ALMOST A DECADE AGO, I made two good decisions. The first was to move from New York to New Orleans. The second was to get there by train. I boarded the Crescent at Penn Station, carrying a small, soft-sided cooler that contained a loaf of bread, a st

WASHINGTON STATE is admittedly a long way from the Highlands of Scotland. But when Seattle’s Westland Distillery opened in 2010, cofounder and master distiller Matt Hofmann was determined to use the greatest whiskey-making resource the Pacific Northw

BACK IN AUGUST, Parisian pastry chef Cédric Grolet began teasing his plans to open a boulangerie on Instagram. By late October, when I happened to be in town, the storefront windows at 35 Avenue de l’Opéra were plastered with a larger-than-life photo

A great many things disappear without a trace from our cultural memory, and had there been just a slight shift in the winds of change, we might never have forgotten about genever. After all, if it weren’t for the Netherlands’ losing New York City to

THIRTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, WHEN LORETTA Harrison opened Loretta’s Authentic Pralines in New Orleans’ old Jax Brewery building, she became the first African-American woman to own and operate a praline company in the Crescent City—a distinction she charact

My father gave me his letters from paris. Written with a fountain pen on onionskin stationery and folded in envelopes marked Par Avion, these formative accounts were addressed to my grandmother, and mailed during the year he studied art in Montparnas

It may seem that fat, flour, and some patient stirring are all that go into this building block of Louisiana cooking. But Justin Devillier, chef-owner of Magazine Street’s La Petit Grocery, gives no fewer than three methods in The New Orleans Kitchen

IN EARLY NOVEMBER 1993, I was eking out a living as a freelance writer in Santa Monica when I received a call from Dorothy Kalins, who’d given me lots of work during her tenure editing Metropolitan Home. “I’ve found us a new magazine,” Dorothy announ

• Saveur is born! The magazine launches with an editorial staff of 11, a cover story on Oaxaca, and an editorial advisory board that includes Marion Cunningham, Sheila Lukins, and Alice Waters. • The Food Network celebrates its one-year anniversary.

It was two years ago that Christopher Hirsheimer first noticed a for sale sign on the vacant old train station in Milford, New Jersey. She immediately asked Melissa Hamilton, her business partner, to come see the place. “This building—this building—t

When my father moved our family from Oaxaca to Los Angeles in 1994, he told us we would only be there for a year. I was 9 years old then, excited to learn a new language and enamored with the America I saw on TV shows like Saved by the Bell and Full

If anyone should know if a recipe’s a keeper, it’s the person tasked with making sense of the original instructions—from the far reaches of Sri Lanka, say, or a famous chef who measures nothing. This might explain why many test kitchen staffers named

SO WHERE WAS I 25 YEARS AGO? Right here. Not in the same physical location (Saveur’s got much swankier digs now), and certainly not in the same position atop the masthead. No, back when this magazine launched, I manned the reception desk outside edit

THE BERRIES OF THIS EVERGREEN LEND FLAVOR TO A LOT MORE THAN GIN AND GENEVER THE LAST TIME YOU EXPERIENCED THE PINEY, citrusy flavor of juniper was likely on the business end of a dry martini (see “Genever Is the Original Juniper Spirit,” p. 25). But

I’D BEEN IN ELKO, NEVADA, for less than an hour, and I’d already broken a rule. I had come to the Star Hotel, a century-old restaurant and former boarding house for cattle ranchers, in search of the Picon punch. There it was, advertised on a chalkboa

In my kitchen in Oakland, California, I preheated my cast-iron comal and slipped a pat of butter onto the surface. I’d just gotten home from New Orleans, where at an artisanal bakery I’d purchased a mallorca, a sweet spiral bun made by a baker from P

THE POUNDING OF BOOZA is a spectacle worth lining up for. Though the word means “ice cream” in Levantine Arabic, today it mostly refers to the Syrian version, a combination of milk with sahlab or salep (a starchy orchid-root flour) and mastic gum (a

“THIS IS NOT ENTRY-LEVEL FISH,” says a smiling Michael Benevides, standing in what has to be the United States’ largest purpose-built bacalhau chamber. It occupies one end of Portugalia Marketplace, the emporium Benevides opened with his father, Fern

CANNOLI HAVE ALWAYS BEEN a fixture in Angie Rito’s family, thanks to her Sicilian grandfather Santo. At age 8, he worked at a tiny pastry shop in Riposto, on the island’s eastern coast. His first task was mixing cannoli dough. “Back then, the shop wa

PAD THAI MIGHT JUST BE Thailand’s most famous export. The lightly sweet, peanut-topped noodle dish can be found in nearly every Thai restaurant around the world. And while it has been endlessly adapted (some might say bastardized) to appeal to the gl

EVERY TIME STEVE SANDO, THE founder of California-based heirloom bean company Rancho Gordo, heads down to Mexico, he encounters a new kind of pozole. “I remember one I tasted in Oaxaca where the cooks used some puréed hominy to thicken the broth and

PARATHAS ARE THE STUFF of my carb-filled dreams. The soft, layered Indian breads were a staple of my childhood in Dallas—most commonly stuffed with spiced, mashed potatoes and made by my Aunt Rachna. I remember sitting at her kitchen table, mesmerize

IT APPEARED AT first that I had arrived in Macau by time machine. The hotel’s name, Morpheus, seemed picked to evoke either Greek mythology or The Matrix, but the exterior of the $1.1 billion building makes it clear the proprietors had chosen science

TURKISH LONDON STRETCHES through the boroughs of Hackney and Harringay, in the northeast of the city. There are Turkish barber shops and bakeries, lahmacun cafes and baklava stores, and an Ottoman-style mosque with a butcher’s shop beneath it. Greeng

“They didn’t tout it as Lebanese,” remembers Davidson, who is now the owner of Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. “We didn’t even know where Lebanon was. But if you wanted to have a great rib-eye, that’s where you went.” Just one of these restaurants remains within

Every meal at Milli begins with a complimentary chalupa. One of the cooks griddles a small, handmade corn tortilla atop a hot comal until it’s bronzed on both sides, then layers it with smoky red salsa and homemade queso fresco. It’s a humble gift—an