You see, that was the day that Chef Ferran Adria announced at a press conference that he was going to close El Bulli for two years. I don’t think I’ll forget the flash of lightning that was almost tangible in the auditorium. The uproar that ensued was like a clap of thunder. The very fact…
We were in the Dar el Jeld, but we could have been in a jewel box for all you knew. The most iconic restaurant in Tunisia filled up an entire mansion, with a plethora of rooms that led out one from another over two floors. Each room had walls that were decorated, in the Tunisian…
America’s North West “The best types of salmon are chinook, followed by sockeye and then coho.” These words of wisdom were imparted by Kevin Moffit, President and CEO, Pear Bureau Northwest. A friend and I were at Paley’s Place, a small, intimate restaurant in Moffit’s hometown, Portland, Oregon. Moffit was the host and much as…
My first glimpse of Leela Palace Udaipur was not of the building itself, majestic as it is, but of the way the management looks after its guests. Shortly after a date for my visit was set, I received an email. Would I please list out my preferences for music, beverage and reading material. And while…
You’ve seen the rolling, flower-strewn meadows of Switzerland in innumerable Hindi films and snow-clad mountains in tourism brochures. You know that Zurich is lined end to end with banks and that every third shop in the country sells cuckoo clocks, cheese or chocolates. But did you know that hornussen is a popular sport, which has…
Forget Shah Jehan and the Mughals, I told myself firmly as I threaded my way through the meat market, in the shadow of the Jama Masjid. The Mughal emperor with the most developed aesthetic sense for architecture and jewellery may have been the raison d’etre for much of Old Delhi, certainly for the giant quadrangle…
On Edgware Road, I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t in Iraq. Burqa clad figures were out shopping: at one end of a side road, a vegetable market had been set up. Fabric shops sold lacy lengths of cloth with liberal helpings of glitter. However, it was the small grocery shops that were…
Our guide in Amman had the rather unlikely name of Basel Ahmed. Had I but known it, his name was the perfect metaphor for Jordan itself: on the crossroads of Christianity and Islam. He had two seemingly irreconcilable passions: history and cuisine. While on site – Jordan has an unfair proportion of world famous Roman…
The orange marmalade I had for breakfast still tingles on my palate. Sevilla marmalade is more intense and more astringent than anything else I have ever tasted; English marmalade is more bitter but not quite as fruity. I’ve started to spread the marmalade more and more thinly on my toast in a bid to make…
