Dining Out and About
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Dining Out and About (Loire Valley): Domaine des Hauts de Loire
Tuesday, November 18th, 2008I have a confession: I like fancy hotels.
I wish I were the type of person who didn’t care where I spent the night, someone who viewed hotels simply as a “place to sleep.” But I’m not. I love thick towels, luxurious bath soaps, marble bathrooms with heated towel racks, and beautiful, over-the-top, they’ve-coordinated-the-pillows, I-even-covet-the-wallpaper hotel […]
Dining Out and About (Paris): Le Mistral
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008If you live in Paris, chances are you frequent a café, a convivial spot around the corner from your home where you can stop in to have a coffee and a good gossip. This is the story of one such Parisian café, Le Mistral, which is tucked into a humble corner of the 20th arrondissement.
Once […]
Dining Out and About (London): Books for Cooks
Monday, September 22nd, 2008We’re just back from a weekend jaunt to London, and though it was a very brief visit (made even shorter by the Eurostar problems), I still managed to squeeze in a visit to my favorite bookstore in the world, Books for Cooks.
As you might guess from the name, this tiny shop is devoted to cookbooks!(!!!) What’s […]
Dining Out and About (Paris): Maria Luisa, pizzeria napoletana
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
I love French food as much as the next person (maybe more), but sometimes I hanker for a little diversity — after all, I am American and our national cuisine is… every cuisine. Of the many foods I crave (among them: sushi, enchiladas, cheeseburgers, fried rice, and falafel), excellent pizza can be the most difficult […]
Dining Out and About: Chez Omar
Wednesday, September 10th, 2008Chez Omar is a gem, but it is not a hidden one. Nor is it particularly Parisian: Almost every other voice you hear has an American accent; many others are Japanese. Heck, the host (propriétaire? Omar?) even speaks Japanese! But, with its classic bistro appearance (complete with smoke-stained walls, mirrored columns and red pleather booths), […]
Dining Out and About: Pho 14
Thursday, September 4th, 2008There has been much recent griping among travelers (particularly those of us who suffer from a weak currency) about the expense of Paris. I can’t disagree: the City of Light could very well be renamed the City of Light Pockets. But on recent rainy Saturday afternoon, we enjoyed a bona fide cheap eat, as we […]
Dining Out and About: In the banlieue
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008Sorry for the brief interruption in posting. Our shipment of furniture and other household stuff arrived last week and we have been surrounded in a sea of boxes, trying to find places for all those things we thought we’d left behind in storage (I nearly died when the 1-ton ceramic Buddha statue showed up). Of course, […]
Dining Out and About (Vermont): Shelburne Farms
Thursday, August 21st, 2008If you’re a regular Cooking the Books reader, perhaps you remember this blog’s first review, a delicious, buttery, maple-syrup-laced visit to Vermont, via Cooking with Shelburne Farms.
The book’s recipes feature quintessentially Vermont products–butter and maple syrup, of course, but also cheddar cheese, lamb and apples, to name a few. I found the recipes reliable and delicious, but […]
Cafeteria “cuisine”
Thursday, August 14th, 2008
Bonjour mes amis and profuse apologies for the loooonnng absence! As it turns out, learning French, full-time, in immersion, is much more time-consuming (not to mention energy-sucking) then I ever imagined. Don’t get me wrong — I loved my program at Middlebury College and, now that it’s over, even kind of miss the three hours of homework […]
Dining Out and About: Sakana
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008Took a night off from Martha for a sushi treat at Sakana, a Dupont Circle Japanese place that I found via my friends on Chowhound. Before I describe the meal, I’d like to take a moment to bemoan the state of restaurants in Dupont Circle. Why do people converge on only a small handful of […]
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