I’m not quite sure whose birthday we were celebrating back in the August of 2014 at the restaurant terrace of the esteemed Savoy Caste in Ráckeve, Hungary. I remember my niece being there, my brother, his wife, my cousin? But while the memory of faces has long since faded, I remember the mood and food…
At around this time every year I get homesick for Hungary and nostalgic about the dishes I regularly enjoy there. I get to daydreaming about lángos by Lake Balaton, salted goose cracklins (libatepertő) on toast for breakfast, mixed Vecsési pickles on the side of all classic meat-and-paprika dishes, my grandma’s chilled sour cherry soup… And, although I don’t…
This is one of those meals I’ve been wanting to resurrect from my Drafts folder for quite some time now. Here goes. About a year ago, the beau and I rented a car and drove out to Benasque to spend some time enjoying the Spanish town’s gorgeous natural surroundings with my brother and his wife,…
“Elle connaît? Est-ce la première fois qu’elle en mange?” he asked my Frenchman with a half-assed nod in my direction. He wasn’t the best waiter, or even a very good one at all. But I get why he asked. “Oui, elle le connaît très bien,” came Ben’s answer. A lie but a well-placed one. When, on…
Passing through the endless aisles of Auchon on a Saturday morning a few weeks back, we collected essentials. Yoghurt and butter, milk and coffee, laundry detergent and Brita filters, salmon and steak. But when we got to the poultry case, a cellophane-wrapped package of flesh caught my eye. On a styrofoam tray 3 x 2…
There’s an epicerie fine called Rock du Palais literally right across the street from my apartment. It’s become my go-to on on those nights I plan to spend dabbling in the canned-and-jarred chapter of France’s inexhaustible cuisine. They have all kinds of great stuff there: duck foie gras, duck magret with duck foie gras, duck…
I’m about three months overdue on an account of my evening at Le Chien de Pavlov, a jewelry-box-sized, quiet little brasserie specializing in creative French dishes prepared with market-fresh, seasonal ingredients. We caught our 9:00 pm reservation after a beer out on the terrace of Le Trou Duck around the corner, and sat to a…
The last dinner of a trip has to be a special one. I think I remember learning that during my childhood from my parents and I’ve lived by it ever since. I guess most people do. For our last night in Rome we chose a place called Elle Effe on the petite Piazza Pollarola near the…
It was around 10:30 that we rolled out of bed and another hour and a half later that the three of us were dressed, perfumed and ready to leave our Trastevere AirBnB. Too many Negronis and Sambuca and not enough water the night before at Freni e Frizioni (which quickly proved itself one of my top…
As I tucked my little Sony Cybershot into my suitcase on the morning of my flight to Rome, I was hoping to find some places worth writing about. Tons of work for school left me with no time to do the research I normally do before visiting a new city, and I only had a list of…
That Best Bite 