“It’s tomorrow morning,” came her voice through the speaker. I sat up and pressed the phone harder against my ear. “And Lili, listen: It’s exactly what you want.” “Tomorrow? But I still need to get out there…” “It’s worth it. Trust me, they hardly ever do it like this anymore!” At 6 a.m. the next day I’m…
El Cau is the local watering hole in the Priotari town of Poboleda, packed for lunchtime every day of the week. Part of their success has to do with location – it’s the first restaurant you pass on the drive into town from the direction of Cornudella. Parked in front are cars, vans and tractors; parked inside are hungry vineyard…
Empanadas will always hold a special place in my heart. Back in the summer of 2011, a few months after my college graduation, I headed out into the world alone for the first time. A fresh faced 22-year-old seeking a change, I found a place I loved and built a life there, in Buenos Aires. I…
There’s a restaurant near my place that has very good octopus. They have other stuff too since technically they’re a tapas bar. So they have little sausages, papas bravas, grilled padrón peppers, all that good stuff. They have other seafood too: razor clams, mussels, cockles from the tin. And they have cheap beer, sangria and clarita…
Dining options in the Priorat are somewhat limited and each town offers only one or two places that are really worth stopping at for more than just beer and good company. Siurana has Els Tallers; Cornudella has Al Toll and Refugi, Poboleda has La Terrasseta and El Cau. And then, of course, there’s La Venta. I…
I asked several Dominicans for advice on where to try good traditional Dominican food in Santo Domingo and they almost unanimous responded “Adrian Tropical” without a moment of hesitation. This place is a fiercely beloved institution of which locals are extremely proud. Brightly illuminated on the Avenida George Washington along the tourist-friendly Malecón boardwalk, the restaurant is relatively easy to find.…
Guiding us back to Santo Domingo after our day at Juan Dolio beach was our Dominican friend Benjamin the sunglass salesman who took a rainy, warm afternoon off to show us around his hometown and to make sure we get back to our hotel unharmed. Before getting on the bus, he had taken us to try yaniqueque…
Breakfast at our all-inclusive luxury resort in the paradisical coast of Punta Cana was a leisurely and drawn-out affair. Greeting us in the restaurant was an endless array of anything and everything we could possibly imagine craving from 7:30 to 11:00a.m. before a day spent lounging by the pool or beach. There was a bar of fresh fruit…
I had done my research. I already knew about the frituras. But to test the accuracy of this suggestion, that the traditional grab ‘n go breakfast in Santo Domingo is actually fried slices of bologna with plantain and, in some cases, spaghetti, I asked the dudes seated outside our neighborhood colmado. They had, after all, proven very useful as bullshit detectors before.…
Fried dough. Just about every cuisine in the world has its own version. Call it fry-bread, call it beignet, call it a buñuelo or puri. In Hungary it’s lángos and its sacred. No summer afternoon at Balaton Lake is complete without it. It’s almost always the cheapest snack a region can offer, yet it is also often…
That Best Bite 