Venice: A Tale of Two Restaurants
Every two years, Venice produces the biggest contemporary art extravaganza on the planet. La Biennale, as it is called, places hundreds of art installations from different countries at venues all over the city–in private museums, houses, churches, public buildings. The epicenter is the Arsenale, a complex of empty military buildings. Though one could easily spend [...]
Read More →Hanalei on Kauai
The town of Hanalei, on the rainy fecund north shore of Kauai, embodies the old cinematic Hawaii of our fantasies. Well, my fantasies at least, which is why, for several years now, I have been renting a small artist’s cottage found through Vacation Rentals By Owner (vrbo.com). Located on Powerhouse Road in Wainha, five miles [...]
Read More →West Maui
Kaanapali, with its perfect year round beach weather and gentle ocean, always strikes me as a big parking lot in paradise. Annually, for 18 years, we stayed in a low rise condo at the Maui-Kaanapali Villas in a unit much enhanced by a long, uninhabited beach on one side–and grandpa next door. Now, ten years [...]
Read More →Bastille Day Feast
This announcement came to me through Georgeanne Brennan, a fellow member of Les Dames d’Escoffier. A Bastille Day Feast Saturday, July 14, 2012 Wolfskill Ranch 4334 Putah Creek Road, Winters, CA Gathering time: 11:30 a.m. Tour of historic Wilfskill ranch: 11:45 a.m. Aperitif: 12:30 p.m. Feast: 1 to 3 p.m. All participants bring their own [...]
Read More →Etxebarri: The Best Restaurant in Spain and Maybe the World
This simple asador in a restored farmhouse in Axpe, a tiny village tucked into a velvety green valley in the Cantabrian mountains near Bilbao, embodies everything I love about food. The menu is just a list of ingredients: most local, some rare, all sourced to be the most exquisite examples of their kind. All the [...]
Read More →Chez Hugon, Lyons
I was following my own footsteps in Lyons using a printout of an article I had written ten years ago. Some things had changed, like my favorite cheese stall in Les Halles, the best indoor food market in town on the Cours Lafayette, a fifteen minute walk from The Globe and Cecil. Small, oozing rounds [...]
Read More →Lyons
Arrived at the Globe and Cecil, my favorite hotel in Lyons, at 11:30 p.m. after a long trip from San Francisco, and immediately set out on a balmy night to find something to eat. Not much stays open late though on the rue de Merciere, in a district of bars, a bouchon called Les Enfants [...]
Read More →Puglia, Italy
Eating in Puglia Puglia, the heel of the Italian boot that stretches along the Adriatic, is one long swath of olive trees– beautiful, noble, silvery, gnarled ones, mere babies at 50 years old. It’s not uncommon to see olive trees with enormous hollow sinuous trunks that are centuries old and still producing olives. The Puglians [...]
Read More →Sicily, Italy
From a stone seat where Goethe sketched the 2500 year old Greek amphitheatre in Taormina, I gazed at the glittering Mediterranean far below agreeing that nothing seems to change on this sunny island–except the prices. Since my last visit two years ago, the cost of everything had tripled. Yet the food, especially in the best [...]
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