Travel | Michael Ruhlman

The return from Key West is always a hard reentry. At least I wasn’t Mark Wiss, who returned to Newport! Hi, Mark, how’s the snow?! But it’s cold. And I’m alone in my office and not with the sailors who are all so much fun. Really, it’s kind of like being in college again, all the diligent work during the day and drunken camaraderie at night (ok, maybe just the latter plus sailing), and good food. Spaceman Spiff came in second to My Shirona in the J-111 class, alas, but a good show in all. I relive the glorious days through the food, so, for posterity, the menu: The first full day is rough, as we’re all rather, um, exuberant when we reach Key West the night before, and so with woolly brain, I and Read On »

For forty of the past seventy days I’ve been on the road, with another two weeks to go before I can settle into the holidays, and perhaps the biggest thing I learned was how hard it is to find good, nourishing food when traveling, especially when you live in a Marriott Courtyard. I spent ten days, for instance, at one such Marriott in the infernal (temperature-wise) San Fernando Valley while filming a new cooking competition show. (Kitchen Inferno airs this Wednesday on Food Network—let me know what you think!) True, there was a Whole Foods within a fifteen-minute walk, where I could buy grapes and almonds for the room, and I could have hit the salad bar, but I don’t like to eat out of plastic clamshell containers. By myself. In a shitty hotel room. Sorry Read On »

Re-posting this because I can’t be there this year and it is such a valuable event. I’m sorry to be missing it, and miss very much my dear friends Brian and Kate Hill and Christoph and Isabell. -MR Christoph Wiesner, the Austrian butcher who raises Mangalitsa, is always tense before the kill. Last year, he told me, yes, he was nervous because it wasn’t his pig, the pig didn’t know him, he couldn’t know what the pig would do. Under normal circumstances the pigs have spent their lives with him and the week before they are done in, he brings the captive bolt, the stunning device, into pens so the pigs are used to even that. The pigs are calm throughout. This year, at Pigstock in Traverse City, MI, Christoph was not only unfamiliar to the pig, he was miked Read On »

After my assistant, Emilia Juocys, returned from a food-related trip to California, I asked her how it was. I’d heard about Eat Retreat but didn’t have a clear sense of what it was. I said, “Why don’t you write a post about it.”Though what she sent me was considerably more personal than I’d anticipated, it also underscored what we all recognize: the power of food to connect us to one another. —M.R. By Emilia Juocys With all of the changes I have experienced in the last 12 months I needed to do something different and meet some new people, especially in the culinary world. Chicago had been great to me but I left in the fall to return home because I was getting divorced after nine years of marriage. Never expected it, but life happens, people change, and the Read On »

I’m writing this from Portland but headed to San Fran for the Egg events below. Hoping to sneak out to Sausalito to meet the extraordinary Deborah Jones, photog of all French Laundry books and an angel on earth—one of the great luxuries of a book tour, seeing cherished friends. I emailed Stephanie Stiavetti (@sstiavetti), hoping to see her as well. Stephanie writes The Culinary Life blog. Her first book, Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese, is also from Little, Brown, and it’s superb, the best one I’ve seen, in fact—accept no imitations! I asked her for SF food recs, and this is what she sent—well worth sharing (though Steph, I hear Hog Island closed for remodeling or something, damn!)—M.R. Dispatch from Stephanie Stiavetti If you’ve got time to head down to the Ferry Building, Hog Island Read On »

Posts Categorized: Travel

Key West Reflections

Road Food: Red Rice Salad

Pigstock TC 2014

Eat Retreat

San Francisco and Egg Tour