On our way back from Aspen, I plotted another chowhound stop (ok, this one was thanks to Roadfood). Mom’s Cafe, write Gourmet’s Jane and Michael Stern, is famous for its “scones,” discs of fried yeasted dough that are kissing cousins of the sopaipillas you’d find just one state south, in Arizona.

Although the Sterns advise getting […]

Although in Aspen, the bill of fare rarely lives up to the bill, halfway down the valley in Carbondale is a restaurant I’ve thoroughly enjoyed twice now. Its website reads like a manifesto of seasonal, local food and gourmet ingredients — you get the impression of a Chez Panisse in the mountains. While not quite […]

In a town where restaurants come and go from year to year, Wienerstube has long been a standby restaurant for my family. Almost every ski vacation featured one morning when we’d walk over and enjoy a hearty, leisurely breakfast. My dad recalls a table that would inevitably be occupied by U. Mich. faculty in-season; my […]

The dining scene in Aspen is a collage of dissatisfaction. The average meal is pricey, a nice night out insanely expensive — and even then there’s no guarantee that you’ll be wowed by what you get. You can go “budget” with ethnic meals, but a mediocre fajita lunch will still run you about $25. And […]

Our holiday getaway this year involved a roadtrip from California to Colorado by way of Utah. After spending a night in Zion Lodge (decent motel accommodations, mediocre food, stunning location in Zion National Park), we stopped for breakfast a couple hours later at Arshel’s Cafe in Beaver, UT, said to be well-known for its pies.

We […]

For a dish that was once an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink invention of fishermen’s wives, bouillabaisse has come a long way — if you venture to Marseille, its birthplace, to find the best you’re more likely to be trolling the city’s Michelin-starred eateries than any waterfront shacks.
After reading two New York Times articles praising L’Epuisette (one by R.W. […]

Display at Richaud, Confiseur
“Welcome to Apt, the capital of confited fruit,” says a sign at the center of town in Apt, Provence. I stopped there on my way home from India, meeting up with Wes, because my parents were spending the month there. It was the week before Easter, and all the confiseries’ windows […]

I sold a story to the Los Angeles Times Travel section, so you’ll have to wait for that (it’s still unscheduled) to hear about our 24 hours at home with the legendary Nimmy Paul.

Bananas are big in Kerala. I wish I had caught photos of the many small stands selling bananas — green, yellow, short, long, piled in bins, hanging from the ceiling — that we passed as we drove through the state. After we crossed the border from Tamil Nadu state, our driver, Vasanth, pulled over and […]

On the last stop of our whirlwind temple tour, Daveena and I landed in Madurai and decided we were tired of picking up the first random guide who approached our rental SUV. Instead, we asked our hotel to find us a guide for Sri Meenakshi, and braced for the cost. We lucked out: The assistant […]