Dispatches
Where I am, what's cooking, and what's interesting. Written from wherever I happen to be.
It started in the ladies' room at Pujol, where I became completely obsessed with the hand soap. Is Xínú a little pretentious? Probably. I don't really mind.
A Microplane, a digital scale, measuring spoons down to 1/64 of a teaspoon — and a little Mexican ex-voto of the patron saint of cooks that has nothing to do with cooking at all.
One suitcase, a carry-on and a backpack each — and honestly, it's still too much. Fourteen things I wouldn't want to be without, organized by the senses.
Sometimes the way I like to eat is a progression — a drink under the lanterns at Hotel San Fernando, tuna on the street at Koku, then a seat at the bar at Plonk.
My Paris references are all very old school — my grandfather's apartment, walks to the Marais with my father, and the tea counter I've been going back to since I was nineteen.
The last island we visited and the one that stayed with me most — flamingos behind the beach, turtles at Los Túneles, and a town that feels quiet and still not fully discovered.
photographI surprised Noah with a birthday weekend on Aitutaki — a private motu, a lagoon the color of nothing I've seen before, and one big mistake: we only booked a long weekend.
Two months on Moorea, and it was the churches I kept photographing — pastel, concrete and coral stone against all that green and blue.
photographOur daughters joined us for a night in the dunes outside Ica — dune buggies, sandboarding, and dinner under an impossibly star-filled sky.