Tabla de contenidos para May/June 2017 en AFAR

1 DINNER AND DESSERT Book a family-style dinner with comforting favorites including turkey pot pie and lasagna at the Hungry Pigeon. Creative sweets—such as banana-bread sticky buns or poached quince and mascarpone galettes—are a constant, whether for dessert or breakfast. 743 S. Fourth St. 2 GET YOUR KICKS Elena Brennan imports quirky shoes from such cult brands as Miista, Yuko Imanishi, Esska, and United Nude to stock her Bus Stop Boutique. She also designs rings, handsome tri-tone oxfords, buttery leather handbags, and other accessories for her own line, Bus Stop X. 727 S. Fourth St. 3 THE CAT’S MEθW When Kristin Eissler opened the city’s first cat café last summer, she wasn’t sure how the locals would react. Fast-forward nearly a year and Kawaii Kitty Café is a knockout success.…

STOP 1 TO WISCONSIN, BY WAY OF JAPAN With Chicago two hours deep in your rearview mirror, the urge to stretch your legs strikes. And—voilà!—Rockford, Illinois, appears. Stroll the exquisitely tended Anderson Japanese Gardens ($9.50), studded with bridges, waterfalls, and koi ponds. Nearby, tour Frank Lloyd Wright’s Laurent House ($15), the only home the architect designed to be wheelchair-accessible, custom-built for a WWII vet. STOP 2 WHIMSICAL EXCESS AND ARCHITECTURAL RESTRAINT You can see its Infinity Room—a horizontal glass spire that juts out across a ravine— before you reach the House on the Rock ($30) in Spring Green, Wisconsin. As striking as it is, nothing can prepare you for the weirdness inside the house: a carousel, a robot orchestra, and all manner of quirky flotsam. Book a room at the…

Sebastian Fernandez, chefowner at the new Peruvian restaurant 33 Kitchen, and his wife, Leslie Ames, owner of the Golden Bar clothing boutique, have lived in the Grove for 15 years. On a stroll between their two businesses, they walked us through the neighborhood’s restaurant revival. Fernandez: “Part of what we love about the Grove is that we can be close to each other and our home, which is three blocks away. We’ve seen a lot of changes. Gastronomy-wise, there was a time in the early 2000s when the neighborhood was mostly empty. But now there are reasons to come.” Ames: “This is one of our favorite places: Bianco. They make organic gelato. I always get the stracciatella.” Fernandez: “They made a special ice cream for our restaurant with lúcuma, a…

GREEK CAPER LEAVES “When my fiancé and I traveled to the island of Santorini, our first stop was the Iama Wine Shop. It’s run by a woman named Ursula who collects old Greek wines and will let you taste her homemade jams. She jars these incredible caper leaves from her backyard. You can toss them in salads, scatter them on avocado toast, shower them on scrambled eggs, or even garnish a martini with them. I’ve never seen them in the United States.”…

“I grew up in the Galilee, the countryside two and a half hours north of Tel Aviv, and as a kid, I spent 10 percent of my time indoors and the rest outdoors. One of the wild plants I encountered was zuta mint. It’s one of my first scent memories. The mint has a captivating smell—like a white flower meets a pine tree—that you couldn’t escape, especially after it rained. Even today, smelling zuta takes me home in a minute. Later on, after I started cooking professionally, I learned to love zuta even more. It’s used in Israel as a tea—it’s believed to have therapeutic benefits—but it can also be mixed with oil as a dip for bread or ground and added to za’atar spice blends. I believe it has…

“Stand still. Glasses off!” barks the blonde at passport control in Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport. She fingers my visa, peers at my face, then scowls back at my visa for a long, long minute, clearly relishing my mounting anxiety. “Anything wrong?” I squeak in a small voice, fighting a Soviet instinct to address her as “Comrade.” “Nah,” she finally sneers. “Just wondering why you look even worse in person than you do on your visa.” I snatch my stamped papers and tramp off toward the airport train past gaggles of guys flogging overpriced taxi rides into Moscow. “Come with me,” one of them tugs at my sleeve. “Why ruin your not-so-young health, lady, with your not-so-beautiful luggage?” Home. Or, more grandly, Rodina, Russian for homeland. An ideologically loaded and often overbearingly…

EARLY ON IN MY career as a writer and editor, I faced a choice: take a job focusing on one beat that I would develop my expertise around (in my case, the burgeoning hedge fund industry) or stay the course as a generalist, covering film, books, music, food, travel, and wine (in other words, all the fun stuff that makes up the good life). Given where you’re reading this today, you can probably guess what I chose: Hedge funds were not my bag. Perhaps because I took the generalist route, today I appreciate the importance and value of expertise even more. For AFAR’s annual food issue, we went straight to the specialists who spend their days testing recipes, interviewing chefs, and traveling in pursuit of culinary obsessions. In “Insatiable,” photographer…

1 BEYOND THE BBQ Classic: Oysters Rockefeller at Antoine’s Update: Oysters with smoked potato puree, ham, and salsify at Kenton’s Food & Bourbon, an Uptown restaurant with a serious respect for fire. Using a wood-powered grill, chef Kyle Knall adds char and sophistication to Southern staples: Trout is smoked and brightened with fried capers, and the classic chicken grilled under a brick gets a grown-up sauce of shallot and ricotta. All those smoky flavors play well with Kenton’s 150-bottlestrong whiskey list. kentons restaurant.com 2 A DRINK TO RAISE YOUR SPIRITS Classic: A French 75 cocktail at Arnaud’s Update: A Billy Bishop cocktail at Monkey Board, the rooftop bar of the new Troubadour hotel in NOLA’s Central Business District. While the vibe and a small-but-mighty food menu are pretty casual, the…

TO ME, COCONUT Grove represents oldschool Miami. This small pocket of bayfront parks, marinas, shops, and restaurants just south of downtown is one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. If you grew up in Miami like I did, odds are you spent a lot of time in the Grove. I’m from Westchester, a mostly Hispanic suburb about seven miles west, but I spent my days in the Grove’s parks as a kid, and I went on dates to the movies here as a teen. Then in March 2016, I opened my restaurant, Glass & Vine, in Peacock Park in what used to be the Coconut Grove Library. It seems that no matter how old you are, the Grove is always a part of a Miamian’s life. “Many people see Wynwood as…

Tell us about your restaurant, Luke Dale Roberts X The Saxon. I did a pop-up at the iconic Saxon Hotel in 2016, and it was so successful that I opened it permanently. There isn’t much fine dining in Johannesburg, so I’m happy to fill that spot. The hotel’s aesthetic is modern African, and the restaurant’s design follows suit: There are handpainted indigenous flowers on the walls by South African artist Shaune Rogatschnig, and we use crockery by local ceramicist John Bauer. We also added a few grande dame–style touches, such as wood paneling and brass fixtures. How do you incorporate South African ingredients into your dishes? I like to experiment with fynbos [vegetation indigenous to South Africa’s western Cape], but you need to be careful, because it can be very…

Zimbro, Portugal Made from sheep’s milk thickened with cardoon thistle, zimbro has the texture of pudding and a grassy flavor. Find it at restaurants throughout Portugal, where chefs warm the rounds, then slice off the top to reveal a fondue-like center perfect for dipping. c2, Tasmania Bruny Island Cheese and Beer Co., located on Bruny Island, a hiking destination just off the coast of Tasmania, makes four raw milk cheeses, including the c2, a sweet, peppery cheese that’s similar to a Gruyère. brunyislandcheese.com.au Gruyère d’Alpage, Switzerland An aged cheese that’s more floral than a typical Gruyère, alpage is made from the milk of cows that graze on summer grasses in the mountains near Lausanne. Meet the makers on a tour with the Gruyère Association. gruyere.com Beijing Blue, China Liu Yang…

MONDAY In 299-year-old New Orleans, Mondays have traditionally meant red beans and rice, as William Kiburz of Coronet Travel notes. Sample this classic at Café Reconcile, a nonprofit soul-food spot that also provides job training. Kristen Korey Pike of KK Travels Worldwide enjoys the lively scene on Frenchmen Street. Mondays bring the added appeal of the Frenchmen Art Night Market, where you can chat with artisans and browse jewelry and crafts until after midnight. TUESDAY Survey the local comedy scene at The Howlin’ Wolf Music Club & The Den, which hosts free standup on Tuesdays, according to William Kiburz. Local draft beers help loosen up the crowd—and are especially satisfying when paired with cheddar-and-bacon beignets. The Grammy-award-winning Rebirth Brass Band plays The Maple Leaf on Tuesdays. Fans of their funk…

Ecuador is the world’s top producer of “fine-flavor” cacao—the stuff that makes the most divine dark chocolate. It’s also the place where the cacao tree originated and was first consumed. But the native trees that produce fine-flavor cacao are facing many threats, not the least of which is that farmers are choosing to plant a cloned cacao variety that is hardy, but yields a flavorless bulk chocolate used for mass-market candy bars. Barbara Wilson and Jose Meza, the owners of Mindo Chocolate Makers, are part of a movement in Ecuador that is working to preserve the old cacao trees from extinction. They do this by making phenomenal (and pricey) chocolate and paying farmers accordingly. Efforts like theirs have changed Ecuador’s chocolate economy in other ways: Until recently, the country exported…

ITALIAN TOMATO PASTE “In Licata, on the southern coast of Sicily, there’s a restaurant called La Madia. Pino Cuttaia is the chef and owner. Next door, he has a little shop, Uovo di Seppia, where he sells handmade pasta, truffles, cookbooks, chocolate, wine, and the best tomato paste I’ve ever tasted. It is so sweet, with a fresh, intense flavor, and it’s smooth as silk. When I visited, it was the first time I’d eaten tomato paste by the spoonful.”…

Bad Saint Washington, D.C. Get to this hot new restaurant early: The line for a table forms as early as 3 p.m. The family-style dishes, including ginisang tulya, a spicy, brothy dish with clams and Chinese sausage, and Bad Saint’s take on ukoy are worth the wait. badsaintdc.com RiceBar Los Angeles, CA At this counter in downtown L.A., you’ll find such standbys as pork longganisa (a sweet and spicy sausage) and ginger-scented chicken with papaya and chili leaves, all served over an heirloom rice that’s sourced straight from the Philippines. ricebarla.com FOB Kitchen San Francisco, CA Although it’s not related to F.O.B. in Brooklyn, FOB Kitchen serves an equally soulful menu. Here you’ll find—yes—lumpia and adobo, but also finger-lickinggood sticky wings, coffee-rubbed spare ribs, and a hangover-curing brunch. fobkitchen.com…

ALYONKA This sweets emporium, named after a Soviet-era chocolate bar, sells such retro items as caramel Crayfish Tails made by iconic confectionaries, including the Red October chocolate factory. 4/5 Nikolskaya ARAGVI After a major renovation, Aragvi, a restaurant that dates back to Soviet times, reopened in 2016 with a menu of Georgian classics— khinkali meat dumplings, cheese-filled khachapuri pies, and lamb riblets. 6/2 Tverskaya GRAND CAFÉ DR. ZHIVAGO Located a short walk from Red Square, the café finds inspiration in such Soviet-era dishes as Kamchatka crab, Siberian dumplings, and beef- and porkfilled solyanka soup. 15/1 Mokhovaya LEPIM I VARIM This locavore fast-food restaurant, whose name translates to “shape and boil,” serves fresh takes on pelmeni (Siberian dumplings) around wooden communal tables. 9 Stoleshnikov Pereulok, Bldg. 1. SAVVA Overseen by the…

For 20 years now, the Spring Mountain Road corridor north of the Las Vegas Strip, the city’s Chinatown, has been a hotbed of hot pots—and every other Asian dish under the desert sun. When celebs such as Anthony Bourdain and Penn Jillette raved about the real-deal northern Thai cuisine at Lotus of Siam or smoky grilled offal at izakaya Raku, the chowhounds followed. But these days, intrepid travelers must look beyond those staples to unearth the city’s most innovative Japanese, Chinese, and Thai food. Tail & Fin, about 10 miles south of the Strip, is one of a half-dozen sushi-burrito and poke-bowl joints taking over Las Vegas. (See also: Jaburritos, Sweet Poké, and Pokéman.) The difference here is the wild card in the kitchen: former Nobu executive chef Karu Wedhas.…

1. HARRY’S PIZZERIA “I like to order my Margherita pizza with extra char. The Harry’s Chopped, with white beans and creamy lemon dressing, is my favorite salad in the city.” 2. PANTHER COFFEE “Panther brought the Pacific Northwest coffee-shop vibe to Miami. This is my favorite location; there’s never a line of hipsters waiting on macadamia-nut-milk lattes.” 3. KIT AND ACE “My everyday outfit—casual pants and V-neck tees—is all Kit and Ace. I own about 15 T-shirts from here, and they all have holes because I’ve worn them so much.” 4. GLASS & VINE “Most of our 225 seats are outdoors—and the indoor ones have views of our open kitchen. I recommend the Local Fish Tartare, served with frozen leche de tigre, a citrus marinade.” 5. ARIETE “They serve modern…

afar.com/hotels/collection Baglioni Cala Del Porto Punta Ala, Italy Belmond Charleston Place Charleston, South Carolina Belmond Maroma Riviera Maya, Mexico Carillon Miami Beach Miami Beach, Florida Casa de las Olas Tulum, Mexico Castle Hill Inn Newport, Rhode Island Cavallo Point Lodge Sausalito, California Chatham Bars Inn Cape Cod, Massachusetts Dorado Beach, A Ritz-Carlton Reserve Dorado, Puerto Rico Freehand Chicago Chicago, Illinois The Fullerton Hotel Singapore Galley Bay Resort & Spa St. John’s, Antigua Halekulani Honolulu, Hawaii Hamilton Princess Hotel & Beach Club Hamilton, Bermuda Hotel 1000 Seattle, Washington Langham Place, New York, Fifth Avenue New York, New York Las Alcobas Mexico City, Mexico Loews Regency New York New York, New York Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong Hong Kong Mandarin Oriental Pudong Shanghai, China Mandarin Oriental, Taipei Taipei, Taiwan Mandarin Oriental, Tokyo Tokyo,…

For those of us who travel to eat, a stay at the 250- acre Meadowood in St. Helena goes hand in hand with an extraordinary meal at the resort’s three-Michelin-star restaurant, where chef Christopher Kostow serves a tasting menu inspired by the surrounding landscape. But what outsiders might not know is that this temple to gastronomy is also a magnet for locals looking for something more casual. Right next to the main dining room, the Rotunda Bar and Lounge opened in 2013 with a lofty wood-beamed ceiling, two roaring fireplaces, and books and board games that invite visitors to linger. The main draw is the roster of inventive cocktails by bar manager Sam Levy, whose seasonal concoctions are simply named after their spirit (Beluga Vodka is a blend of mint,…

The croissants of the world get all the attention. But there are so many diverse pastry experiences out there. To play this sweetened-up version of La Lotería—a Mexican game of chance akin to bingo—tear out this page and start collecting (aka eating) these lesser-known pastries of the world. As you taste them, tweet or Instagram a photo tagged #afarplaydough. To play a calorie-free version—and learn more about each pastry—visit afar.com/playdough and print out a deck of cards and the rules.…

Taste its history Chocolate expert Lourdes Delgado designs tours of cacao farms in the Guayas and Los Ríos provinces of Ecuador that emphasize the history, culture, and gastronomy of cacao. Travelers will also taste it as an unexpected ingredient in risotto. chchukululu.com Play Willy Wonka Pacari Chocolate offers a day trip to an indigenous community in the Amazon to see how farmers grow and process the organic cacao that goes into Pacari’s acclaimed bars. Back at the company’s Quito headquarters, you can make your own. pacari chocolate.com Grow your own If you harbor fantasies of farming, book a stay in one of the two rustic rooms at Hacienda Limón in Los Ríos. Swiss-born Samuel von Rutte, the farm manager, will show you how to grow and process cacao. Homecooked meals…

To everything there is a season. Even drinking. And, while our almanac can’t predict the best day to plant your summer garden or reveal the date to watch the next lunar eclipse, it can ensure that you’ll have the right drink at the right time of year. (A critical issue for booze-focused travelers, we know.) Take a spin around the wheel to find the perfect cocktail for the season you’re in—and to get inspiration for where to drink next. You’ll find recipes for each drink, plus a video guide to making them, at afar.com/almanac Find more snackable stories like these at afar.com/insatiable.…

Istarted working at Berkeley’s Chez Panisse in 2000 with one adult travel experience: a year abroad in Europe, where the choices I made were informed by the cost of train tickets or creaky hostel beds—not by food. But from my first moments in the restaurant, when I sat through a meeting where the chef shared the origin story of each dish on that day’s menu, I could see that travel begets memory, which in turn begets great cooking. Each new menu brought with it stories of the far-flung restaurants, roadside stands, and dear grandmothers whose food inspired our dishes. Many of the memories the chefs shared were of extravagant meals. Yet the ones that struck me the most involved revelations about the simplest foods: a pot of beans cooked in…

Bareiss In 2007, chef Claus-Peter Lumpp earned a third Michelin star for the Bareiss Hotel’s eponymous eight-table restaurant, which showcases the produce of local artisans (cured lamb; goat cheese; herb-flecked butter). Hermine-Bareiss-Weg 1 Metzgerei Koch Butcher Joachim Koch makes dozens of sausages as well as Black Forest ham, which he smokes with pine needles, seasons with juniper, and ages for three months in his shop. Murgtalstraße 160 Michael Peterle Cheese maker Michael Peterle’s goats feed off the Black Forest’s wild herbs, which gives his creations a unique flavor. Schonegrunderstrasse 80 Schwarzwaldbrennerei Third-generation distiller Markus Kalmbach makes schnapps in a variety of flavors inspired by the ingredients of the surrounding forest, such as anise, bilberry, and bloodroot. Stöckerweg 16 Rosengarten Chef Friedrich Klumpp, who owns the restaurant Rosengarten, was one of…

The Malaysian island of Penang is a former British trading post and a melting pot of ethnicities and religions, having attracted migrants from Asia, the Middle East, and Europe over the last six centuries. This rich mix of cultures is most evident in its cuisine, which combines elements from China, India, and the Malay peninsula. One could easily spend weeks sampling the street food culture of the George Town district, a UNESCO World Heritage site that dates to 1786. Read on for our guide on how to make the most of your visit. EAT NEW LANE HAWKER CENTRE Come evening, Lorong Baru (New Lane) heaves with locals and tourists grazing from 20 or so hawker stalls. Try the noodle-and-curry-based mee lemak made with coconut milk, and rojak (fruit and vegetable…

WHO: DEPUTY EDITOR JENNIFER FLOWERS DURATION: 7 DAYS SOUVENIR: A JAR OF XO SAUCE I lived in Hong Kong three times while growing up, and I still visit every chance I get. On my most recent trip, I checked into The Peninsula Hong Kong, an 89-year-old grand dame hotel that nods to the past (high tea in the lobby) while embracing the future (LED controls in the guest rooms). I also spent a couple of nights at the much newer, André Fu–designed Upper House, located across Victoria Harbour on Hong Kong Island. When it came to food, however, I went straight for the classics. I lunched on noodles topped with shredded pork—my favorite local dish—at Mak’s Noodles. For dessert, I strolled around the corner to Tai Cheong Bakery for the…