worry: won’t it be lonely? What if something goes wrong and there’s no one there? I asked myself all of these questions…
For most of my early cooking life, my spice situation was a graveyard. A handful of dusty jars I’d bought years earlier, most of them barely used, a couple I couldn’t even remember purchasing. Salt and pepper did nearly all the work, and my food tasted, predictably, a bit flat. The change didn’t come from…
Wine has a reputation problem. For something that’s essentially fermented grape juice enjoyed by ordinary people for thousands of years, it has managed to wrap itself in an intimidating fog of jargon, snobbery, and unspoken rules. I spent years quietly nodding along in wine shops and restaurants, terrified of revealing that I had no idea…
Ask people about the best thing they’ve ever eaten and something interesting happens. They rarely name a famous restaurant. Instead they talk about a grandmother’s kitchen, a roadside stall in a country they were visiting, a friend’s dinner table, a dish someone made for them at exactly the right moment. The food that stays with…