On The Road

  • Paris 2014, Part 1

    Autumn is a great time to visit Paris. Yes, there are some gray days – at that latitude, it's a given, they tell me – but there are plenty of positive things that offset the gray. For starters, the angle of the sun produces a golden light that makes lots more than the dome of

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  • The Chelsea Flower Show

    This has been a year of an amazingly (wonderfully) large amount of travel. In May, I had a chance to go to the Chelsea Flower Show, an annual event in London.  I had wanted to go for years – I'm not a gardener myself but gardening is another form of architecture, which I do love,

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  • New York: Brunch at The Tribeca Grand

     Brunch in New York can be a.) a contact sport, b.) excellent people watching c.) confusing. d.) expensive e.) all of the above The correct answer is, naturally, "e". Experienced test-takers know to re-read questions to look for key words, and here the key is "can be". Not "is", at least not necessarily. I've found

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  • What I Did On My Spring Break, Vol. 2

    A Facebook/blog entry from my Chowzter buddy Juliana Loh on one of our many delightful experiences at the gathering in London. One of the most accurate photos of me ever taken, gratis Ricky Ly, another Chowzter, from Orlando.  Here's Juliana's story.

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  • On London: Food and Otherwise

    The single best thing I think I ate on the trip in May was an omelet Arnold Bennett at The Delaunay. Made with smoked haddock, plenty of cream and, combining two traditional versions of it, both hollandaise sauce and cheese, the whole thing glazed under the grill before it's served. I'd read about them for years,

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  • The Prospect of Whitby

    There's nothing wrong in being a tourist. Places become tourist cliches usually because they're worth seeing, things like the London Eye and Big Ben and the British Museum. But after you've seen them, if you have a sense of curiosity, there are other places to explore. Some are slightly off the beaten path. Others are…more

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  • Eating London Tours

     If you are a traveller who likes to eat, I hope by now you have discarded the idea that food in London is still the punchline to a joke. Of course not everywhere is great or even adequate. Even in New Orleans, you can still get a bad meal, a city that used to pride

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  • London: Two Meals at Dishoom

    It's taken me three years to get to Dishoom. After eating very trad food on the last short visit to London, it was time to enjoy the Indian food the British Isles offer in such variety. I'd read about it before our 2011 visit, but an unexpected funeral to attend ended that idea. Now my

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  • What I Did On My Spring Break

    In London with food bloggers from four continents at a weekend planning (and tasting) conference for the website www.chowzter.com, which I'm starting to do work for.  The Wall Street Journal had something to say about it: http://blogs.wsj.com/scene/2014/04/30/bangkok-named-foodiest-city-in-fast-feasts-battle/

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  • New York City: Eisenberg’s

    Some kids fantasized about Hollywood. I fantasized about New York. Blame the movies. Forget the palm trees, give me yellow taxicabs and Gershwin's brass as background music. And, being a reader, I read about New York. Voraciously. Somewhere in all those years, with decades between visits, I learned about Eisenberg's Sandwich Shop. When I began

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