Table of contents for May 2026 in Food & Wine

2024 BODEGAS TERRAS GAUDA ABADÍA DE SAN CAMPIO ALBARIÑO ($17) I’ve been a fan of Terras Gauda’s wines since I visited the winery over two decades ago on a trip to Spain’s Rías Baixas region. They’re still top-notch and, in the case of this citrusy, seashell-minerally white, perfect for springtime drinking. Pair them with something like fresh fava beans sautéed with garlic and mint, dusted with pecorino. FARMER’S ORGANIC GIN ($26) One of the only gins I know of that’s certified organic by the USDA, Farmer’s is made from organic wheat grown on a locally owned, third-generation farm in Buhl, Idaho. It’s floral, juniper-y, and pretty potent at 93.4 proof. I initially came across it at the Food & Wine Classic in Aspen last year, and since our next Classic…

A PERSONAL BLENDER is a small but mighty appliance. Not only is it a must-have for those who take their morning smoothies to go, but it’s also indispensable for sauces and purees. A great one can be used to blitz a single serving of tomato soup, emulsify your own mayonnaise, and—if it has a pulse function—chop herbs for a zingy pesto. To find the best personal blenders on the market, we tested more than 40 models. Here are five worth taking for a spin. BEST OVERALL NUTRIBULLET PRO 900 Nutribullet makes a wide range of personal blenders, but the Pro 900 offers the best balance of price and performance. The body is well-built, and it comes with one 24-ounce cup, one 32-ounce cup, one sealing flip-top lid, and two screw-on…

Creamy Kale Pasta TOTAL 25 MIN; SERVES 4 TO 6 Silky and vibrant green, this creamy kale sauce clings to every bite for a dish that feels both comforting and fresh. Blanching the kale locks in its verdant color and tames the bitterness, while sautéed leeks add mellow sweetness and depth to the sauce. Any short, ruffly pasta shape like cascatelli or radiatori will work in place of campanelle. 1 large bunch lacinato kale, stemmed and roughly torn (about 5 cups)1 lb. campanelle pasta¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided2 leeks, white and light green parts only, trimmed and thinly sliced (about 2 cups)2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced (about 1 Tbsp.)2 oz. Parmesan cheese, grated (about ½ cup), plus more for garnish⅓ cup heavy cream¼ cup fresh lemon juice (about 2…

WHEN I RECENTLY VISITED Philadelphia’s award-winning Friday Saturday Sunday, head bartender Paul MacDonald offered me a coconut daiquiri, a staff favorite that included a hefty dose of coconut rum from Martinique’s Rhum Clément. The classic lime-and-rum drink was fragrant and perfectly balanced, completely unlike the pirate-branded sickly sweet flavor I’ve long associated with coconut rum. I drank it down, happily transported from the gray sidewalks of Philadelphia to some sunnier, beachier locale. Rhum Clément’s Mahina Coco, it turns out, is not technically a rum—it’s considered a rum-based liqueur because cane sugar is added to the rum to help balance the flavor without making it overwhelmingly sweet. It’s just one in a new class of ambitious, carefully crafted coconut rums and rum-based liqueurs that are reimagining the category, drawing on ingredients…

FOR THOSE WHO LOVE to experience the world food-first–we’re looking at you, Food & Wine reader—it’s a thrilling time to be a traveler, as restaurants, bars, hotels, and cruise lines vie to outdo one another with world-class culinary offerings. Where to begin? Start with the expert-vetted, road warrior–tested winners of our fourth-annual awards for the best food-forward destinations on the planet, and get ready to book your next delicious adventure. (To read more about the winners, visit foodandwine.com/globaltastemakers.)…

A Global Traveler WHEN SHE CLOSES HER EYES to summon memories of her childhood in Tijuana, Mexico, chef Claudette Zepeda smells street vendors’ charcoal grills firing up as they prepare for the morning rush. She hears roosters crowing and schoolkids singing the Mexican national anthem. And she sees herself: a self-described “border kid,” who learned English by watching PBS once she moved to “the other side,” aka San Diego, with her family. Zepeda grew up crossing back and forth between both countries, and the duality of that existence inspired her new book, Cooking the Borderlands: Spice and Smoke Between Mexico and the States. We share stories and recipes from it, like her grilled tacos gobernador and a fun new take on bananas Foster, in “Daughter of the Border” on p.…

EGGS FLORENTINE A BRUNCH CLASSIC, eggs Florentine has royal associations—legend says its roots lie in the court of France’s Queen Catherine de’ Medici, originally of Florence, whose affinity for spinach led dishes prepared with the green to be dubbed “à la Florentine.” A cousin to eggs Benedict, eggs Florentine consists of poached eggs on top of toasted bread (commonly English muffins) and sautéed spinach, topped with hollandaise sauce. Making the dish doesn’t require extraordinary skill, but a little finesse and timing are key. To make the hollandaise, set up a bain-marie (a heatproof bowl set over gently simmering water, also known as a double boiler). Whisking egg yolks with a splash of lemon juice and water before placing them over the bain-marie begins the emulsion process. But it’s the slow,…

CESAR CABALLERO’S EYES CRINKLE at the corners of his black-framed glasses as he stands in the shade of the well-placed banana trees that protect his coffee plants from Panama’s relentless sun. He picks up a pair of binoculars and focuses on a tree in the distance, certain he’s spotted something: one of his winged coworkers. “There are more than 200 species of birds at Finca Lérida,” he says, scanning the branches. That includes the resplendent quetzal, a creature that looks as though it flew out of a fairy tale: The males have shimmering teal feathers, deep maroon chests, and tails that can dangle nearly three feet. Here, the quetzal lives alongside the coffee plants, playing its part in the work on the farm. Caballero explains that the birds eat insects…

ONE EVENING ALMOST 20 YEARS AGO, I left Rome to make the roughly two-hour drive north to Hotel Il Pellicano in Porto Ercole, a seaside resort in Tuscany. It was a long journey for a dinner reservation, but I was eager to try the cuisine of Antonio Guida, a chef generating a lot of buzz at the time. I was mesmerized—the food was deep in flavor, comforting, and technically impeccable. I remember thinking: “Wow, you can eat this well in a hotel restaurant!” Back then, that was far from guaranteed. In 2014, Guida moved to the Mandarin Oriental in Milan. Its restaurant, Seta, was designed and positioned to express a unique identity and ambition rather than to be an efficient yet predictable hotel amenity. Mission accomplished: Today, with its two…

SAUCES HAVE BEEN SHAPING the way we cook for millennia: Researchers have found evidence that suggests an early form of hot sauce, perhaps a simple blend of chiles and water, was made in Mexico more than 2,000 years ago. Much more recently, in the 19th century, French chef Marie-Antoine Carême formalized the idea of “mother sauces,” a system later refined by Auguste Escoffier. Those five classics—velouté, béchamel, hollandaise, espagnole, and sauce tomate—form the backbone of countless dishes and the framework from which dozens of “daughter sauces” developed. Those foundational techniques underpin everything from eggs Florentine (hollandaise, recipe p. 35) to béchamel-based dishes like chicken potpie and lasagna, and the tomato sauces that define Italian American classics like spaghetti and meatballs. But French cuisine represents just one chapter of a much…

I GREW UP IN KENTUCKY, but I’m sometimes hesitant to say I’m from there. Not out of shame, but rather because I was told it wasn’t mine to claim. My family relocated from New Jersey to the northern Kentucky suburbs a few months after I turned 2. But despite living there for 16 years, without generations of family rooted deeply in the region, I often felt like an invasive weed, a patch of kudzu in the bluegrass. “Where are you from?” I’d hear when I met someone from the heart of the state—Louisville, Lexington, Rabbit Hash, Bowling Green, Hazard, Paducah—tripped up by my unplaceable accent. “Fort Thomas? That doesn’t count. It’s basically Ohio.” Still, once I made my break to Baltimore, the part of the state I was from didn’t…

WINE TRAVEL IS MORE POPULAR THAN EVER, and why not? Most wine regions are beautiful; plus, actually being in the vineyards is one of the best ways to learn about wine—and to learn to love wine, for that matter. But despite all the many, many wine regions out there, most travelers default to the familiar names: Napa Valley, Chianti, Champagne, Bordeaux. Those are all wonderful places, no question, but with the average Napa hotel room running more than $400 a night and more than 3 million people visiting Champagne each year, perhaps a visit to a less thronged and less pricey destination might be the ticket. At least, that’s my advice for wine travel in 2026. So, to that end, here are eight great less-discovered wine paths, all of them…

IT’S AN APERITIVO-HOUR BEACON in neon: “Bar Basso” written in bright white script on a background of Campari red. Walk toward it on Via Achille Maiocchi and through the door, past ladies in heels with dogs at their feet. Prepay for a cocktail at the till, and shimmy into an opening at the zinc-topped bar. There, you’ll stand shoulder to shoulder, sipping drinks and snacking on potato chips and Castelvetrano olives. Bar Basso sits nearly two miles northeast of Milan’s center, where the Duomo and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, those dueling cathedrals to God and commerce, draw tourists by the millions. But this 79-year-old drinking institution is the heart of the city’s cocktail culture. The design community claims it as its own; so do writers and artists and doctors from…

“YOUR MOTHERLAND WILL ALWAYS CALL YOU HOME—BUT YOU DON’T GET TO CHOOSE HOW THE MESSAGE ARRIVES.” THERE IS A UNIQUE CULTURE in the lands on either side of the line drawn in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which divided Mexico and the U.S. The borderlands in both countries have always been home to beautiful tales of migration, immigration, resilient and often misunderstood people, and, of course, a shared love of food. I have been a border kid for four decades, and I’ve cooked professionally for over half that time. So much of who I am is a result of where I was raised, moving seamlessly—daily—between San Diego, California, and Tijuana, Mexico. But I didn’t always know that was what made me who I am. For the first decade of…