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12 days: on the twelfth day of christmas: kostow… (2015)
~ What can I say this year that I didn’t say last year? Before you read the rest of this post, I urge you to read what I wrote on the twelfth night of last year’s Twelve Days of Christmas. Even if...
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travel: fairytale…
~ Five years ago today, I walked out of the law firm and into the unknown. What began as a shapeless but exciting restart on life quickly formed into an unexpectedly self-guided and fulfilling journey...
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best dishes of 2015…
~ There was no runaway hit in 2015. There were quite a few of them. However, whereas in past years, canvassing through hundreds of dishes for my 25 favorite was a particularly difficult task – one...
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best desserts of 2015…
~ I started issuing a list of my favorite desserts in 2011 because I noticed something exciting happening in pastryland, and I wanted a record of it. At the time, many pastry chefs were branching out...
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best of 2015: the restaurant edition…
~ In 2015, quite a few tracks upon which I had been running slowly began to converge. While my destination remains unclear, my direction has become much more so. Rapidly disappearing is my desire to...
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travel: so flirtable….
~ I’ve been playing tag with London all of my adult life: always flirting, but never letting myself get caught in what would surely be a financially devastating love affair. So, perhaps purposefully,...
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travel: an agnatic shadow…
~ Not surprisingly, the traffic leaving Paris was horrible, so we had fallen behind schedule. Despite that, I insisted that we stop at the Château Chambord on our dip southward to Anjou. It had been...
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rumination 32: extraterroirial…
Recently, I’ve been increasingly engaged in dialogue about food sustainability – whether it be in panel discussions, seminars, or casual conversations with friends. The food cognoscenti – media,...
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travel: københavn…
~ If you stitch together all of the days and weeks of my last eight trips to Copenhagen, the ledger will show that I’ve spent over two of the last 22 months in Denmark. And I’ll be spending another...
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travel: quiet corners…
~ My friend Mark was digging into a salad he had packed. The late-autumn sun was dropping quickly toward the tree line, and with it, the temperature. It began to rain, lightly. The two of us were...
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travel: hemispheres and horizons…
~ The calendar has turned for the twelfth time on this blog, and once again, I find myself nearly immobilized by the daunting task of gathering the previous year in one post. What has proven...
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favorite dishes of 2016…
~ In 2015, I yawned. So, in 2016 I did something about it. I took my foot off the culinary gas pedal, tuned out the lists and rankings, and returned to the basics. I’ve never been a conformist, but,...
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favorite desserts of 2016…
~ What is happening in pastryland? In 2015, I described a slow-down and a top-off, as the energy and excitement that I first noticed propelling dessert-making into a new era half a decade ago began to...
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favorites of 2016: the restaurant edition…
~ In the past, I’ve used this final, year-end blog post to marvel at just how well I’ve eaten in the preceding 12 months. Over the years, that emphasis has grown dull and unnecessary. By now, those...
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travel: woo pig sooie… (2017)
~ In the decades since I last visited my neighboring state to the south, I have heard increasing praise for Arkansas’s upper-left corner. Home to three Fortune 500 companies – Tyson Foods, J.B. Hunt...
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rumination 33: clicking for stars …
“What is the long-term effect of too much information? One of the effects is the need to be first, not even to be true anymore.” This was Denzel Washington’s pointed reposte when a sidewalk journalist...
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le cinq: tragic triptych… (2016)
~ The British restaurant critic may be one of the few species that deserved to board Noah’s ark. Equipped with endless wit and flare for hyperbole, they have gifted the world with some of the best...
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12 days: on the twelfth day of christmas: kostow… (2017)
– It always seems to end before it begins. For five years now, I’ve had the pleasure of recording and reporting from one of the most magical corners of the culinary world during one of the most...
View Articlerumination 34: simplify…
Chefs: I challenge you to remove one (and for some of you, three) items from each dish. Simplify.
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travel: an education… (2017)
– It has been over a dozen years since I started recording and reporting here. Yet, despite my dwindling updates, I have not lost enthusiasm or eagerness for it. What little time I manage to devote...
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