I never really “got” London. It was always this hulking city that I struggled to navigate, overwhelmingly large, with a subway system that seemed like a tangle of routes and directions that I just couldn’t unravel. But part of it is my fault as I never really spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. I just accepted defeat early on. So this…
When I was in London, it just happened to be Wimbledon weekend and even though there wasn’t a tennis ball in sight where we were, all we wanted were pitchers of Pimm’s Cup. To our dismay, a number of places didn’t have them, and at the one restaurant that did, we were unimpressed. (So much so that the waiter took it off the bill.) Since…
Faced with an overload of cherries, I had no choice but to make a mess. On a trip to London, and at a dinner in Paris, I was served a couple of messes, an English dessert that traditionally incorporates whipped cream, crumbled meringues, and berries. But like most messes (present company included), they can often go in unusual – and unpredictable – directions. Over the…
The cocktail resurgence has hit Paris big-time (and it’s hit me too), and the team who created Candelaria and Glass, two of my favorite places in Paris, have another hit on their hands with Le Mary Celeste. This corner bar in the Marais is named after a ship in the nineteenth century that left New York and was later found adrift and abandoned. No one…
I’ve cracked more than my fair share of fresh coconuts, and tried a number of ways to open them, including doing as the monkeys do and lifting them high above my head and crashing them to the ground. Which I don’t recommend, unless you aren’t wearing pants (like monkeys do) because your pants will get all wet. (Like mine did.) In baking, I tend to…
I hate to tell you this. But not everyone in France gets five weeks for les vacances. While it’s true that most people in France get a five weeks of vacation, I am not quite there yet. Nor am I at the point where I get 7 weeks of vacation, as a few of my friends do. (But that’s what I continue to aspire to*.)…
When I was younger, we used to go to a restaurant in Los Angeles, the long-gone Scandia. It was one of those places where they would wheel up the salad cart, and toss a big bowl of salad right at your table. Since some members of my family went there a lot, they made a special salad for us, which had lots of finely chopped…
[Update: As of November 2015, Freddie’s Deli has closed and Kristin has turned it into GreenHouse.] Parisians have been welcoming an influx of foods coming from a few unexpected shores for a number of years now – tacos, hamburgers, tortillas, banh mi in mobile form, and now, pastrami. I’ve never seen anyone with a more far-away look of longing than my French partner after recounting a…
A while back, I posted a recipe for a Meatball Sandwich, something I had been craving like a lunatic and just had to get my hands around. Then, a few weeks later, I ran into a reader (at a health food store!) in Paris who said, “That was funny…because I was craving the exact same thing, and then I saw it on your blog!” Am…
Join me on my Spring 2026 book tour for my latest book, The Great Book of Chocolate
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