Almost 20 years ago, I spent a dreamy summer living with a host family in the Alpine town of Annecy, situated on one of Europe’s most magnificent lakes. The town is, in many ways, unchanged since then –crisscrossed by flowerbox-lined canals an almost luminescent shade of blue, and ever popular with package tourists in safari gear….
There’s no better city break in North America than a weekend in Montreal – a city so full of great food that 48 hours seems not only paltry but almost cruel. I always leave wanting more, and as a result I come back, and back, and back. Probably 15 times since my first visit in…
I grew up in an ice cream town. Not New York – Boston, the birthplace of “mix-ins,” and home to several important shops and innovators with national profiles. I once heard that Boston consumes the most ice cream per capita in the United States, but I have no idea if that’s true or if it matters…
Who could ever forget the headline: “Is New York’s Best Pizza in New Jersey?” An inflammatory rhetorical question if there ever was one, this is what crowned New York Times dining critic Pete Wells’ 2017 review of the pizzeria Razza in Jersey City – just across the Hudson from lower Manhattan. In a city full of…
Several years ago, a friend in London texted me a photo of what appeared to be a bulging bread roll stuffed with chocolate frosting, like some sort of mutant maritozzo. I couldn’t puzzle out what was going on, but then I read the caption: “Nutella bagel on Brick Lane.” London has its own distinct bagel…
The Caribbean patty is one of New York City’s most important vernacular foods. They are omnipresent, and in fact – those outside New York may not realize – you can often get a patty at a pizzeria, or at a hot dog cart, where they’re displayed next to knishes. There may not be such a thing as…
Deep in Modena’s medieval core, there’s a bowl of jollof so powerful it’s a verb, and it’s conjugated in the Italian first-person plural – Jollofiamo. This is the invitation – “let’s eat jollof together” – on the current menu at Roots, a restaurant and social enterprise that trains migrant women in restaurant cooking. And a year and a…