Tag: Food
Chocolate Travels, From Hotel Hershey to the Boston Chocolate Tour
by Jim Benning | 02.14.07 | 3:12 PM ET
We think every day is a good day to eat chocolate, or write about eating chocolate, for that matter. But Valentine’s Day seems a particularly good excuse to point out this story highlighting chocolate-related hotels and attractions around the United States. It turns out that chocolate lovers can find all kinds of creative ways to indulge during their travels. Among the most intriguing: the Boston Chocolate Tour, which concludes with “the Langham Hotel’s infamous chocolate bar, with such innovative concoctions as create-your-own crepes, chocolate ‘sushi,’ and chocolate croissant bread pudding.”
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Yahoo! BuzzInside the UK’s Best Chip Shops With Badly Drawn Boy
by Michael Yessis | 02.06.07 | 8:05 AM ET
I’ve got a soft spot for Badly Drawn Boy, aka Damon Gough, and it’s not only because my wife and I saw him perform in San Francisco during our first date. Badly Drawn Boy, like the subject of our latest Q-and-A, Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos, is a musician with a healthy appreciation for food. But here’s the twist: Where Kapranos wrote a book about his gastronomic adventures while on tour, this month Badly Drawn Boy will be take his act on the road to some chip shops around the UK. How can you not love that?
Alex Kapranos: ‘Sound Bites’ and Savory Food
by Frank Bures | 02.06.07 | 7:51 AM ET
Franz Ferdinand's singer has eaten mole in Mexico, mussels in Brussels and fishbrain bread in Finland. He talks to Frank Bures about his new book and his culinary adventures on the road.
Bryan Curtis: ‘My Dinner With Zagat’
by Michael Yessis | 01.30.07 | 8:48 AM ET
Slate’s ‘Middlebrow’ columnist Bryan Curtis spent an evening out in New York City with Tim and Nina Zagat, which he describes as “a bit like sailing the coast of South America with Ferdinand Magellan.” The Zagats are the publishers of some of the most influential dining guides in the United States, and Curtis’s excursion provides much insight into their powers. Their books are everywhere, and when you’re a Zagat, an open table in a crowded restaurant and fawning fellow diners seem the norm.
Update: Japan’s ‘Sushi Police’
by Michael Yessis | 01.30.07 | 8:46 AM ET
I supported the idea of a seal of approval for “pure Japanese” food when I heard about it last year. Now, as the Japanese government moves closer to taking action on the idea, Mariko Sanchanta has another take. “Japanese food has spread in popularity abroad in great part thanks to restaurants owned by enterprising individuals—many of whom are Chinese and Korean in the US—who saw a business opportunity and successfully exploited it,” Sanchanta writes in the Financial Times. “Sure, kimchi and sashimi probably don’t mix. But instead of separating the authentic from the inauthentic, the government should hand out thank you notes to everyone who tries to promote Japanese food—especially the genius who invented the California roll.”
R.I.P. Momofuku Ando, Inventor of Instant Ramen Noodles
by Jim Benning | 01.09.07 | 1:31 PM ET
Oh instant ramen, how we love thee. You feed 100 million people a day, by some estimates. You have served as a worthy and affordable introduction to Japanese food for countless people around the globe. In much of Asia, you are standard dining fare on trains. And now, we learn you were invented by Momofuku Ando in 1958. Sadly, we learn, too, of Ando’s death at the age of 96 near Osaka, Japan. But we agree with everything Lawrence Downes writes in an eloquent tribute in today’s New York Times: “Ramen noodles have earned Mr. Ando an eternal place in the pantheon of human progress. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime. Give him ramen noodles, and you don’t have to teach him anything.” Too true.
Related on World Hum:
* Chinese Noodles Predate Marco Polo
Photo: jayceho, via Flickr. (Creative Commons License.)
Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos on Fresh Air
by Michael Yessis | 01.09.07 | 8:14 AM ET
The frontman for Scottish band Franz Ferdinand sat with Terry Gross yesterday on the public radio show Fresh Air to talk about Sound Bites, Kapranos’s book about his gastronomic adventures on the road. The book is based on a food column Kapranos wrote for The Guardian. Food, Kapranos tells Fresh Air, has always played a big role in his life. He and bassist Bob Hardy hatched the idea for the band while working in a Glasgow restaurant.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Cheap Flights and Covered Bridges
by Michael Yessis | 01.05.07 | 9:08 AM ET
It’s a new year, and travelers are still showing love for some old standbys—Las Vegas, cheap travel and a good Irish beer. But they’re also looking for some underwater adventure. Here’s your first Zeitgeist of 2007:
Most Viewed Weblog Category
World Hum (this week)
Las Vegas
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
No Place for a Zamboni: A Hockey Rink Where Players Sink
* Yes, this story is about the glorious sport of underwater hockey. It is, apparently, big in Britain.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
How to Get the Cheapest Flight Every Single Time
Most Dugg Travel Podcast
Digg (current)
The Traveling Morans
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Three Travel Books Crack Entertainment Weekly’s Nonfiction Books of the Year List
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Places in Between by Rory Stewart
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
Busiest Airport in the U.S.
FAA (2006)
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport
* Total flights logged in Atlanta: 976,307. Chicago O’Hare International Airport finished a close second with 958,643 flights.
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Covered Bridges Take You From Present to Past
Recalling Hemingway’s ‘A Moveable Feast’
by Jim Benning | 12.13.06 | 4:02 PM ET
How to Down a Pint in a Real Irish Pub
by Cheryl Donahue | 12.06.06 | 2:01 AM ET
Photo by Cheryl Donahue. There's more to it than simply bellying up to a bar and ordering a beer. Cheryl Donahue explains how to become a first-class punter (and if you think we're talking football you really need this).
Of Spilled Beer and Lederhosen: Recalling Oktoberfest
by Jim Benning | 12.04.06 | 7:46 AM ET
So October is but a distant memory. That doesn’t mean the annual bacchanal in Munich cannot still be celebrated. Thomas Swick of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel does just that in Sunday’s paper: “Remember this. The vast hall. The great din. The spilled beer. The smoky haze. The saccharine music. The pretzel vendors. The workhorse waitresses. The buttery smell of roasted chickens. The vendors of silly hats. The bodies squeezed onto benches that disappear into the distance and suggest a boarding school cafeteria of colossal scope and questionable fare. The strange feeling, as you drink engulfed by a human sea, of escape, of having departed the world of work, responsibility, sobriety.”
Rachael Ray to Feed Space Travelers
by Michael Yessis | 12.01.06 | 7:22 AM ET
Perky, polarizing multimedia mogul, Food Network personality and travel show host Rachael Ray will cook Thai chicken and two other meals for the astronauts on the next voyage of the space shuttle Discovery, which is set to launch Dec. 7. They’re the first meals from a food celebrity to fly on the shuttle, USA Today reports. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station ate Emeril Lagasse’s jambalaya and mashed potatoes with bacon last August.
Hide the California Rolls! Here Comes Japan’s ‘Sushi Police’
by Michael Yessis | 11.27.06 | 9:10 AM ET
Japan has a problem with the proliferation of Japanese restaurants around the world: Too often, Japanese government officials say, they give Japanese food a bad name. “A fast-growing list of gastronomic indignities—from sham sake in Paris to shoddy sashimi in Bangkok—has prompted Japanese authorities to launch a counterattack in defense of this nation’s celebrated food culture,” writes Anthony Faiola in the Washington Post. “With restaurants around the globe describing themselves as Japanese while actually serving food that is Asian fusion, or just plain bad, the government [in Tokyo] announced a plan this month to offer official seals of approval to overseas eateries deemed to be ‘pure Japanese.’”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Beer, Bryson and the City of Brotherly Love
by Michael Yessis | 11.24.06 | 10:02 AM ET
The Zeitgeist has returned from a two-week hiatus spent mostly in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, and it finds travelers still loving Bill Bryson, still concerned about their airfare prices and wondering whether to order a Heineken, Grolsch or Amstel in Amsterdam. Let’s go.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
36 Hours: Philadelphia
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
How do airlines set their ticket prices?
* This Slate “explainer” unravels the mystery.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
U.S. to Require Passports for Nearly All Air Travelers
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir by Bill Bryson
* Two Three Six weeks in a row at the top for Bryson’s memoir of growing up in 1950s Iowa.
Top Travel and Adventure Audiobook
iTunes (current)
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
* Bryson hits the daily double with his classic about hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
SideStep
Most Popular Travel Podcast
PodcastAlley (November)
808Talk: Hawaii’s Premier Podcast
KLM Introduces Sustainable Coffee on Flights, Faces Greenwashing Charges
by Michael Yessis | 11.02.06 | 8:16 AM ET
The airline’s recent pledge to serve coffee from sustainable farms in conjunction with the Rainforest Alliance has been met with mixed reviews. It’s the first European airline to take such a step, but according to a story by Tom Chesshyre in The Times of London, “environmentalists are sceptical that the move is ‘greenwashing,’ designed to shift focus from the damage that emissions cause to the environment.” KLM serves 25 million cups of coffee a year.
Related on World Hum:
* Branson Pledges Airline and Train Profits to Renewable Energy Research
* Airplanes and Climate Change
The Speed of Rancho Santa Inés
by C.M. Mayo | 10.18.06 | 4:05 PM ET
Photo by C.M. Mayo. The saying goes: Bad roads, good people. Good roads, bad people. On a sleepy Mexican ranch, C.M. Mayo finds out what the Transpeninsular Highway brought to one stretch of Baja California.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Triumph and Tragedy
by Michael Yessis | 10.13.06 | 8:02 AM ET
This week we’re paying tribute to literary feats, vintage air travel and the victims of tragedies in Moscow and New York. Here’s the Zeitgeist:
Best Selling Travel Book
Amazon.com (current)
Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
* Pamuk won the Nobel Prize in Literature Thursday, and it sent his travel book to the top. No similar bump for Peter Hessler’s Oracle Bones. After its nomination for a National Book Award, its Amazon ranking among travel books stands at No. 26.
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (current)
Rick Steves’ Europe: Packing for Women
Most Viewed Story
World Hum (this week)
Fueling Desire
* The best story ever about jet fuel as travel aphrodisiac.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum
R.I.P. Anna Politkovskaya
Most Dugg World News Story
Digg (this week)
Aircraft Crashes into NYC Building
Most E-mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Cabbies, culture clash at Minn. airport
Traveler Buzz Video
Yahoo! Current Traveler (today)
Vintage Airline Commercials
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Pulled Pork, Pulled Corks in North Carolina
World’s Most Expensive Restaurant
Forbes (2006)
Aragawa, a steak house in Tokyo’s Shinbashi district
* The cost for one person to dine? $368. Yikes. Now, for the not-so-rich among us…
The Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” Button Travel Zeitgeist Search
Best budget restaurant in Tokyo
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From Our Own Correspondent: An Appreciation
by Frank Bures | 10.12.06 | 6:15 AM ET
Late last month, the BBC’s Andrew Harding ate at an unusual restaurant in Beijing. He reported back to the Beeb for the show that is one of my favorites anywhere, and a real gem for many of us who love good, vivid travel writing: From Our Own Correspondent. As Harding sat in the restaurant, he stared at the the grey and shiny food on his plate:
R.I.P. R.W. Apple
by Michael Yessis | 10.05.06 | 3:30 AM ET
Legendary New York Times journalist R.W. “Johnny” Apple passed away yesterday from complications of thoracic cancer. Apple, who made his name as a hard-hitting newsman, wrote mostly food and travel stories in recent years. Times editor Bill Keller wrote in a note to his staff that Apple wrote his last story for the Times—this story about 10 restaurants abroad worth boarding a plane to visit—from his sickbed.
Travelers’ Tales’ ‘The World is a Kitchen’
by Jim Benning | 09.26.06 | 6:20 PM ET
Food, cooking and travel are, thankfully, inextricably linked. They’re also great fodder for books. Bill Buford’s Heat is among the latest to explore the subjects in a book-length memoir. Now comes The World is a Kitchen, an intriguing book from Travelers’ Tales that combines stories about learning to cook in countries around the globe with recipes and related resources. Writes Michele Anna Jordan in the preface: “Cooking has become the universal language, an international tongue that allows us to communicate, to resolve every cultural challenge, be it language, custom or belief, and even overcome personal inhibitions like shyness and insecurity. We take a bite, smile, and raise our eyes to see the same response in our companions. May I have some more, please? And you know what comes next: How did you make it? We lick each other’s fingers and ask for the recipe.” The book is the latest in a series of Travelers’ Tales titles exploring travel and food.