Spectator Life

There comes a time in every home cook’s life when she is separated from her craft. This may be due to illness, incapacity, repairs, renovations or, worstof all, moving house. This month, I moved from Texas to Pennsylvania. Between packing up my utensils and appliances, waiting for the moving truck to make its halting way across the nation, and finally unpacking and reorganizing my tools, I lost my kitchen for four weeks. But benched cooks like mehave a surprisingly satisfying alternative: cooking podcasts. The first podcast I tried is most similar to traditional cooking shows: Food 52’s Play Me a Recipe. Chefs and cookbook authors host episodes in which they introduce a favorite recipe and talk through its ingredients and method, encouraging listeners to pause and rewind as needed.

I occasionally come across a social media account — usually run by a conservative male — claiming to great fanfare that young women these days don’t know how to cook. They’ve been too busy girlbossing to learn. In my experience, this is wrong. The ambitious women I know are ambitious in every part of their lives. They get the promotion while moving up the Peloton leaderboard, planning their dream wedding and creating flavorful, photogenic meals that Betty Crocker hadn’t dreamed of. For these women, there’s the Ambitious Kitchen. The Ambitious Kitchen was created in 2011 by a Chicago woman named Monique Volz. It has since amassed more than 700,000 followers on Instagram and a cookbook deal for 2024.

"I was really fascinated with the process, the science behind everything,” recalls Camari Mick, the now twenty-nine-year-old star pastry chef, who studied anatomy in high school. “I love true crime: I was very into Snapped and crime junkie podcasts.” When she approached her parents, however, they asked her to reconsider. “My dad looked at my mom, looked at me, looked back at my mom and looked at me, and said: ‘Are you sure?’” At the time, Mick was running a mini-business from home, making baked goods to sell to friends, teachers and neighbors. “You’re doing really well, you clearly love being an entrepreneur, why don’t you go into this avenue?” her father asked her. His advice paid off.

Quizzed on how best to assimilate a new culture, travel writer and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once uttered the famous line: “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” I never met the man, but still I miss him and his deft writing. The Opening a Bottle series is about getting pickled with people far cooler than I am, in whatever city I’ve washed up in.  “What is it, love?” A British lady, tanned deep walnut, is curious, as are most passersby. I’m standing outside the imposing red façade of Red Chalet in the sleepy town of Armação de Pêra, in Portugal’s Algarve. She’s the third septuagenarian to greet me since I touched down. I smile to myself — some stereotypes exist because they’re true.

Celebrity chef John Mountain made headlines last week for banning vegans from his restaurant, Fyre, citing “mental health reasons,” reportedly because a vegan customer complained about Fyre’s lack of plant-based menu options. Meanwhile, a vegan landlord in New York City forbids tenants from cooking meat in his $5,750-a-month apartments. What’s the deal with vegans? Are they all self-obsessed, birdseed-eating eco-warriors who are only able to wash down “cheese” made of arrowroot with a massive dose of ego? Or are they disciplined, clean-living champions whose commitment to the cause merits our admiration and imitation? Had you asked me my opinion of vegans a few years ago, I would have scoffed and made a soy boy joke.

It was an extraordinary sight. For three days, and about seventy kilometers of hiking, there were just endless olive trees covering the fields, hills and mountains stretching to the horizon of the small Spanish province of Jaén. Tucked away in the southern region of Andalusia, this is the country’s powerhouse of olive-oil production. Many people assume Italy or Greece are the largest producers of olive oil. That’s a result of good branding and name recognition, a Jaén-based olive grower told me. After he pulled up alongside me in his dusty car, we walked through the endless olive groves as I was given a tutorial on olive oil production. Spain is the world’s top producer of olive oil.

To beat the killer combination of jet lag and altitude on arrival in the Mile High City, use the tools at your disposal — or local dispensary. I advise newcomers to: Jog around Cheesman Park and the Botanic Gardens in bright sunshine, or thick snow (likely both) Buy up all the melatonin in Walgreens Drink copious local beers Have a smoke, if that’s your jam Grab a meal Hit the hay Repeat as necessary Denver’s bursting with shiny new concept restaurants and kitsch little nooks to drop into; so my muddled brain was grateful for any steer. I hounded discerning friends for recommendations, downloaded Stoned Appetit (a genius app full of the best spots to satisfy the munchies), and took aim at anywhere with a James Beard nod.

Quizzed on how best to assimilate a new culture, travel writer and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain once uttered the famous line: “Drink heavily with locals whenever possible.” I never met the man, but still I miss him and his deft writing. The Opening a Bottle series is about getting pickled with people far cooler than I am, in whatever city I’ve washed up in.  It’s my first proper day of spring on home soil, and it’s a blinder. Not a cloud in the sky, and a glorious cool breeze wafting the scent of mown grass across Lime Wood Hotel’s sumptuous gardens. They’re bursting with color, flowers blooming in every direction. White stone walls are awash with lilac wisteria. I’ve driven down to rural Hampshire from London to meet lauded resident chef Luke Holder.

My mother advised that I get a plain wedding ring. Diamonds, she said, interfere with a woman’s ability to knead dough. “But I don’t knead dough,” I protested. “You will when you’re married.” I guffawed. And yet there I was, four days into my marriage, in an Albanian chef’s Venetian home, being told in no uncertain terms that while my husband Nick could keep his ring on, mine would need to come off. We had arrived in Giudecca, an island in the Venetian lagoon, by water bus, having spent the day in Padova. There, we’d visited the Basilica di Sant’Antonio, home to first-class relics of the great saint — bones, lower jaw, incorrupt tongue and cartilage from his larynx.

New York City mayor Eric Adams is on a quest to cut the city’s “food-related emissions” by 33 percent by 2030, and not by making Gas-X free to residents. Adams, whom the New York Times reports is “a self-described vegan who sometimes eats fish,” has expressed support for the city reducing the amount of meat it serves at schools, hospitals and in other government-funded capacities. “It is easy to talk about emissions that are coming from vehicles and how it impacts our carbon footprint,” Adams said. “It is easy to talk about the emissions that’s coming from buildings and how it impacts our environment. But we now have to talk about beef. And I don’t know if people are really ready for this conversation.

What does the man who has everything really want for dinner? A humble hamburger — at least, that’s what Succession seems to be telling us. In the season four opener, Murdoch-esque media mogul Logan Roy slips away from his lavishly catered birthday party and decamps to a low-key diner, where he mulls the meaning of life in the company of monosyllabic bodyguard Colin. “What are people?” asks the tycoon, before concluding, depressingly, “Economic units.” This existential crisis with a side of fries is (spoiler alert) Logan’s on-screen Last Supper, and it reveals more about him and his ilk than a disdain for canapés. Food is everywhere in Succession — yet rarely is anybody enjoying it much.

At the age of sixteen, chef and restaurateur Forough Vakili, now forty, left Iran to meet a brother she barely knew, eventually settling in America. She didn’t return for eleven years. As a member of the minority Baháʼí faith, which teaches the value of all people, regardless of gender or religion, Vakili had hit a wall in her homeland. “I came here so I could continue my education,” she says, when we speak over Zoom. “We didn’t have many rights back in Iran — there wasn’t a lot offered for us after finishing high school.” It was in Vienna, waiting for her American visa, that Vakili reconnected with her brother for the first time since she was a toddler. Six months later she moved in with him, his wife and three daughters in Atlanta.

Asparagus inspires gentle thoughts, or so said Charles Lamb in an essay about grace before meals. Other vegetables had come to pall on him, but a noble affection for asparagus still lingered in his heart, a reminder of simpler and more innocent times. One can only surmise that he didn’t much care for the vegetable. Who feels melancholically virtuous when eating greens? People who don’t really like them, that’s who.

Mexican food is my comfort food. My devotion stems from memories of my mother’s enchiladas. I used to love watching her fry the tortillas in oil. They would bob about like lily pads, sizzling gently. Then when the bubbles formed with little pops, Mom would lift each tortilla out of the hot oil and place it on a paper towel. At the same time, she’d be heating salsa roja on the gas stove and, when it was ready, she would dip a spoon in the pan and put a dollop on a tortilla, swirling the spoon to coat the whole tortilla, then turn it over and do the same on the other side. She was such a careful cook, and neat. The bowls of fillings sat ready and waiting on the kitchen island, each with its own spoon.

Have you heard about the latest food trend sweeping the nation? It’s called “whimpering over your grocery bill.” In the early days of 2023, Americans are spending 70 percent more on eggs than one year ago. Chicken, dairy and bread prices outpaced inflation as well, increasing by double-digit percentages. What’s an adventurous home cook to do? The answer is Budget Bytes, a website I first turned to as a broke twenty-two-year-old with a galley kitchen in Queens. I didn’t know, before an acquaintance tweeted a link to a coconut vegetable curry, that you could make a tasty, filling meal, complete with leftovers, using almost entirely canned or frozen goods. Budget Bytes taught me to cook.

I have written before in these pages about declining standards in the restaurant world, which has less to do with the food than with the whole “experience” of dining out: the lack of tablecloths, the napkin-wrapped silverware, the to-go boxes, the slovenly informality of staff and customers alike. I stand by every word of it, which is why discovery, or rediscovery, of rare holdout occasions, in this diner-out, is sheer joy. One such exception, long known to me, Jimmy Kelly’s Steakhouse in Nashville, is exceptional in another sense, too. It has been in operation without interruption and under the same family ownership for eighty-nine years.

Everyone loves guacamole, even food puritans. It’s like ice cream or donuts ­— but healthy and good for you. (No need to ask about the fried tortilla chips or calories.) On Super Bowl Sunday, it is estimated that Americans will eat 120 million pounds of avocados, mostly in the form of guacamole. It’s the brownish-green fruit’s big day. Not by accident, Mexico’s avocado trade association runs elaborate ads each game. "The fruit that can change the world, alter history, and make everything better" is its 2023 Super Bowl offering promises. Avocados are a happening food item worldwide, and Mexico leads in sales. Valued at $3 billion last year, its avocado exports were greater than tequila or beer.

Does it seem these days that everyone you know suffers from a food allergy, sensitivity or intolerance (don’t ask me to explain the difference)? It seems inevitable that eating out in a group entails someone in the party requesting a menu item be made vegan, keto, gluten-free, dairy-free, tree nut-free, sulfite-free, etc. (I usually just hope the meal itself is free). Blame it on seed oils, soil depletion, genius marketing, the Liver King — whatever. The fact is that our toxic world makes party-planning a royal pain. How do you accommodate a bunch of people whose dietary restrictions turn menu-making into a culinary Sudoku puzzle? Fortunately for you, The Spectator associates with a lot of cool, accomplished, clever people — one of whom is Chef Andrew Gruel.

Six months of the year, I’m a (wannabe) Lisboeta, “a person from Lisbon.” A peripatetic British food and travel journalist somewhat scuppered by Brexit, I’m allowed in the Schengen Area for up to ninety days in any 180-day block. I max them out before I’m sent packing. I’ve come to think of these moments in time as “chapters,” in a half-hearted attempt to romanticize the loss of my border privileges. Lisbon is the object of my affections — and has become my base for European chapters from which I breathlessly ping between countries. I try new dishes and try not to fall in love with anyone before I’m ordered home (rather inconvenient: "getting married for the visa" jokes grow less and less funny).