Saveur Summer 2019

At the Elk Room, craft cocktails are made with time and care in a neighborhood steeped in stories. Here, conversations take priority over selfies, because no cell phones are allowed. Though there’s no sign on the door, it’s not hard to find this speakeasy — just ask around. Because in Baltimore, we treat you like a neighbor even if it’s your first visit. Say you’re from out of town and we’ll help you find the best hidden spots to explore. We’re not about guest lists or keeping secrets. We’re about keeping it casual, taking it slow and taking the time to get to know one another. That’s how Baltimore does cool. BALTIMORE.ORG > SAVOR THE MOMENT WITH US…

MY SUMMER MORNINGS ALL START the same way: with a walk in our backyard garden. So far, it’s just a few raised beds—not much more than a tomato plant here and some herbs and chiles there—and yet harvesting as little as two or three ripe strawberries, a few English pea pods, or just enough sungold tomatoes to top a pizza is plenty to raise my spirits. Watching plants spring to life is a gift no matter the scale in which you do it. But for a grower supplying a town or state or country with food, it’s intense, high-pressure work. Our country’s farming families struggle in the face of falling prices, climate change, international competition, an immigrant labor crisis, and the outof-touch standards of mainstream grocery stores, which let much of…

ON A COOL MORNING IN PAMPORE, India, the fields have become a purpledotted canvas. Haji Ghulam Hassan Bhat, 65, walks toward his farm carrying a small willow basket, called a zaen, that his grandfather had gifted him when he plucked his first saffron flower at the age of 6. His callused hands are soiled, and the cracks in them are a testament to his deep attachment to his trade. Bhat has farmed here for nearly 50 years. He has a great deal of saffron land compared with his neighbors, and, until recently, it has provided him with a good living. Popularly known as the “saffron town,” where the world’s best saffron grows, Pampore sits 10 miles southeast of Srinagar, Kashmir’s capital city. Like many, Bhat believes the land of Pampore has…

TO THE SIDE OF AN EMPTY ROAD ON THE ISLAND OF Lanzarote, the northeasternmost of Spain’s Canary Islands, a landscape of dark volcanic mountains and craters rolls out into the distance. The black rock is so arid, and the vientos alisios (trade winds) so fierce, it seems impossible that anything could grow here—we might as well be on the surface of the moon. But thanks to the ingenuity of some of Lanzarote’s 18th-century inhabitants, things do grow here, in deep divots called hoyos, dug by hand into the volcanic ash. At any of the island’s vineyards—of which there are hundreds—grape vines grow in solitary plots tended by family growers who have shared the same peculiar techniques for generations. “Here in Lanzarote,” says Ignacio Valdera, co-founder and oenologist at Los Bermejos, one of…

IT CAN BE EASY TO GET LOST IN the labyrinthine trails of Nopalito Farm and Hopyard in northeast San Diego County. Hop farms are strangely evocative of oceanic kelp forests: fields filled with gently waving, upward-reaching verdant plants that can tower so high, they blot out the sun. But unlike the unsustainable and sometimes-violent mechanized kelp-dredging process, hop harvests are done delicately and by hand on small farms to ensure their perennial return. The typical hop plant—a member of the hemp family—generally takes three years to fully mature, making growing hops a laborious process. Hops thrive in moderate climates that have lots of both sunshine and rain as well as distinct seasonal temperature fluctuations. The Yakima region of Washington State is by far the most prolific hop-growing province in the United…

THE SLENDER, YELLOW-GREEN kapitsiriwi pepper is named after a blowpipe dart. Then there’s dzaka inapa, resembling a jaguar’s tooth, and kawathsidalipe, extremely hot and shaped like a clay pot. Spanning from orange to green to yellow to purple, 80 distinct pepper varieties are cultivated by the Baniwa, a people who have lived in small settlements in northwestern Brazil’s Içana River basin for thousands of years. “As far back as I can remember, there were always peppers around,” says Alfredo Brazâo, a Baniwa man who eats these indigenous chiles with every meal. Arable land is sparse here, so many Baniwa families plant their gardens on hills in the jungle to avoid flooding, even if doing so requires a bit of a journey. Brazâo and I hike for more than an hour from…