Copper Harbor, MI – As far as olfactory promises made by restaurant names go, ‘Jamsen’s Fish Market and Bakery’ sends a decidedly mixed message. And while I’ve certainly eaten smoked fish for breakfast, the thought of walking into a co-mingled fish market and pastry shop gave me pause. But I was desperate for coffee just…
One of the only things that’s tough for me when I’m on an epic road trip is that I don’t always have the opportunity to cook. I have been in Boise, Idaho for the better part of a week at a very cute AirBnB whose only deficiency is that it has no kitchen (though it…
Biscuit lessons from Chef Susan Spicer was one of the highlights of the Southern Food Road Tour.
My first Wigilia in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, was one to remember.
INDIAN RIVER – I’m not sure what I was expecting when I stopped to walk through the Hall of Sisters, a collection nun dolls on exhibit in this tiny Michigan town, but there was a lot to disconcert. Several hundred dolls, most nuns but some priests too, are really a sideshow to a massive six-story…
Bakers throughout Louisiana are breathing a sigh of relief, hiding their King Cake recipes away till next year.
One of the pleasurable things about writing – and fine arts like painting and ceramics – is that you have tangible evidence of your work at its height, unlike cooking, where once the meal is eaten there is no way to go back and truly taste it. To know with certainty that was the silkiest…
HOLBROOK, AZ – In dusty Northeast Arizona, a Japanese import is behind the 8-Ball, cranking out international-award-winning sake not nearly as fast as people would like to buy it. People like the Japanese chefs in Tucson and Phoenix, diplomats at the Japanese Consulate in Los Angeles and sake connoisseurs alert to his influence in a…
Unloved by locals in Costa Rica and Mexico, dark chocolate is a bittersweet business in pandemic times.
Fewer than 10,000 people live in dusty Brownsville, TN. It would be easy to blow right past downtown if you were, say, trying desperately to find anything at all worth listening to on the radio. But even if you did, you still wouldn’t miss the town’s biggest attraction, Helen’s BBQ, which sits a mile removed,…
PORTAL, AZ – As if we were all Wild West outlaws lowering our bandanas for the first time, my neighbors in tiny Portal, Arizona and I are finally seeing one another’s faces. Never having seen their mouths, I made many of them extravagant Thanksgiving and December holiday dinners, alongside my friend Zola, who’s pushing 90…
New Mexico has ‘Christmas’ year round – that’s how you order half red chile, half green chile sauce. But this mostly very Catholic state goes all out with Christmas decor, from religious to irreverent.
CHICAGO – Don’t feel bad if you didn’t sound it out. [Ponch’-key] wasn’t my first guess either, on my pilgrimage to what I was informed is the best place in Chicago to taste these delightful Polish donuts, the Polish Pączki Cafe. Made from a yeasted dough, hand filled with not-too-sweet plum jam and shaped by…