Suzanne Pollak is preparing a frisée salad for our lunch. She adds bacon (“You do eat pork?” she considerately asks), grinds some of her new-favorite pepper mélange, and tops the bowl with the largest, toastiest, most geometrically precise cubes of croutonsRead more
I watch in awe at the precision and speed with which Provençal chef Jean-Marc Villard peels and cores a Gala apple. The chef is demonstrating how to make a single-serving-sized tart tatin. He spoons granulated sugar into a ramekin toRead more
Maybe the brown T-shirt imprinted with the eye-catching COOKIE…take a bite! logo that Tracy Mattson is wearing signifies super powers, something like the “S” emblazoned on Superman’s chest. Inside the 400-square-foot commercial kitchen of Tracy’s boutique, artisan bakery in Santa Rosa,Read more
Bundled against London’s late December chill, the woman staffing Kappacasein’s cheese stall at the Stoney Street entrance to Borough Market, London’s oldest food market, assembles our order of two toasted cheese sandwiches. For each, she begins with two thin, rectangular-shapedRead more
The sound system in the kitchen at Barrington’s restaurant in Charlotte, NC, plays “I’ve Had the Time of My Life” as I observe owner and executive chef Bruce Moffett wield a hefty knife and trim excess fat and other unwantedRead more
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s newest patron wears a fuzzy pink onesie. The baby girl is strapped face forward, arms and legs dangling, into a supportive carrier on her father’s chest. Dad holds a bottle up to his daughter’sRead more
Michaela Rodeno and I are standing in the light-filled kitchen of her cube-shaped home in Oakville, CA, which also doubles as the tasting room of her family’s Villa Ragazzi winery. She hands me a bottle of their flagship Sangiovese wine andRead more
Five of us culinary volunteers at Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa, CA, are about to sample a freshly made biscuit containing Canadian hemp, an edible seed derived from the same cannabis plant species as marijuana. We wonder aloudRead more
Sixty-eight. Sixty-seven. Sixty-six. The countdown is under way as Bill and I drive the winding, two-lane Bodega Highway toward Bodega Head on the Sonoma Coast of California. Bill is at the wheel. He steals frequent glances at the thermometer onRead more
Personal chef Erin Hraster is drizzling olive oil over nine eight-ounce Caribbean lobster tails in the kitchen of Vida de Mar, our rental beachfront villa on St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Erin is comfortably dressed in black, stain-obscuringRead more