I’m kind of a nitwit in social situations. Consider last spring (or was it summer?), when I was at a party in New York, I met Justin Chapple. A bunch of us chatted casually over cocktails in our friend’s backyard, but I found out later he is the Mad Genius over at Food & Wine and he’s on television and all that good stuff. After I found…
[UPDATE: The restaurant has changed its format offering a fixed-price meal (currently €67) that includes starters and main courses, but not desserts or sides. I haven’t been back since they instituted the change.] When Daniel Rose opened his first restaurant, Spring, it was a small, seasonally driven restaurant on an unremarkable street in the 9th arrondissement. Word quickly spread about the talented chef, who helped fuel a revolution…
I have a mixed history with granola bars. The only ones I’ve ever made that were absolute perfection was when I had some peanut butter frosting leftover from a cupcake recipe that I was playing around with. I mixed in some other ingredients into a bowl of leftover frosting on the counter, perhaps more peanut butter, some nuts, a handful of oats, etc, until it looked like…
There are a lot of desserts in my repertoire, but the one that I always have room for – and crave – is Tangerine Sorbet. Come winter, when the markets are loaded up with citrus, Parisians rifle through the piles on the market stands and buy ’em by the kilo. (About 2 pounds.) I do too, never failing to come home with a sack bulging…
I’d been anxious to eat at Honey & Co. in London, which was at the top of my list of places to try there, but never made it. One of the underrepresented foods in Paris is Middle Eastern food. With a large population from that part of the world, most of the restaurants are snack bar-like stands. And even at the standard Middle Eastern restaurants,…
One of the differences between French and American dining is that the green salad is normally served after the meal, either with cheese or on its own. I remember Romain being very surprised when I told him that Americans usually ate cheese before a meal, with the apéritif. “Ah bon?” he replied, having a moment believing that we did that. (And this is from the only French…
Every time I go back to San Francisco, there is a crush of people that I want to see. In addition to everyone that I want to catch up with, there’s also a whirlwind of places I want to go to visit, from favorite taquerias to new chocolate and pastry places. (Not sure what happened in my absence, but the city has really ramped up…
[Update: Mon Éclair closed in the spring of 2018.] I was recently part of a panel on France24 television to debate the subject: “The argument over French cuisine.” Rather than being a debate, though, it was more question-and-answer session once the cameras were rolling. But beforehand, the four of us on the panel had a very lively discussion in the lobby about the subject, which at one point,…
When I started baking professionally, whenever a recipe called for chocolate, we grabbed whatever chocolate we could get in bulk, lopped off a chunk, and used that. At the time, there wasn’t much consciousness about chocolate and all the differences that there are today. (I know, I sound like a dinosaur!) Often “European” chocolates were talked about as being of the best quality. But when I started at…
Join me on my Spring 2026 book tour for my latest book, The Great Book of Chocolate
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