Ramen: Tokyo's Ultimate Comfort Food
Who doesn’t like ramen? Like American chicken noodle soup, pho in Vietnam, Mexican tortilla soup, or Tuscan bean soup, it’s comfort food.
Athens: The Good, The Bad, and the Delicious
The first time we were headed to Greece, we were going to island hop around the Cyclades in the Aegean Sea for a couple of weeks. We were flying into Athens, but our friends advised us to skip the city. We love cities, and Athens is the birthplace of civilization, so how could we ignore it?
Din Tai Fung
Din Tai Fung may only be a dumpling joint at heart, but it is legendary. It’s everywhere in Asia, popping up in America, and immensely popular wherever you can find one.
A Fresh Baguette
Paris at sunrise. The simple pleasure of going out in the morning to buy a fresh baguette.
It’s a quiet time of day, there are a few people walking to the metro, early office workers, students getting in a few extra hours of studying because they stayed out late (who wouldn’t).
Scramble Crossing
You've seen it in millions of films (Lost in Translation, The Fast and Furious, etc.): that crazy intersection jammed with people in Tokyo.
A Loire Valley Chateau
What do you do for a significant wedding anniversity? Rent a French chateau on a lake in the Loire Valley with 32 bedrooms and invite 60 or so of your best friends, of course.
Gaggan 1.0
One sunny and sticky afternoon, we arrived at a lovely white mansion on a back street in Bangkok to have lunch.
It was one of those graceful rooms (multi rooms actually) that made me feel that I was not at a stuffy Michelin but at someone’s home (a grand one but still) for a casual meal with friends.
Ho Jiak
How often do you get to eat authentic Malaysian food? If you live in Sydney, Australia, you can find it at Ho Jiak, one of four restaurants by Chef Junda Khoo.
Tiny Tokyo Food Trucks
Like San Francisco and New York City, food trucks are big in Tokyo. Well not exactly big but tiny in fact.
House of Red Pearl
I’m a big fan of Jean-Georges. We’ve been to many of his restaurants in New York; they are all unique, and the food never lets you down. (Oddly enough his only restaurant in Paris is sort of so-so.)
Amsterdam
OK, so if you’re a young bro, you probably go to smoke some legal weed (come on guys, it’s legal nearly everywhere now) and gawk at the women in the windows in the red-light district.
Foraging My Way Through Noma
Noma is a three-Michelin-star restaurant run by chef René Redzepi, and co-founded by Claus Meyer, in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Okay, so every food writer has written about Noma in the past twenty-plus years.
What more can we say about it?
Terracotta Warriors
It’s a schlep to get to X’ian China and the day we were there, the air was so bad that our eyes were burning (You can almost breath in the smog from the photo.) and we couldn’t wait to leave. Until we got to Emperor Qinshihuang's Mausoleum Site.
Aspen in Winter
Aspen Colorado has a reputation for being a playground for billionaires. (Well, considering the number of private jets parked at the airport there’s some truth to that.) But I remember the good old days when it was a playground for mere millionaires (who have all been driven out to Basalt).
Chai Phraya River, Bangkok
We’ve all been in traffic jams before, right? But there are American traffic jams like LA and then there are epic traffic jams like Bangkok.
Le Bernardin
All those years we lived in New York City we never got around to eating at Le Bernardin, the legendary three-star Michelin restaurant by Eric Ripert which opened in 1986.
Paris Bears
Even in the depths of COVID, the Parisians had a sense of humor.
Arzak, San Sebastian
Years ago, I spent a week in San Sebastian to attend a Spanish language immersion class.
Banksy
The reclusive street artist Banksy (nobody really knows who he is, possibly not even his mum.) has been getting a lot of coverage these days.
Bac Ha Market
Bac Ha is located 200 miles from Hanoi or 65 miles from Sapa. It is the 'capital' of the Hmong Hoa (Flower Hmong), one of Vietnam’s most vibrant ethnic groups.