You might be wondering how this made it to your inbox. Me too. A few days ago, I found myself with a rare, quiet moment and the strange urge to write a newsletter. I realized it’s been almost a year since I published honestly? 2025 is a bit intense in which I announced that I was ready to come back here.

And then I promptly…didn’t.

When I determined that 2025 was a thorn-in-your-side type of year in April, I didn’t know how prickly things would become.

I was mostly out of work, although I did a few small projects here and there. After five years of owning a business and working together nonstop, my husband started a full-time position in July. That left me caring for our baby over the long, hot, South of France summer. I counted down the days until September when she’d head to nursery school, and I could get a few minutes to myself.

The joke was on me.

For three weeks, I shuttled her back and forth after she didn’t adjust well. Then, once she settled in, she caught every cold, flu, and virus that a group of 10 babies can concoct and lovingly brought them home to me. I lived in a state of constant illness from September until December, when this storyline reached its peak: we both came down with a flu so bad that we spent our shared birthday week lying in bed staring at the ceiling because watching TV required too much energy.

What a way to ring in one and thirty!

If you’re a parent, you’ve probably been here. But these are the parts we don’t say aloud – at least not until someone else is going through it and we offer our sympathies: Oh yes, I remember how hard that was. But just like my OB-GYN told me she doesn’t tell women how their body will change after pregnancy so as not to freak them out, parents mostly keep the really gross stuff to ourselves (and anyway, no childless person wants to know about your kids’ bodily fluids.)

It wasn’t all rainy days, though. 2025 brought some really great stuff as well. In May, we took our baby to Greece, the first time any of us had been. And when my husband got a week off at the last minute in August, we hopped over to Romania and let our baby sleep for hours in her carseat as we drove through the mountains, stopping at little churches and lakes, and specifically not stopping on roads where bears (like, real, giant bears!) seemed to be hanging out at every pull-off.

Travel was our escape, but the biggest changes happened at home. I learned time management, patience, and the liberating power of saying this can wait (hence my year-long absence here.)

Most importantly, though, I learned to let go. I’m not the most organized person, and combined with the fact that I live in a foreign country and have a baby, I sometimes feel like the messy character in the sitcom. But you know what? It’s crazy how much less it bothers me now. I try to apologize when I make a mistake and laugh off the rest (like the time a French lady stopped me on the street – talking on the phone while holding a coffee – to tell me my baby was slipping down out of the stroller because I had forgotten to buckle her in.)

I clipped her back in and life went on.

See you soon.

Have you ever experienced a moment where life forces you to reset? It’s as if you were speeding along until all of a sudden the sign reads, “HIGHWAY ENDS.” That’s been 2025 for me, both personally and professionally.

In December, I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Jenna. She is the absolute joy of my life and every day I get to watch her grow feels like an achievement in and of itself.

Becoming a parent changes you in ways you don’t expect. Everyone talks about the sleepless nights and the incessant crying, but those moments pass. People talk less about the emotional side of things.

My first thought when the nurses put the baby on my chest was that I finally understood my own mother – the sacrifices she made, and the reasons why, even though I’m almost 30, she still calls me almost every day to ask if I’ve eaten dinner or if I’ve gotten over my cold. As a child, you love your mother, but you can never understand the type of love your mother feels for you until you have a child of your own.

Since becoming a parent, I’ve also started to feel a much more profound sadness for the suffering of children around the world. That’s not to say I was cold or callous before, but when I hold my baby in my arms, as adorable as she is, I realize that every baby on earth coos and smiles and grasps and giggles the same way she does. She is not more innocent than the rest, she just happened to win the lottery of being born in a stable country to two parents who love her dearly.

And yet, as lucky as she is, I still worry about her future. The world today feels darker than it did two years ago when I was backpacking through Asia, eating Thai roti and Korean street food without a care in the world. Then again, there are people backpacking Asia right now who are having the time of their lives, so maybe I’m the one who has changed. The stakes feel higher now, and I understand why when I was a kid I thought all adults were sad.

Regarding this newsletter, it would be easy to tell you that after giving birth I simply didn’t have time to write, but that’s not true. I’ve made time to see friends and go on walks and try new hobbies like stand-up comedy.

The truth is, I didn’t write because I couldn’t motivate myself to post happy-go-lucky food stories when the world seems headed towards impending disaster. Who cares about the difference between the waffles from Brussels and Liege when so many people are starving and authoritarianism is at our doorstep?

Meanwhile, the algorithms are pushing us towards light content that lets us ignore the painful reality of the news cycle and big publishers are taking the bait. Thank God for the journalists risking their safety to bring us the truth, but their work is being buried in the deluge of cucumber salad recipes and features columns about whether its acceptable to wear sweatpants on a flight.

To be clear, I don’t fault the creators and writers who are paying their bills with this type of content. I, too, had a job selling a service through content creation. I didn’t tell my employer I was pregnant for fear of losing the gig. Ironically, they let me go a few weeks before giving birth. They didn’t tell me why, but I later discovered they replaced me with a combination of AI and students paid pennies to make content out of their dorm rooms.

I’m fed up with a global economic system that’s making it increasingly harder for people to find meaningful work that pays a fair wage, no matter their skills or level of education. I see my friends with full-time jobs struggle to pay rent, meanwhile, corporations hoard millions in bank accounts – money that currently amounts to almost meaningless 1s and 0s but could make a difference in the lives of real people if only a select few weren’t so greedy.

You’re probably wondering what this has to do with a food newsletter. Maybe not much, but I couldn’t bear to write about food as if nothing’s wrong. I’m tired of hiding behind a veneer of positivity.

This newsletter might have a slightly different tone from now on – or maybe not! I’m not promising anything, not even regularity. But I’m not going to stop writing, because no matter the world outside our window, we all deserve the ability to express ourselves, to create, to sing, to laugh, to share with others. I’m not going to let events out of my control keep me from that, even as I’m mindful of the fact that my writing isn’t changing reality.

At the end of a newsletter, I have a tendency to wrap things into a positive little package with a bow of hopefulness slapped on top. I’m not going to do that today. I’m only here to let you know that I’m ready to come back to writing about food and travel and the things I love.

I’ll see you soon.

– Anna

I’ve never been one for astrology or the Myers-Briggs system, but if there is a personality test I can relate to it would be the Enneagram. Through and through, I’m Type 7 – The Enthusiast, generally characterized by a constant desire to chase something new. I’ve been this way since I was a child when my list of potential future jobs included ecologist, interior designer, news reporter, sanitation worker, or homesteader in the Alaskan wilderness.

Eventually, I settled on journalism exactly because each story allowed me to live someone else’s routine and immerse myself in their world if only for a day. That was the experience I had with legendary pastry chef Vincenzo Santoro, at the helm of Pasticceria Martesana, a bakery known for the traditional Italian Christmas bread called panettone.

I met him in 2021 while capturing his craft for this video for Eater.

Our 4 a.m. start time was made even more challenging by the chilly November air as we headed out of the center of Milan towards a large industrial complex still shrouded in darkness.

Inside the sprawling bakery was buzzing with dozens of pastry chefs wearing tall white hats and moving at lightning speed around a variety of cakes and cookies. Vincenzo was already there, incredibly chipper and ready to go. I downed a few shots of espresso and fumbled with my gear, my eyes watering from the bright lights.

To start, Vincenzo presented his “dear friend” – not a human one, but living all the same – a sourdough starter that he had been feeding and nurturing for over 50 years – the basis for his inimitable panettone recipe.

Another key ingredient was the dried fruit – raisins and Sicilian citrus. Vincenzo smelled handfuls of it before dropping it into the sticky, yellow dough. He waited and listened as the machine turned, adding more liquid based on the sound and his years of expertise.

It was never a given that Enzo Santoro would become renowned for the Milanese tradition of panettone. In fact, he grew up far away from the city in a modest home in Puglia. When one of his brothers went to Milan to find work, he soon invited Enzo to join him and take a job as a dishwasher. Enzo remembered those early days when he would pass by the Martesana pastry shop on his way to the restaurant and stare at the sweets in the window with the awe and longing of a child. Eventually, the baker noticed the boy and offered him a job. Vincenzo began to work at Martesana at the age of 14 and eventually took over the business.

Even as he approached 70, Vincenzo seemed to retain every bit of passion and wonderment that first led him to the world of pastry. For hours, I watched as he and his baking partner Domenico lovingly shaped each ball of dough by hand and then placed it into a paper mold using a razor blade to cut a cross into the top (a benediction! he said with a smile.) At Christmastime, the bakery hand-produces more than 27,000 pieces of panettoni per month.

“Enzo, in his 50 years of experience, still says we can do it even better,” Domenico told me.

With the kind smile of a grandfather, Vincenzo pressed a hot cookie into my hand as we waited for the panettoni to finish baking. While some parts of the process required extreme patience, others demanded speed. When the steaming bread came out of the oven, Vincenzo, Domenico, and their assistants quickly flipped them over on special racks to prevent the panettone’s signature domed tops from collapsing in on themselves. Then Vincenzo cut one in half to show me what the perfect panettone looks like when a baker respects the needs and timing of the ingredients.

“So long as I feel alive, I will never stop doing this…it is a magic that comes from passion,” he said.

I met Vincenzo Santoro at a formative time in my own career and I often think of what I learned just by observing him. Vincenzo committed himself to one discipline that he practiced day in and day out until his panettone became the new standard for the product.

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In my own life, I find it all too easy to rush the process and feel pulled in so many different directions that a project starts to lose its meaning before it’s even completed. But Vincenzo knew that the sourdough starter he lovingly tended to each day wasn’t just for the year’s Christmas rush – he was crafting a legacy around something he loved, a recipe that would bring people joy for generations to come.

At the end of the day, Vincenzo sent us home with a few panettoni and the most endearing kiss on the cheek. He may no longer be with us, but his lessons on how to nurture a passion are still on my mind every year at Christmastime: To achieve our full potential, we must inch forward one day at a time, and only by living for the art itself will we find the motivation to continue.

When we arrived in South Korea, it was raining buckets.

We had just spent a fabulous three weeks eating our way through Japan, and Korea was the final stop on our four-month grand tour of Asia and Australia. Our backpacks dug into our shoulders, and fatigue was starting to set in as we dragged our carry-ons through yet another unfamiliar city.

With no internet connection and lacking the willpower to be picky, I said to my husband, Let’s just eat at the next restaurant we pass, no matter what it is.

The next restaurant turned out to be a large room full of wooden booths, with something resembling a dorm room kitchenette in the back corner and a few bubbling pots on the stove. An older woman was having lunch with her husband at one of the tables but jumped up to seat us and pointed to a menu the size of a billboard hanging on the wall. We had downloaded Google Translate for Korean and quickly deduced that the restaurant’s specialty was pork intestine soup—not exactly what I was craving at the moment.

Feeling a bit deflated, we ordered two bowls, which were quickly brought to us along with a silver plate of banchan—Korean side dishes like cabbage kimchi and other pickled veggies—and rice.

As luck would have it, that meal of murky pork soup was one of the best things I ate during the entire trip.

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We started our Korean adventure in Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city and a bustling beach town on the Southeastern coast. Our friend Minwon had been living in France for the past few years but had moved back to her hometown only ten days before we arrived. We were delighted to see a familiar face.

For dinner, Minwon suggested we try chicken galbi at a restaurant where all the ingredients were served raw in a large, flat pan in the center of the table. We took turns poking the dish with a wooden spoon until the meat was cooked and it was time to add curly ramen noodles to the sweet and spicy red sauce. Chicken galbi was the second thing I ate in Korea, and so far we were two for two.

The next morning, Minwon led us through the local market. While there were plenty of fruits, vegetables, and sweets, I was surprised by the amount of fresh seafood stocked in small aquariums lining the sidewalk. I didn’t recognize half of it, but one creature kept appearing over and over: gaebul, known as the penis fish. For the uninitiated like myself, the pink marine worm is rather uncomfortable to look at, and the thought of eating made me shudder. But for many Koreans, gaebul is a popular bar snack known for its chewy texture and sweet taste, most often served raw with a dipping sauce. In fact, many local watering holes had their own aquariums full of squirming gaebul, waiting to be served to hungry drinkers.

I ultimately passed on the gaebul in favor of something a little more within my comfort zone: Cheddar cheesecake, which perfectly walked the line between dessert and savory snack.

In Busan, we visited the Gamcheon Culture Village, a colorful neighborhood built into a hill, and got a taste of the Korean love for photo booths and skincare stores. But after three days, it was time to say our goodbyes to Minwon and take a train north to Seoul.

For the first few days in Seoul, we found ourselves alone and unsure of how to get around, although we did manage to visit the War Memorial of Korea and the sprawling Gyeongbokgung Palace.

We were quite relieved to meet up with Francis, a Seoul native whom my husband had met some years ago while living in Australia. Francis only had one evening to spend with us, but we were determined to make it count. We headed to Gwangjang Market, which seemed to be bursting with people and warm energy despite the rain. We passed by Cho Yonsoon’s kalguksi (knife-cut noodle) stall, unmissable with large posters showcasing her appearance on Netflix’s Street Food: Asia series. There was no chance of getting a seat, so we tucked into an adjacent restaurant nearby for some dumplings and mung bean pancakes.

I was blissfully unaware of the surprise in store for me at our next stop. As we moved through the market, Francis noticed a restaurant with several tanks of live octopus resting on the sidewalk in front. “Ah, this is so Korean!” he said. “You have to try it!”

We made our way to the upstairs dining room, which was much fuller than I would have guessed from the outside. I tried to politely explain to Francis that I didn’t want to partake in this experience, and he politely explained to me that he would be partaking whether I wanted to join or not.

He called out to the server, and in record time, a plate of raw, chopped, still-squirming octopus garnished with herbs and accompanied by a dipping sauce was delivered to our table. I was still trying to make sense of it all when Francis began to pop raw pieces of octopus into his mouth with the blissful smile of a kid eating gummy worms.

I had a decision to make: stay indignant about the cruelty of eating a semi-living octopus, or let myself have a cultural experience that would likely never present itself again.

I timidly picked up my chopsticks and put a small piece into my mouth. I was totally unprepared for the way each individual tentacle suctioned to my teeth as if the octopus were fighting until the very end. I did not eat another one.

We had been snacking all evening, but it was starting to get late, and it was time for a more substantial dinner. We made our way to another section of the market where most of the stalls had closed, and there were no other customers in sight. The alleyway was dark except for the lights from a few butcher stands that were still open.

A friendly butcher and his son showed us several Styrofoam packages, each containing a slightly different assortment of cuts with various types of marbling and price points. We deferred to Francis’ judgment and bought a pack containing mostly fattier meat and a few lean pieces. The only thing left to do was find a place to cook it.

Luckily, the bring-your-own-meat barbecue restaurant just across the street was still serving the last few customers and begrudgingly seated us latecomers around a metal table with a charcoal grill in the center.

The server began to bring all manner of sauces, salads, and pickled side dishes, along with our plated beef and the necessary utensils to cook it ourselves. Francis threw the fattier pieces on the grill, which seemed to have the texture of butter.

As we ate, we asked Francis all sorts of questions about life in Seoul, cultural values, and the country’s relationships with neighbors like Japan and North Korea. How did he feel about the military exercises going on at the border?

“This is every day for us,” he said. “The West probably sees this as a bigger deal than we do.”

After our beef dinner, we settled into the classy red booths of a jazz club for a drink and some music before Francis drove us home. Our route passed through Itaewon, and Francis pointed out the alleyway where the deadly Halloween stampede had taken place just a few months earlier. It was hard to imagine the scene on a night when the streets were so quiet, with just a few military personnel in uniform walking under the rain.

A day or two later, we flew back to Europe from Seoul. As we left, I couldn’t help but feel like Korea had taken me for a spin. The food was some of the most delicious and flavorful of our entire trip, yet it was clear I had barely scratched the surface of a rich culture so different from my own. I decided not to form any conclusions about Korea, and instead leave the page unturned with the hopes of one day returning to write the next chapter.

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My knowledge of Polish is limited to “hello,” “goodbye,” “thank you,” and about 20 different food words. While that means I’ve forgotten nearly everything I knew as a child, it also means I can still successfully get myself a piece of poppy seed cake in Polish bakery.

My parents moved to Krakow, Poland, in the mid-90s when the country was still emerging from the heavy hand of communism. My dad still remembers how the streets were littered with banana peels – one of the many imported products that were finally accessible.

Last month, I drove past the concrete maternity hospital where I was born, and it appears to still be delivering babies. The Google reviews mention a very attentive staff, which my mother confirms.

My parents quickly made friends through their church and the school where they taught English and by the time they left two years later, they had become conversational in Polish.

Back in the States, our small house was dubbed the Polish embassy. Friends would cycle through, sometimes staying for weeks or months, and we’d regularly visit Baltimore’s handful of Polish shops for imported kielbasa, pickles, kefir, black currant juice, and caramel candies.

Growing up, Poland became something of a mythical place for me. My parents told stories of adventures like crossing the Baltic Sea on an icebreaker and getting circled in by riot police after a soccer game. They laughed about mix-ups while trying to learn Polish, and entertained me with stories of food that were equal parts about the taste and the magic of the moment.

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As rich as the memories were, it wasn’t until I had graduated college that we could finally afford to travel back and so, in 2019, I returned to Poland for the first time with my parents and younger brother.

The post-Soviet atmosphere of the 90s was gone, but the beauty of Europe is that the castles and church towers and parks tend to remain frozen in time. Food was a big part of our quest: paczki – pillowy donuts traditionally filled with rose jam, Krakow bagels covered in sesame or poppy seeds, and naleśniki – thin Polish pancakes filled with soft cheese and jam.

We snagged a table at Babci Maliny (literally: Grandmother Raspberry), a traditional Polish milk bar in a cozy basement that was the local hangout in my parents’ day and has become well-known since. I ordered bigos, a classic stew made of kielbasa and sauerkraut, with a side of creamy cucumber salad.

Our trip in 2019 was largely about visiting many of the places I had heard so much about growing up – the house where we lived, Wawel castle, the underground chapel carved out of salt in the Wieliczka mine, and even the eerie apartment blocks in neighboring Nowa Hutte, a 1950s planned city designed to be the perfect model of Soviet realism.

I didn’t know it at the time, but that trip was the very beginning of my new life in Europe. I left my parents at the airport and continued on to France to begin my teaching assistant job. In the months and years that followed, I fell in love, got married, started a business, and traveled the world. I knew I would visit Poland again when the time was right.

The opportunity arose this year when my husband and I got the assignment to produce this video about Chopin Polish potato vodka. We decided to take a week to explore more of the country accompanied by our new Polish friend Kasia whom we met in New Zealand last year.

After arriving around midnight, we were extra appreciative of the traditional Polish breakfast Kasia prepared for us the next morning – thick slices of soft bread to be eaten with a mayonnaise-dressed veggie salad, salty Polish pickles, and cottage cheese and chives.

In Krakow, we spent three days visiting museums and cultural sites like the historic synagogue in the Jewish district of Kazimierz and the Rynek Underground, a relatively new museum located under Krakow’s central square displaying excavations of market stalls from the middle ages.

When it was time for lunch, we made our way to another milk bar. These cafeteria-style establishments are known for local dishes and quick service at reasonable prices. The woman behind the counter spoke into a microphone and hot plates of cabbage rolls covered in mushroom sauce and a bowl of tomato-rice soup arrived through a small window before we had even finished our order. We helped ourselves to small plates of red cabbage slaw, tomatoes, and carrot salad with a glass of homemade berry kompot to wash it down.

After a few days in Krakow, we drove south to the Tatra Mountains, the beloved outdoor hiking and skiing destination of Poles from across the country. The region’s main tourist attraction is Morskie Oko, a beautiful lake nestled in the mountains, accessible by an “easy” three-hour hike. Having previously been carried to the top as a baby, it was magical to finally return, and on a gloriously sunny and warm September day no less.

Although a six-hour hiking day is short by Polish standards, it was enough to work up an appetite that could only be satiated by Polish mountain food. Several of the local restaurants had closed for vacation before the start of the winter tourism season, but we were fortunate enough have Szarotka Karczma all to ourselves, with its charming wooden interior and a menu of freshly prepared local specialities.

Since the beginning of our trip, Kasia had been on the hunt for the classic Polish stew Żurek, served in a fresh bread bowl. We found it on the menu and were not disappointed. It was thick and sour, filled with chunks of spiced white kielbasa. And to be extra sure we’d have to waddle out of the restaurant, we ordered two plates of cheese and potato pierogi topped with fried onions.

After three beautiful days hiking through the mountains, we loaded up our suitcases and a bag of local, smoked sheep cheese and drove to Warsaw to visit the city and prepare for our upcoming shoot. As a parting gift to myself, early on the morning of our final day, I stopped by the bakery to grab a piece of poppy seed cake.

Drive out of Modena and the apartment buildings will soon be replaced by vineyards on the flat, green land of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. Some of these grapes will become wine – namely Lambrusco – but many will become balsamic vinegar, a complex product that’s far less understood.

Last year while on assignment for Eater, I had the pleasure of meeting Daniele Bonfatti, Gilberto Barbieri, and his wife Laura Maini. The two families run Acetaia del Cristo, a fourth-generation company and the largest of the 250 traditional balsamic producers in the region.

“Traditional balsamic” means that the product is produced and sold under strict legislation pertaining to its Protected Designation of Origin (the Italian acronym DOP is more commonly used). Bottles of Balsamic DOP are denoted by the official EU red and yellow seal.

Before arriving at Acetaia del Cristo, I mistakenly believed that I was about to peek behind the curtain to see how the balsamic I eat at home is made. I soon learned, however, that my large, comparatively cheap bottle of vinegar with a blue EU label is a far cry from traditional balsamic. Unless you are a Modenese or a wealthy emir, you too are more likely to have balsamic IGP (Protected Geographic Indication) in your kitchen cabinet.

The differences between balsamic DOP and IGP are apparent right from the start. While both products are required to be “produced” in Emilia-Romagna, grapes for the IGP product can be trucked in from further regions or even other countries. Grapes for balsamic DOP, however, must be locally grown.

I visited Acetaia del Cristo in early September on the first day of the grape harvest. They plant four varieties of grapes, two green and two black, which are blended to give a more robust taste to the vinegar.

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Unfortunately, humans aren’t the only ones who find the grapes tasty. As we walked between the vines, Gilberto pointed out the white, foamy webs of the mealybugs that have been ravaging the vineyard for the past several years. Climate change and mild winters mean the bugs get more time to propagate and destroy valuable hectares of harvest. For now, though, Acetaia del Cristo still manages to reach the maximum quota the law allows them to grow.

The grapes (including the bugs which will eventually be cooked and filtered out) are collected via a combine harvester. Then they’re passed through a special machine that uses a large bag to delicately squeeze out the juice, leaving the skins and unripe grapes behind – a process designed to mimic the more antiquated practice of stomping with bare feet.

The grape juice, now called must, is left to chill overnight to keep it from fermenting before the time is right. The next day it’s pumped into large basins where Daniele and Gilberto bring it to a gentle boil in order to carefully scoop off the impurities trapped in the foam that rises to the top. Then they lower the temperature and let the must simmer for several hours until the volume of liquid is reduced by half.

Once the cooking has finished, they smell and taste the must to evaluate its sweetness and flavor before transferring it to fermentation tanks. These initial stages of the process must be handled with care since the must boiled today will not be bottled as vinegar before 2035 at the soonest.

Here too lies another key difference between the two types of balsamic. IGP vinegar is cooked at higher temperatures to produce a more concentrated must with a flavor Daniele and Gilberto described as “burned.” This intense cooking process also creates a higher concentration of sulfites in the must.

While it’s true that Acetaia del Cristo is the largest producer of traditional balsamic vinegar, that’s more a matter of stock than of manpower. Daniele and Gilberto describe their work as a classic tale of man versus nature. With the help of a single assistant, the pair continually monitor and manage 2,000 barrels containing 120,000 liters of vinegar at various stages of the aging process.

Unlike distilled products which sit in sealed barrels, traditional balsamic vinegar needs to breathe. Each barrel is topped with a simple cloth which keeps the product clean while allowing the air to pass through. Over time, the alcohol in the fermented must oxidizes and gives the vinegar its characteristic dark reddish-brown color.

As we passed through the rows of barrels, I was surprised to see thick and sticky balsamic oozing from cracks and pooling on the floor. Gilberto assured me this is normal. The wooden barrels, some of them dating to the 1860s, expand and shrink with the changing of the seasons.

“If you happen to enter a vinegar cellar that’s completely clean, take a look inside the barrels because there can only be one explanation – the barrel is empty!” Gilberto laughed.

The vinegar doesn’t stay put anyway. The barrels are grouped into a series of seven organized from largest to smallest. The runny must is poured into the largest barrel and thick balsamic is taken from the smallest one. During the winter months, Daniele and Gilberto laboriously move a percentage of the aging product from one barrel to another during the processes of decanting and topping up. As the vinegar moves to each subsequent barrel, some of the liquid evaporates and the flavors concentrate. After 25 years, 100 kilos of grapes will result in 1.5 kilos of balsamic vinegar.

IGP vinegar does not undergo the same transformation. The concentrated must is mixed with wine vinegar and caramel color and is left to rest in a single barrel for 60 days. Meanwhile, according to regulations, traditional balsamic vinegar must be aged for either a minimum of 12 or more than 25 years. Although Acetaia del Cristo produces a vinegar aged for more than 50 years, it must be labeled as belonging to the latter category.

The barrel itself also influences the vinegar’s flavor which is why Daniele and Gilberto often keep their product in a series made from one type of wood. According to law, barrels can only be made from chestnut, cherry, juniper, mulberry, oak, or acacia wood.

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In addition to managing their own product, Daniele and Gilberto also look after the barrels of celebrities and sports stars who either come from the region or have discovered the richness of the product and now wish to keep their own stock of balsamic vinegar.

After Daniele and Gilberto retrieve the product that’s ready for sale, they must bring it to the approved bottling facility where all vinegar from traditional producers is checked for quality and bottled under strict conditions. Since 1987, Balsamic DOP is only allowed to be sold in 100-milliliter bottles with a signature bulb shape. The first balsamic bottled in this way belonged to Acetaia del Cristo and is now in the company museum.

Once I had seen the process from start to finish, it was time to experience traditional balsamic for myself. Daniele explained that his balsamic can be used to accompany a variety of regional foods, with parmesan being among the most classic pairings. Balsamic aged in juniper is best suited for meat, while balsamic from cherry wood is the perfect companion for strawberries or gelato. The preferred way of the Modenese, however, is to swallow a porcelain spoonful of vinegar as a digestif at the end of a meal.

I tried the vinegar on a porcelain spoon as Daniele suggested (metal can disrupt the flavor). I was quite surprised to find that it wasn’t nearly as sour as I’d expected. It was rather sweet with a depth of flavor I wasn’t aware was possible in vinegar. I took a bottle home to savor slowly, with a newfound appreciation for the effort that went into making it.

Check out the video below to see the process I captured during my time at Acetaia del Cristo.

Have you tried Balsamic DOP? What would you pair it with?

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Although I am quite at home in Nice, whenever someone asks me where I’d move next, I have an answer ready to go: The Netherlands. There’s something about that flat, green landscape dotted with windmills, and cities with architecture only slightly quirkier than the people that really draws me in.

Luckily, I get my fix about once a year when I travel for work to the charming small town of Breda in the south of the country. I’ve spent a number of weeks there over the years, and I’ve learned a few things about Dutch culture in the process (namely, always carry an umbrella, Visa and Mastercard are hardly accepted anywhere, and don’t try to buy pants in Dutch stores unless you’re from a neighboring tall-people country).

But what I can’t seem to wrap my head around is the food. There seem to be very few Dutch restaurants in the country (a telling sign), so what I’ve experienced has mostly come from my Dutch colleagues graciously buying me the grocery store classics that they eat at home. Let me share my thoughts on a few staples of Dutch cuisine:

Cheese

Yes, cheese is obvious, but I truly believe Dutch cheese is on par with French or Italian cheeses. In fact, the cheese-flavored snacks I tried in the Netherlands were far superior to those elsewhere. What really gets me, though, is the ability to choose the same sliced, hard cheese in about seven different levels of aging, ranging from infantile to rebellious teen, mature 40-something, and downright geriatric (in reality, the names are less exciting, but the principle stands).

Sandwiches

You can’t talk about cheese without mentioning the Dutch love of sandwiches. I paid good money for a KLM flight to Amsterdam, and the only meal served on board was a sandwich consisting of one (1) slice of Gouda between two pieces of brown bread (I think there was supposed to be a whiff of fig jam in there, but it didn’t show up to work that day). The packaging exclaimed how proud the airline was to provide this taste of the Netherlands! To be fair, Dutch sandwich bread is quite soft and delicious.

Filet Americain

If you don’t want cheese on your bread, might you consider filet americain? This meat-based spread of a dubious orange color has a French name and absolutely no relationship to the United States. It’s a grocery store pâté made from raw beef, onions, paprika, Tabasco, and mayo, although the flavor hardly gives away the ingredients.

Chocolate sprinkles

Once you’re done with your filet americain, it’s time for something sweet. That’s where chocolate shavings known as Hagelslag come in. Simply pour them on a slice of buttered bread for endless fun! Please note that Hagelslag is not just for children; serious Dutch professionals eat chocolate sprinkles for lunch at work.

Tea

Sure, a lot of countries drink tea, but it’s the Dutch tea-making process that really stands out. First, get yourself a tall glass and fill it with enough boiling water so that you can’t really pick it up without burning your fingers. Then, dip the tea bag inside for three milliseconds so that a hint of color appears but zero flavor is transferred. Now you can leave the tea bag lying on the counter so your friends can use it later!

Dutch people say they do this because their tea bags are meant to make a full pot. No comment.

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Peanuts

Most people know that the Netherlands makes good cheese, but the Dutch relationship with peanuts might come as more of a surprise. Peanuts were introduced to Dutch cuisine by way of former colonies Indonesia and Suriname, two peanut-producing countries on opposite sides of the globe.

Peanuts are prominently featured at borrel—the Dutch equivalent of the aperitif. In the grocery store, you’ll find plenty of peanuts coated in various spice mixes advertised as the perfect borrel snack.

Dutch peanut butter, called pindakaas (literally “peanut cheese”—go figure), is far superior to anything sold in the U.S. or elsewhere in Europe. It doesn’t contain sugar, yet its natural sweetness propels me to use my checked bag allowance to bring oversized jars of the Calvé crunchy stuff back to France.

Roti

Peanuts aren’t the only culinary influence from Suriname, the South American country that gained independence from the Netherlands in 1975. No trip to the Netherlands is complete without a taste of roti: yellow flatbread accompanied by a curry sauce consisting of chicken, potatoes, and green beans. Or go for another dish from this unique cuisine that blends flavors from the country’s Chinese, Indian, Creole, and Javanese ethnic groups.

Kroketten

At first glance, you might think the Dutch kroket is fairly similar to other European versions of a deep-fried snack with a similar name. But yet again, the Dutch have managed to make it their own. Dutch kroketten are often as long as a hot dog, making them the perfect size to place inside a white bread roll and slather with mustard. While a beef filling is most common, you can find a number of wacky flavors on grocery store shelves, like goulash, curry, or tuna. Instead of buying them in the store, however, a real Dutch experience is to buy them from a vending machine built into a wall—hot and ready to go!

Honorable mention:

Dutch apple pie – If you’re in Amsterdam, try Winkel 43!

Dutch people (and others) – tell me: What am I totally wrong about? What did I miss? What Dutch favorites should I try next? Let me know in the comments!

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The boiling days of August are upon us and few are enjoying the heat – possibly least of all the tomato pickers in Sarno, a patchwork of industrial buildings and small fields tucked behind Mount Vesuvius in Italy’s Campania region. One of the few living things that can thrive in these conditions are the tomatoes themselves, oblong and plump, turning deliciously red thanks to the sun’s relentless beating.

The tomato pickers don wide-brimmed hats, long sleeves, and gloves as they begin their work around 6 a.m. Most of them are in their 80s and will stop around noon when conditions become unbearable. They sing old Italian songs to pass the time as they kneel on the ground carefully plucking the first ripe tomatoes from the bottom of the vines. The green ones higher up will slowly mature over the next few weeks.

Not all Italian tomatoes receive such attentive care, but that’s because not all tomatoes are San Marzano. This unique variety is highly revered among chefs and pizzaioli around the world for its sweetness and depth of flavor, complimented by just a touch of acidity. In the Neapolitan tradition, a can of whole San Marzano tomatoes crushed by hand and mixed with a pinch of salt is all that’s needed for a pizza sauce that perfectly balances the fatty creaminess of buffalo-milk mozzarella and the peppery bite of fresh basil leaves.

Although one of the region’s proud farmers told me that the San Marzano is as old as the land itself, that’s not exactly the case. In fact, the tomato, now a ubiquitous icon of Italian cuisine, has only been consumed in the country for the past 200 years.

Native to Central and South America, tomatoes were brought to the Old World in the 16th century by returning Spanish conquistadors. At first, Europeans didn’t dare eat the fruit since the leaves resembled the poisonous nightshade plant. Instead, they were grown for decorative purposes until the 1800s when they found their way into the Mediterranean cuisine of Spain, France, and Italy.

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There are several legends purporting to explain the origin of the San Marzano tomato, but historic evidence suggests it was first cultivated in the 1770s in the village of San Marzano sul Sarno, a stone’s throw from the ruins of Pompeii. The volcanic soil, abundant water sources, and iodized breeze blowing off the Tyrrhenian Sea allowed the tomato – and subsequently the local economy – to flourish.

Today, only tomatoes cultivated, harvested, and canned in this remarkably tiny geographic area are allowed to be labeled as San Marzano thanks to the Protected Designation of Origin certification awarded by the European Union in 1996.

That doesn’t stop counterfeit products from being produced, however. Around the world, cans labeled as San Marzano-style, Italian-style, or more brazenly, simply San Marzano try to capitalize on the glory of the real deal.

That’s why Nunzia Pino Adiletta takes extra care to check each crate of tomatoes delivered to her family’s canning facility in Sarno, where freshly picked San Marzanos are delivered in the morning and stored in the warehouse by evening. She picks up a bright red tomato warm from the sun and inspects the shape – long and thin with a distinct point at the tip. Then she breaks it open with her fingers to check for the veins just under the skin along with the thick, white filaments which run through the center – telltale signs of a real San Marzano.

The canning process is simple yet meticulous. According to Italian regulation, a tomato can only be labeled San Marzano if it is of the right variety, whole, peeled, and canned – no diced products or sauces allowed.

In Nunzia’s processing facility, the tomatoes are washed twice before being passed through a steam peeling machine. The peeled tomatoes drop onto a conveyor belt where rows of nimble hands pick out any slightly green, misshapen, or poorly peeled tomatoes that don’t conform to the specifications of the law. They’re dropped down a tube to be cooked and blended for the sauce that fills the San Marzano cans, which come in two sizes: three kilos and 500 grams. I get a kick out of Nunzia’s description of the food service size as suitable for large families and the regular can being a “single portion.”

Although – or maybe because – Nunzia has grown up surrounded by these tomatoes, she’s remarkably passionate about them. When we retreat to her office to escape the sputtering machinery of the factory floor, she grabs a can of tomatoes off her desk and points out that the expiration date was technically two years ago. Then she pops it open, pours the tomatoes onto a paper plate, and puts one in her mouth. Not only has it not gone bad, she explains, the flavor is as intense as the day it was harvested.

I try one for myself. Although I’ve been learning about these tomatoes for two days, it’s the first time I’m tasting one that hasn’t been incorporated into pizza or pasta. The flavor is unlike any tomato I’ve tasted before. It’s fresh and bright – a perfect balance of sweetness and acidity. If I could only choose one tomato to eat for the rest of my life, it’d be the San Marzano, ripened in the sun and picked by the wrinkled hands of grandmothers in the shadow of Vesuvius.

The Seine is apparently swimmable and the athletes are posting TikToks from their cardboard beds – in other words, the XXXIII Olympiad is ready to begin. By Friday’s opening ceremony, 10,000 people will have carried the Olympic flame across France since it arrived in May, but as far as I’m aware, I’ve only ever met one of them.

Last week, Tharshan Selvarajah became the first Sri Lankan to carry the flame during these games. He won the honor after spending the past year delivering baguettes, croissants, and rolls to French president Emmanuel Macron as the winner of the 2023 Grand Prix de la Baguette de Tradition Française de la Ville de Paris – more commonly known as France’s best baguette competition.

The contest is just one of the many ways that France honors its legacy of good bread. French people tend to patronize their favorite local bakery, and although it’s not required to work in the field, there’s a nationally recognized baking degree covering bread and viennoiserie – which means croissants, pain au chocolate, and anything made with a laminated dough base (this does not include pastry, for which there is a separate program!)

Tharshan, however, didn’t earn a degree. After moving to France from Sri Lanka in 2006, he found work in an Italian restaurant where he got to know the owner of a local bakery who often came for lunch. When the restaurant shut down putting Tharshan out of work, the bakery owner invited Tharshan to try his hand at making bread instead.

Tharshan was interested in the offer and joined the bakery, but soon found the transition difficult.

“The beginning was really hard because I didn’t speak French and I didn’t know how to make bread,” he said.

Although he lacked language skills and formal training, Tharshan became determined not only to become a great baker, but also to build a reputation for himself and his bread. In 2016, he bought the bakery where he worked, Au Levain des Pyrénées, from his boss and mentor and set his sights on winning the best baguette competition.

The contest rules are deceptively simple. On the day of the competition, each baguette that’s entered must be produced in a Paris bakery using only water, flour, yeast, and salt. The bread must weigh between 250 and 300 grams and must contain 18 grams of salt per kilo of flour. Baguettes are judged both on taste and appearance.

The competition is only for “traditional” baguettes, which are crunchier, browner, and contain less dough than regular baguettes. Most bakeries offer both since the two recipes differ significantly in flavor and texture.

Tharshan entered the competition in 2018 and won third place, but he wasn’t completely satisfied. He spent the next several years perfecting his technique and patiently waiting for the right moment to try again.

Bread is about scientific calculations, Tharshan explained while I filmed him poking a thermometer into various bags of flour during our shoot for Eater.

He first takes the temperature of the raw materials so that by the end of the two-stage kneading process, his dough will be as close to 24 degrees Celsius as possible – the perfect temperature according to his years of testing.

The ingredients themselves are also important, especially the flour. Tharshan mentioned that over the years a statistically significant number of first-place winners have all used flour from Moulins Bourgeois, a family-run organic wheat farm and flour mill located in a village two hours east of Paris.

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But the most important ingredient is patience. Tharshan lets the dough rest for 3-5 hours between the first and second kneading, then overnight in the fridge. After being shaped the next morning, the baguettes rest for 20 more minutes to let the dough rise a bit more. Otherwise, they’ll look perfectly fine but will turn hard soon after coming out of the oven.

When a batch of steaming-hot, perfectly golden baguettes was ready, Tharshan grabbed one and began squeezing it next to his ear, smiling at the sound of the crunch.

“Sometimes people think that well-baked bread is hard to eat,” he said, flexing a piece of the crust between his fingers to show its malleability. “With our bread, there’s no problem… when you are done eating you always want more!”

In 2023, Tharshan felt ready to enter the competition for a second time. Out of the 1,305 bakeries that participated, he won first place. Word got out before he and his team even knew what had happened. When he came to work the next morning, the line outside his bakery in the 20th arrondissement stretched down the block. By noon, they were sold out of traditional baguettes.

Since winning the competition, Tharshan has opened a second bakery and created a brand around his bread, which he hopes to bring back to Sri Lanka and beyond.

“France really gave me a beautiful life because I learned everything here,” he said. “France gave me this life so I want to bring French products around the world.”

After spending two days with Tharshan, including an early morning trip to take 20 hot baguettes to the president, I was struck by his perseverance and charisma. But I wanted to know: in a competition where every baker must use the same ingredients, how did he really manage to make the best baguette?

“It’s always the same recipe,” he said. “But we are always truly happy. It’s not just a smile, but inside our hearts. That’s our secret.”

I wasn’t buying it. But what are the techniques? I asked.

Tharshan smiled and then began to laugh. “That we don’t say!”

Watch the full video for Eater here:

If you’re headed to Paris for the Games or otherwise, you can find Tharshan’s competition-winning bread at Au Levain des Pyrénées. The 2024 winner of the contest was announced in May and, in a full-circle moment for me, the prize went to Boulangerie Utopie, where I filmed my first video for Eater back in 2020. Try their bread and also their sourdough croissant!

In Italy it seems there is no such thing as "too much gelato." Whether in Puglia, Sicily, Tuscany or Liguria, in everyone’s hand seems to be the same shared experience: a few scoops of frozen milk and sugar rapidly melting in the late afternoon sun.

But not all gelato is created equal. I recently came across several videos of Italians explaining to tourists how to pick out an artisanal gelato shop from one selling a mass-produced, low-quality product. The various pieces of advice boiled down to one main concept: the less flashy, the better. Heaping mounds of gelato over-whipped with air, vibrant colors like blue or yellow, or fake fruit placed on top are all tell-tale signs of industrial gelato. Meanwhile, the good stuff is often hidden away in cylindrical containers with steel caps designed to keep each flavor cool and fresh.

Before true gelato was invented, ancient civilizations also looked for ways to keep cool through frozen desserts. In China, around 200 BC, snow and ice were mixed with fruit juices to create a sweet, slushy treat. The idea then spread to Persia and the Middle East where it was refined even further by placing the liquid in a container before bringing it into contact with salted ice – the same basic process used to create gelato. The dessert, called shrb (from which we get the word sorbet) was then introduced to Europe during the Arab conquest of Sicily.

Gelato as we know it today didn’t arrive on the scene until the Renaissance era in the late 16th century. Although the exact origins are debated, it is widely believed that Bernardo Buontalenti, a Florentine artist and architect, created the product when asked by the Medici family to invent a dish that would impress visiting foreign dignitaries. In response, he blended milk, honey, and egg yolks with a hint of wine. The resulting frozen mixture was smoother and creamier than shrb. It was a big hit among his guests and continues to wow Italians and visitors to this day.

While gelato is often written off as simply being the Italian word for ice cream, the two have key differences. Gelato often has a higher sugar content than ice cream and is churned at slower speeds for a longer time resulting in a denser, silkier texture. It’s also served at slightly warmer temperatures. Both of these factors lead to a dessert with more concentrated flavors.

But the biggest difference between gelato and the hard ice cream found in American freezer aisles lies in plain sight. Ice cream recipes incorporate a higher percentage of cream resulting in a fat content between 10 and 25 percent. Gelato also uses cream but in a lower proportion to milk resulting in a fat content of less than 10 percent. In other words, gelato is both more flavorful and healthier. In Italy, gelato refers to recipes made with and without dairy.

Italians have a frozen dessert made with cream as well. It’s called semifreddo (literally: half-frozen) and has a texture resembling frozen mousse, Paolo Guerzoni explained to me at Cremeria 059, an artisanal gelato shop outside of Modena. Paolo and his wife Maura Luppi have been running the shop together for a decade, and every day begins by making a handful of their 27 flavors of both gelato and semifreddo.

As I learned when I visited Cremeria 059, gelato is a relatively simple process that relies on fresh ingredients and a certain level of craftsmanship to achieve the optimal result.

Paolo begins making strawberry gelato by measuring fresh fruit that’s been left to soak in its juice overnight. The recipe is straightforward: equal parts fruit, sugar, and water with a splash of lemon juice to give it a particular taste Paolo fondly refers to as “grandma’s strawberries from once upon a time.”

Paolo shows me how gelato can be churned inside of the Carpigiani L20, a machine from the 1970s that requires the operator to scrape the freezing gelato off of the blade using a long-handled spatula. At Cremeria 059, only Paolo and Maura are allowed to use the L20 to ensure that it doesn’t break. Staff members make gelato in the more modern machines nearby.

Once the blended strawberries are poured inside, the machine seems to be doing most of the work, but Paolo assures me that his job isn’t over just yet. Although it usually takes eight minutes to turn the liquid to a semi-solid, the consistency of the fresh fruit and how warmed up the machine is play a big role in the exact timing.

With time, he tells me, an operator can know when the gelato is ready just by the sound the machine makes. As the product freezes, the machine struggles and makes a harsher noise.

“However it’s still recommended that you take a look!” he laughs.

Today we pull out our gelato after 10 minutes. The color has changed from crimson red to a more muted red-pink (a shade one might even describe as strawberry!)

Paolo places the gelato in a metal container and brings it out to Maura who scoops me a cup. We’re in Modena, so this gelato gets a unique final touch – a few drops of balsamic vinegar to play up the sweetness of the strawberries.

It’s simply perfect.

To say thanks for sticking around, I thought I’d send you a practical edition that might serve you or loved ones traveling to the Côte d'Azur this summer or might make you start planning a trip for September (a great month to visit).

This is not a guide to the “best” places to eat in Nice – I’m claiming to be a resident, not a restaurant critic. This is, however, my carefully curated list of spots I return to again and again because they meet my simple yet exacting criteria for a good meal: delicious food, fast and friendly service, and reasonable prices. If a place falls short in any one of these areas, it doesn't make the cut!

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In no particular order, here are nine great places to eat while you’re in Nice:

1. Crêperie Le Trimaran

No trip to France is complete without a good crêpe, and no trip to Nice is complete without a visit to Crêperie Le Trimaran. Tucked beneath an archway in the Old Town with outdoor-only seating next to the pungent St. Francois fish market (but don’t worry, the fishmongers usually pack up before noon), the crêperie is my go-to spot for a light lunch. But here’s the real secret – Le Trimaran offers a wonderful deal: One savory buckwheat crêpe – technically called a galette – with your choice of egg, ham, cheese, or ratatouille (my favorite) plus a sweet crêpe with dark chocolate sauce, homemade lemon curd, Nutella, or jam. 

2. Lou Colonial

When I lived in the Old Town, I could barely be persuaded to eat dinner anywhere but Lou Colonial. This Vietnamese-French fusion restaurant might surprise you – not with tiny gastronomic works of art, but with heaping quantities of saucy noodles, a creamy Asian risotto, or a classic magret de canard with homemade fries. Treat yourself to the Toblerone banana for dessert, and I promise you’ll leave stuffed and very, very satisfied. Plus, the atmosphere is cozy while still classy enough to make you feel like you’re out on the town after a long day at the beach. Reservations recommended!

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3. Indian Curry & Tandoori

After moving out of the Old Town, I got an apartment on Boulevard Gambetta, a tree-lined, residential street full of little shops, bakeries, and restaurants. Locals and tourists agree that it’s a lovely neighborhood to stay in. Once I got settled here, a neighbor told me that Indian Curry & Tandoori was the best restaurant on the street – she was right. Recently I sat next to a couple from Liguria who said they regularly come to Nice and eat here every time. We agreed that the staff is always so kind, the cheese naan is like a hug, and no matter what you order, you can’t go wrong. I’ve brought vegetarians, meat-eaters, children, my parents, and my grandmother to eat here and all mentioned it as a highlight of their time in Nice.

4. La Boulangerie Par Michel Fiori

On a rainy Sunday in January, we invited a few friends to our new place for a housewarming party, and Mia and Fabien brought us champagne and a flan. But it wasn’t your typical sunny yellow flan that can be found in just about any French bakery. This one was off-white with a dark, caramelized top and flecks of fresh vanilla bean. It was topped with raspberry coulis. 

All the guests implored Mia and Fabien: Where did you find this flan! 

They shrugged. “It was just a random bakery by our apartment that was open on a Sunday!”

The mystery remained unsolved for many months, until one recent morning when I was searching for breakfast on a side street not far from the train station. There are a million flans in Nice, but when I saw this one, I knew it was the one I had eaten in January. I later discovered that Michel Fiori has made flan his signature pastry, as evidenced by the display case in the front of the store with flavors like tiramisu, pistachio, cheesecake, and black sesame. And once you see how flaky and oversized the croissants are, I’m sure you’ll leave with more than just flan.

5. Oceanosa

My husband Mohamed and I run a company together, and we feel it’s only right that the partners should get together every so often for a business meeting – which means getting sushi at Oceanosa. Everything is super fresh and tasty and there are plenty of creative special rolls to choose from. Plus the upstairs dining room is cozy in the winter and there’s outdoor seating for the warmer months.

6. Garden Cafe

In New York or Nice, brunch is expensive, and I find that weird for a meal consisting mainly of eggs and bread. And so many brunch restaurants are just OK! Garden Cafe solves both those problems with its generous menu options consisting of salmon and avocado toasts, stuffed croissants, decadent pancakes, gourmet yogurt, eggs, and fluffy brioche French toast. Seating is both cute and limited so get there before 10 a.m. or you’ll be waiting in a line that snakes down the block for the rest of the day.

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7. Pera Kebab

Whether you need a late-night bite after dancing in the bars or a quick picnic lunch to take to Castle Hill, Pera is a great choice. Located right in the heart of the Old Town, it’s a kebab take-out that doubles as a casual restaurant. For my vegetarian friends, I recently ordered the veggie kebab with grilled eggplant and cauliflower, and I was not disappointed. Here’s a tip for Pera or any kebab shop – if onions are your thing, ask for your sandwich with sauce algérienne, a spicy French favorite that most visitors haven’t heard of.

8. Ikko Ramen

It may be June, but the weather has been unusually spring-like here in Nice – and I say all the better to eat ramen! Ikko Ramen’s Abuli and Karamiso recipes are on par with the ramen I ate in Japan – and so much better than what you’ll typically find in France. On cooler days a line usually forms for lunch and dinner so if you don’t mind a bit of perspiration, go when it’s warm! I recently wrote about interviewing Ikko and how he’s dedicated his life to the art of ramen.

9. Le Barbecue

When I lived in the Old Town, Le Barbecue, a Portuguese restaurant with terraced seating on a steep side street, was my favorite place to go with friends. Start the meal with vinho verde, literally “green wine” and a flaming sausage charred right at the table, both sure to please a crowd. Then order the platter of marinated, roast chicken with potatoes and peppers – deceptively simple but so delicious you’ll be happy to eat the leftovers for lunch the following day.

Now, dear reader, I need your help. Whenever I ask my French friends what they want to eat for dinner, 90 percent of the time the answer is Italian. And yet, I can’t recommend an Italian restaurant in Nice. Of the ones I’ve tried, the worst have been overpriced tourist traps, and the best have been mediocre compared to what you’ll find 40 minutes down the road in Italy. I’m sure that great Italian food exists in Nice, I just don’t know where to find it. So, have you been to an exceptional Italian restaurant in Nice or the surrounding area? Let me know in the comments!

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Tooting Mama

Storytelling through the eyes of the Sri Lankan diaspora through recipes, writing, photography and the spoken word to find our sense of purpose and belonging.

By Ranji Thangiah

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Just One More Bite, with Jenny Berk

Savory Bites of Wisdom for Mindful & Intuitive eating, Culinary Nutrition, and cultivating a nourished life.

By Jenny Eden Berk, MSEd

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A walk through Palermo’s bustling main strip presents no shortage of little carts with snack-size portions of local street food neatly stacked behind the glass: chickpea fritters called panelle, plates of fried calamari, perfectly round and golden arancine, and cannoli covered with chocolate chips or bright green pistachios.

The cannoli are particularly enticing and although they’ve been sitting out for a while, if you were to buy one, you’d probably be reasonably satisfied. But they’re a tad too sweet and the shell is starting to soften. This is not the best of the best. For that, you’d have to go the extra mile.

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If the arancina is the queen of Sicilian street food, the cannolo is the king (alas, I do not argue with Italian gendered naming conventions) and like many kings, he lives secluded away from the rest of the population.

So to experience the best cannoli in Sicily, you head out of the center and through the outskirts of Palermo – where the drivers will make you thankful you got the full insurance on your rental car – and then towards the mountains. You wind your way up tiny roads that pass through sleepy villages as the scenery turns all shades of green, a welcome relief from the dusty city below.

Up, up, up you go until suddenly everything is flat again. This is Piana degli Albanesi, or Plain of the Albanians. The name is not random. The town was founded in the 15th century by Christian Albanians fleeing persecution under Ottoman rule. Even today, the area’s road signs feature village names in Italian and an Albanian dialect still spoken by the majority of the town’s 6,000 residents who proudly uphold ancestral traditions in dress, music, and other customs.

The defining feature of this plateau is a large lake set against the backdrop of a long, rounded mountain. Sheep graze on the sloping hills – they’re essential to what we are about to experience.

The town is relatively quiet, even on a beautiful spring day when Sicily’s major cities and beaches are swarming with tourists. Only a few – the wisest – have made their way into the hills and now are parked outside of Extrabar, a cafe and bakery in the main square across from the village’s Italo-Albanian church.

Finally, you’ve made it – the fortress of the cannolo awaits you. You walk inside. Empty shells fried to golden brown perfection are piled on top of the counter, but there are no cannoli in sight.

All this effort and we’re too late! But it’s only 10 a.m.!

Nicola Petta comes out from behind the counter and gives you a warm, knowing smile. You’re here for the cannoli. Everyone is.

“At Extrabar, our cannoli are made fresh to order, like an espresso,” he says. 

Of course they are! That’s why you left Palermo and came all the way here. To try the very best. 

You order, and moments later you hear a scraping sound as the barman’s spatula scoops smooth ricotta into the brittle pastry shell. He adds candied orange peel to each end. It’s everything you hoped for. Your mission is complete.

Two main legends aim to explain how the cannolo first came to be. One states that the concubines of Arab princes developed the recipe using sugar, pistachios, and candied fruits, ingredients that were first introduced to the island during the period of the Emirate of Sicily (827–1091). Evidence for this theory comes from the fact that similar fried-tube desserts exist in various cultures across the Middle East and North Africa. 

The second legend credits the origins to nuns who made the treat as a symbol of fertility before the annual Carnival celebrations. 

While the inventor of the cannolo remains a mystery, its Sicilian roots are uncontested. The first known written record of the recipe dates to the year 70 when the Roman lawyer and writer Cicero visited the island and mentioned “a flour-based, cylinder-shaped pastry made with milk.” Sounds like a cannolo to me!

While the recipe varies slightly from bakery to bakery, the ingredients list is fairly limited. The dough is made by combining wine (or sometimes brandy) with lard, before adding flour and sugar. The exact proportions of Extrabar’s recipe are secret, but Nicola’s son Luca, walked me through the process when I visited on assignment for Eater in 2022. 

Once the dough is rolled out, Nicola uses a worn cutter handed down through the generations to create a signature diamond shape for his shells – most other bakeries use a rounded stamp. Then he wraps them around beech wood sticks, which degrade quicker but are more authentic than the steel tubes used elsewhere. The name “cannolo” comes from the Italian word for reeds or canes, which were originally used to shape the shells. The shells are fried in boiling lard until they’re golden brown and covered in bubbles, a texture created by the wine.

The Pettas say the shells are Extrabar’s claim to fame, and they’re now shipped worldwide. But the ricotta is the real reason you make the trek to Piana degli Albanese. The town became known for its cannoli because of the quality of its cheese, which Luca told me is extra delicious in the springtime when the sheep pass the taste of fresh grass into their milk.

The recipe is simple. Fresh, raw, sheep’s milk ricotta is delivered to the bakery from a local dairy. Luca first assesses the texture of the cheese – harder ricotta must be softened with more sugar. Soft ricotta should get less sugar or it will become too runny and won’t be suitable for filling the shells. Once the sugar is added, Luca passes the cheese through a motorized sieve to create a whipped texture.

The sweetened cheese won’t keep for long, which is why Extrabar only serves its complete cannoli on-site and you’d be hard-pressed to find the same high-quality product in Palermo.

Even Sicilians themselves are willing to make the journey. Luca brings the fresh shells and ricotta filling into the bar where a rowdy group of Italian middle schoolers have just disembarked from their bus and are crowded around the counter eagerly awaiting the cannoli.

The barman mixes a few handfuls of chocolate chips into the ricotta at the last minute to avoid tainting the color, and then he fills each shell at lightning speed.

I wait until the kids have filed out to take my first bite. While Extrabar makes a half-kilo version, I’m holding the standard shell, and it’s heavy for its size. The shell is crunchy and flaky, but when it shatters only a few pieces fall into my lap. The rest are held in place by the ricotta filling, which is creamy and only lightly sweet. It tastes cheesier than I expected but in a good way. It’s rich and I can only eat one, but that’s the point – a cannolo is meant to be savored.

Just outside the village on the road back to Palermo, I pull over and take out my camera. It’s quiet and there’s a light breeze. I see the lake down below and a few sheep in the distance. I take a picture of them as a way of thanking them for their service.

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I’m convinced that Italy’s biggest source of soft power is food. In 2024, its passport ranked second most powerful, ahead of Singapore, Sweden, and Japan. I mean, who would turn down diplomatic alliances with the birthplace of pizza?

While pizza and pasta have conquered hearts around the globe, Italian cuisine is far more diverse than it’s given credit for abroad. With nearly 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) of coastline, seafood plays a big role in many regions, while in Tuscany, meat is king. In Florence, for example, you’ll find traditional food carts serving up lampredotto – chopped cow stomach on a thick roll. Chewy!

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Of all my time spent in various regions of Italy, I think Sicily has the strongest street food culture. Historically, it makes sense. Americans say that Italy is shaped like a boot, but I recently learned that Italians call it a boot kicking a soccer ball (ahem, football, let’s all calm down!) Sicily is the ball floating in the Mediterranean only 200 nautical miles from Tunisia. 

Because of its strategic position, Sicily was occupied during various periods by the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Germanic tribes, the Spanish, French Normans, and Vikings – and that’s an abbreviated list! Each conqueror left a unique mark on the culture of the island. The French cemented Catholicism as Sicily’s primary religion, while under Spanish rule, the architectural style now known as Sicilian Baroque took hold.

While Arab rulers tried to exert longstanding influence in a number of ways, food is predominately where they succeeded. It’s no coincidence that centuries later, Palermo still boasts some of Europe’s most bustling markets. A walk through the maze of tents and tables is a feast for the senses. Vendors call out their goods in an effort to help you decide where to spend your money. Between plump fruits and vegetables, fresh seafood, fried snacks, and decadent sweets, it’s a tough choice.

Like me, you might be tempted to go for distinctly Sicilian products like lemons, oranges, apricots, eggplants, pomegranates, and pistachios. After all, from pasta alla Norma to lemon granita, you’ll find these ingredients in some shape or form on virtually every restaurant menu or bakery counter on the island. Yet all of these items were imported to Sicily during the period of Arab rule, circa 830 to 1091.

Even the “queen of Sicilian street food” is a transplant. Arancine (derived from arancia, or orange, given the shape and size) are stuffed rice balls that usually contain one of two fillings: meat ragù or ham and bechamel (a recipe known as al burro). It was the Arabs who first brought rice to Sicily along with recipes that could be made with it.

“The arancina originated from an idea of the Arabs in North Africa,” Danilo Li Muli told me. “The idea was to transport the filling on a trip to the desert. So the mutton and vegetables were placed inside fried rice, making it transportable.”

I met Danilo and his wife Eva Polanska when I visited Sicily for the first time in 2022 while on assignment for Eater. The couple runs Ke Palle: Arancine d'Autore (literally: what balls!), a shop in the heart of Palermo that only does one thing and does it very well.

While you can find arancine nearly everywhere in Palermo, Ke Palle is worth visiting for two reasons: First, the product is made fresh daily and fried in small batches throughout the day. I ate plenty of soggy arancine in Palermo which had been fried in the morning and quickly microwaved to order later in the day. At Ke Palle, hot and crispy is the guarantee.

What really differentiates Ke Palle from other arancine vendors, however, is the shop’s offering of 20-30 recipes ranging from seafood flavors, to chicken curry, porcini mushrooms, alla Norma, and even sweet arancine filled with melty Nutella or pistachio cream. They’ve also experimented with cooking methods to create a version that’s baked instead of deep fried and another that’s open on top so it can be stuffed with copious amounts of mozzarella and mortadella before being showered with crushed pistachios.

Danilo likens the couple’s vision for arancine to that of gelato. You’d be hard-pressed to find an ice cream shop that only offers two classic flavors – so why should arancine fillings be limited to ragù and al burro?

And since arancine is such a cheap, versatile, and accessible street food, Danilo and Eva believe everyone should be able to try it regardless of dietary restrictions and preferences.

Their chef, Giuseppe Di Forti, gave me an inside look at the magic in the Ke Palle kitchen. You can watch the whole process from cooking the rice and fillings, to forming the balls by hand, to coating and deep-frying them to crispy perfection in my video below. Warning: it will make you hungry!

Now you might be thinking, “I always called this food arancini!” And that’s where things start to get serious. As I discovered, the naming convention of fried rice balls is a hotly debated topic in Sicily.

The Palermitani form their fried rice balls into perfectly round, orange-sized circles, from which comes the feminine word “arancina” and the plural form “arancine.”

Meanwhile, in Sicily’s second-largest city, Catania, the form is triangular to represent the shape of nearby Mount Etna, the active volcano that looms over the city. Since they are no longer shaped like oranges, the masculine words “arancino” and “arancini” are used.

If you are ever traveling in Sicily – even if you do not speak Italian – you must take great pains to get this right. Otherwise, you will likely offend someone and be sternly corrected.

Take it from me. During our interview, I asked Danilo a question about “Ke Palle’s arancini.” The smile slipped from his face.

“We don’t sell arancini,” he said firmly, before adding some remark about the “Catania-nization'' of the word. 

Like I said, this is serious. Just look at Ke Palle’s 2017 poster for International Women’s Day: L’arancina è fimmina! The arancina is female!

I’ll let the Palermitani have this one: The arancinA is the queen of Sicilian street food. She’s even got her own festival – Palermitani traditionally gorge themselves on arancine for Saint Lucy’s Day on December 13.

But the arancina isn’t the only royalty on the island. There’s also a king of Sicilian street food and he’s a local through-and-through. In Part 2 of Street Food Stories: Sicily, we’ll leave Palermo and travel inland to the mountain village of Piana degli Albanesi, where fresh sheep’s milk ricotta becomes the deliciously rich filling for the crunchy pastry tubes known as cannoli. See you soon!

Subscribe below to get the next installment of my street food series directly in your inbox. In the meantime, check out the first post about Thailand.

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There’s something mystical about street food – the idea of an entire kitchen’s worth of utensils and gadgets reduced to a single pull cart, or the back of a truck, or even a few pots and pans and a worn gas burner set out on the sidewalk.

Street food transcends time, place, and culture. Whether it’s arancine formed by hand in a Palermo market, grilled corn on the side of the road in Egypt, or roti drizzled with sweetened condensed milk on a busy Thai street corner, virtually everywhere you travel, you’ll find some iteration of a vendor selling a single product to be eaten on the go.

And since street food is cheap, quick, and meant for locals, it’s often emblematic of a country’s cuisine. Just ask any European what they consider “American food” and they’ll probably tell you a hot dog from a New York food truck.

When I arrived in Bangkok last year in February, I was immediately struck by the Thai societal dependence on street food. A friend living there told me that many Thai apartments barely have a kitchen. Why bother cooking when ready-made food is so cheap, delicious, and easy to find?

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No matter how early I left my hotel in the morning, I had to zigzag around the numerous vendors who had already set up shop right outside the door. Men and women in stylish suits and skirts clutched clear plastic bags full of soup or creamy rice porridge as they rushed onto the metro.

At night, the city’s Chinatown strip came alive with hundreds of carts and stalls selling everything from fresh coconut ice cream and grilled seafood to sausage balls and jet-black scorpions on sticks (although heavily photographed by tourists including myself, I never saw a Thai person purchase one.)

Lines formed in front of the most well-known carts and shops including one selling grilled buns oozing with sweet fillings. The noise from a boulevard packed shoulder-to-shoulder with happy, hungry people meant I had to yell to ask my husband which one of a seemingly infinite number of delicacies he wanted to try. After filling our stomachs, we found a bit of respite down a side street, where Buddhist monks in orange robes burned incense in front of an ornate temple.

After a week in Bangkok, I had eaten my fill, both from street food stalls and in attractive and efficient mall food courts (and once in the extravagant food court of ICONSIAM, where the entire ground floor is designed to look like a floating market full of street food stalls – but with much-appreciated air conditioning!) 

Yet, there was one item high on my list that I had not yet eaten – the Thai roti pancake.

I’m obsessed with pancakes in all shapes and forms (see My Year in Pancakes) so I kept my eyes peeled for the Thai roti ladies whose carts piled high with fresh bananas and cans of sweetened condensed milk are part of Bangkok folklore. I’m not sure whether I had poor timing or just wasn’t looking in the right places, but I didn’t find roti until I traveled south.

I finally got my hands on it in Koh Lipe, a popular tourist destination and an island with the dreamy blue water you expect to see when you book a trip to Thailand. The best part about roti in tourist destinations is that you can order it sweet or savory at breakfast. Paired with a giant, sweet and milky Thai iced espresso (Italians, you’ve been warned!) it's the perfect carb rush to kick start a blazing hot day at the beach.

Up until this point, I had been on the beaten path of Thai street food. It was fabulous! delicious! exciting! but also what had been experienced by numerous travelers before me.

Then we went to Hat Yai, a medium-sized city on the border with Malaysia before carrying on further south to the province of Pattani. Unlike elsewhere in Thailand, a large percentage of the residents of southern Thailand are practicing Muslims of Malay origin and even have special permits allowing them to cross the border with Malaysia as much as they wish. We went to visit friends living there, and soon found out that many Thais consider the area relatively dangerous because of recent attacks on police and military personnel.

“People here like that the rest of the country think it’s dangerous,” our friend said while we ate a ridiculously spicy meal at a cozy outdoor restaurant one evening. “That way they leave us in peace!”

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Indeed, after piling three of us onto a scooter, a trip around town revealed a bustling city full of cute cafes, trendy restaurants, outdoor flea markets, immaculate mosques, and buzzing street food stands, all full of locals shopping and eating – with not a single tourist in sight.

On our final night in Thailand in Hat Yai, we treated ourselves to a different menu of Thai street food that we hadn’t found in Bangkok, including crispy roasted chicken thighs and rice chopped plated by a woman who really knew how to wield a cleaver. I bought freshly sliced mango for less than a dollar and then we waited in line for roti, this time at a cart run by a man.

After dinner, we wandered around for a while until we heard yelling and cheering in a park. It turned out to be a group of men jumping and contorting themselves in an impressive game of Sepak Takraw (imagine volleyball, but played with your feet!) So we sat and watched for a while, mesmerized, with stomachs and hearts filled to the brim.

Is there ever a truly original idea? A thought that has never crossed the mind of one of the other 117 billion people estimated to ever have lived on Earth?

Mark Twain didn’t think so. Here’s what he wrote in his autobiography:

"There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.

A few years ago, I went to Bordeaux to meet the inventor of a new idea. Franck Wallet was working as a city planner when he realized just how much bread gets thrown away in French bakeries every year. He became so passionate about the issue, he quit his job to look for solutions. He soon discovered that crumbs made from old bread could replace flour in a variety of recipes like cakes, cookies, or even more bread.

But bakers told him they didn’t have an effective way to grind large quantities of bread in their bakeries, so Wallet set out to create a machine that could do it for them. He named it le Crumbler. You can see exactly how the concept works in this video I produced for Insider.

The beauty of le Crumbler lies in its simplicity. It’s basically an industrial food processor designed specifically for bread. And because it’s small scale and low tech, it can be easily implemented for immediate impact.

It’s the type of idea that makes you think why wasn’t anyone doing this before?

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Then, a research-savvy editor at Insider sent me this Ebay page advertising a “Rare Antique Counter Top Lee's Bread Crumber from 1895 by Goodell Company.”

At first glance, I didn’t quite understand what this weathered contraption might have to do with a mechanical bread grinder. Intrigued, I searched “Lee’s Bread Crumber.”

Well, it turns out le Crumbler is not a new idea.

The machine advertised for sale on Ebay may not have an electric motor, but its purpose is the same: grind stale bread into crumbs so that they can be used in the next day’s dough. And like Franck Wallet, the original Crumber inventor was so passionate about fighting food waste that he decided to dedicate his time to building a machine that could reduce it.

I didn’t find out about the Crumber inventor until the Insider video was nearly finished, but his story deserves a spotlight. His name was Joseph Lee.

Lee was born to enslaved parents in South Carolina in 1849. During his early life, he worked as a kitchen servant where he learned cooking and baking. In 1865, at the age of 16, he was freed as a result of the Civil War.

Putting his culinary training to use, he set sail with the U.S. Coast Guard earning a living as the ship’s cook. He eventually settled in Newton, Massachusetts. It was there that Lee began to make a name for himself.

Lee married Christiana Howard in 1875 and the couple became known as some of the Boston area’s most prominent socialites. In the 1870s and 80s, Lee opened several businesses including an upscale seafood restaurant and a posh hotel. His most notable guests included Supreme Court justices and three presidents: Benjamin Harrison, Chester Arthur and Grover Cleveland.

Even after so many successful endeavors, Lee continued to chase new ambitions. As a baker and bakery owner, he noticed that a more uniform kneading of the dough always led to better bread. So, in August 1894, Lee secured a patent for a dough-kneading machine designed to produce higher-quality loaves in less time.

After having created a solution for the beginning of the production process, Lee then turned his attention towards finding a way to reduce waste on the backend. He patented Lee’s Bread Crumber in 1895.

Lee’s Crumber was powered by a hand crank which forced the dried bread through cogs to tear and shred it. The crumbs would fall through a grate and land in a try where they could be removed or emptied into the top for another run through the machine.

Lee sold the rights to this machine to New Hampshire based manufacturing firm, The Goodell Co., who produced the model seen on Ebay.

The idea caught on. By the turn of the century, hundreds of catering companies and large hotels were employing Lee’s Crumber to save money by reusing their old bread.

Lee died of tuberculosis in 1908 and is buried in Newton cemetery. In 2019, Lee was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

I’m intrigued by the fact that the Crumber didn’t stick around. Lee’s death wasn’t the end of bread baking, even if there are fewer independent bakeries than before, yet somewhere along the way, the idea of bakeries recycling their old bread fell by the wayside. Maybe there was no one passionate enough to update the technology with the times or maybe people became less concerned with food waste — whatever the reason, the idea lay largely dormant for more than a hundred years only to be “reinvented” in 2015.

I don’t know if Franck Wallet ever heard of Joseph Lee, but I do know that the Crumber/Crumbler is the perfect example of what Mark Twain describes in the rest of his musings on new ideas:

“We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages."

If you ask me what my favorite month on the French Riviera is, I’ll tell you February – that fleeting moment when the winter clouds give way to bright, clear days, and the impending spring rain seems a far-off thought. Just today from my open window, I heard marching bands practicing for Nice’s Carnival parade – a cornerstone of the city’s heritage as a winter resort town, for which it was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2021.

But long before tourism took hold as a primary driver of the French Riviera’s economy, the mild, sunny days of February lent themselves to another activity: harvesting lemons – specifically in the town of Menton, not far from the border with Italy, where the Alps rescind from the sea just enough to create slopes with an east-west alignment – the perfect conditions for cultivating citrus. 

Lemons first arrived in Menton from Spain in the 15th century. Over the following centuries, the area’s unique micro-climate and terraced growing method gave birth to the Menton lemon – a unique variety with bumpy, extra-oily skin and a mild flavor.

By the 18th century, Menton was Europe’s leading lemon-producing region, exporting one million lemons annually to consumers as far away as Russia and the United States. Then, as foreign tourists began to take notice of the French Riviera’s pleasant winters, the citrus terraces were cleared to make way for hotels and villas. 

Meanwhile, the French Revolution caused trade restrictions to ease and Menton faced growing competition from Spain and other lemon-growing regions. Finally, a cold snap in the 1950s killed the remaining lemon trees and the local workforce made its final transition from agriculture to hospitality.

Yet the Menton lemon never really went away. Since 1934, the city of Menton has organized the Fête du Citron, a festival celebrating the region’s lemon-growing heritage. Unlike in Nice and many other cities where professional event organizers plan and staff the carnival festivities, the same municipal workers who spend the majority of the year painting buildings and handling maintenance work also rubber band more than three tons of lemons and oranges to wire frames, creating impressive structures that can reach up to ten meters high. In 2022, when I created the video below and an accompanying article for BBC Travel, the festival’s theme was Operas and Dances. This year, the upcoming summer Olympics in Paris are in the spotlight.

While the sculptures are on display during the entirety of the two-week festival, the town really comes to life on the weekends. That’s when the parades take place, with giant floats lumbering through the streets, much to the delight of the 15,000 cheering spectators packed onto bleachers and every available inch of sidewalk space. Bands and dancers keep spirits high with performances hand-picked to match the year’s theme. 

From the look of the festivities, you’d hardly guess that today only about 15 Menton lemon producers remain perched on the peaceful slopes above the town. In fact, with a total output of around 100 tons per year, the entirety of the Menton lemon harvest wouldn’t be enough to meet the festival’s fruit consumption of about 150 tons. All the fruit for the Fête du Citron's sculptures and floats must be imported from Spain (and is sold at a discount at the festival close to avoid waste.)

But the Menton lemon may once again have its day in the sun. Originally from the Southwest of France, Laurent Gannac prides himself on being the first person in recent years to make a living entirely off of the Menton lemon. Together with his son, he maintains about 750 trees. A boutique in Nice’s old town and another in the airport sells products boasting the family name.

When he began to cultivate lemons in the 1990s, many locals couldn’t understand why a young person would be interested in reviving a bygone product. Today, he’s not the only one. Menton native Laetita Sepicacchi was working in Paris when, on a trip back home, she realized her family’s former vineyard would be the perfect place to grow lemons. In 2015, with the help of a city initiative, she planted 35 young trees.

While she waits for the trees to reach full maturity, she harvests about 100 kilos of fruit off of three older trees, which she sells to specialty grocers and perfume producers.

Even renowned chefs have caught onto the lemon’s potential. At Mirazur, the Menton restaurant ranked number one in the World's 50 Best in 2019, chef Marco Colgresco plants new lemon trees in the gardens behind the restaurant every year.

When Sepicacchi reflects on her ultimate goal to cultivate the Menton lemon, she imagines a day when lemon trees can once again define the local landscape and support the town's economy, maybe resembling French poet Stéphen Liégeard's 1887 description: "little valleys that leave to the breeze the care to shake passers-by, the heady smell of lemon trees."

This post is based on my 2022 article for BBC Travel. Read the full story here.

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In July 2022, I was filming a video about Dijon mustard in a village restaurant Burgundy when the chef said to me, “You should really do a story about Beurre Bordier up in Saint-Malo. That’s what all the big French chefs use.” 

I had never heard of Beurre Bordier, but I soon discovered that was almost like never having heard of Ben & Jerry’s – it was the butter, renowned both in France and around the world, a gem, but hardly a hidden one.

Four months later, Eater sent me to Beurre Bordier’s atelier in Brittany to see the magic for myself. The company was founded by Jean-Yves Bordier, who in the 1980s revived the historic technique of remalaxage – or re-kneading – and developed a roster of flavored butters including the signature Brittany seaweed butter that the company is known for today.

Monsieur Bordier had recently retired, but the company’s oldest employee Vincent Philippe graciously walked us through the entire process. I learned that Beurre Bordier does not produce butter from cream. They buy high-quality, organic churned butter in giant blocks and rework it on a giant wooden kneading machine by adding salt and removing water until the flavors become more developed (read: delicious).

Then they add exciting flavors like wild garlic, Madagascan vanilla, buckwheat or yuzu, just to name a few, and form it into custom sizes and shapes for customers around the world.

A few months later, I even spotted Beurre Bordier for sale in a swanky Bangkok shopping mall. I excitedly told the young woman behind the counter that I had just been to the place where the butter was made. Understandably, she pointed at the butter as if to say Cool story, and would you like to buy some?

You can see the whole process here:

To date, 6.6 million people have watched this video, making it my most-viewed piece of work (full disclosure: anything about butter performs well on YouTube). Nearly 2,000 people also took the time to leave a comment. Here is a selection of them:

 – “i really like the amount of hand hair that went to making of this butter”

– “love how they wear a Hairnet but his Hairy arms are wide open”

– “Love the taste of finger prints in slice of butter..!!” (This one really cracks me up: What do fingerprints taste like? Imagine slicing butter and finding one inside!)

– “While I'm sure this is quality butter I don't want employees working gloveless with hairy ass arms kneading my butter.”

– “Hand sweat adds flavor.”

Now, if you’re going to work with YouTube in any capacity, you can’t get bent out of shape about the comments. In fact, it’s wise not to read them at all, except in specific cases like Eater videos because there are often a lot of lovely comments from people who have nice things to say.

To me, however, these particular comments are emblematic of a wider societal problem: We simply can’t stand hands touching our food. I’ve noticed it in other places, too – like this Instagram Reel and this one where people are wearing gloves while cooking for no apparent reason.

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Sure, some people may wear gloves to avoid the squishy texture of raw meat (although in the first video he doesn’t even touch the ground beef!) but what purpose do gloves serve when slicing an onion or an avocado? 

It seems that somewhere along the line, we got the idea that hands = contamination and that we should use gloves when preparing everything, as if the kitchen were a hospital. We forgot that cheese is made of mold and yogurt formed by bacteria. Food should be clean, but it was never sterile to begin with.

Ironically, I grew up quite the germaphobe. Even as a kid, I couldn’t stand to see people make food while wearing rings and so much as an eyelash hair on my plate would ruin my whole meal. Over time though, as I’ve traveled more and eaten in other people’s homes, I’ve come to realize that hands are precisely what elevates food from a simple means of sustenance to one of life’s greatest pleasures. Food safety is important, but cleanliness shouldn’t mean no human involvement. 

In many places around the world, food is now something that comes in a brightly colored package with lab-derived ingredients. Cheese is wrapped in plastic with a picture of an idealistic-looking farm that hardly resembles modern, industrial dairies. In the U.S., I recently saw flawless, elongated bell peppers, bagged and branded with a cutesy name as if they were produced in a candy factory instead of a field.

This isn’t a rant against mass-scale food production, which has allowed us to more efficiently feed ourselves and refocus our energy on other areas. I’m simply pointing out that the more detached we become from what food actually is, the more we develop a warped view of the way it should be produced. We’d rather a machine pop out perfectly uniform, brightly dyed pieces of cereal than eat butter that was molded with care by clean, washed hands.

At Beurre Bordier, Vincent explained that bare hands are precisely what allows the workers to better understand if the butter has been mixed correctly and whether it has the right temperature and consistency. In other words, whether it’s safe and delicious.

To be clear, not all cultures seem to suffer from the fear of hands touching food – some embrace it wholeheartedly. After all, isn’t this the way it’s been done since the literal beginning of mankind? I, for one, would like to say please keep your hands in my food. As Vincent told me on the day I visited Beurre Bordier, clean hands are much preferable to dirty gloves.

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If you go to Nice’s old town, down some stone steps, and into a narrow alley, you’ll find one of the most dedicated people in the city.

In the summer, sweat drips from his brow and in the winter the line for his restaurant snakes out the door. Every day that Ikko Ramen is open – which is most of them – you’ll find Ikko Shikata there with a whisk in one hand and a blow torch in the other. 

His wife Ayako manages the lunch service and on Wednesdays, when there’s no school in France, you’ll find his son and daughter placing wooden spoons on top of firetruck red napkins.

I first met Ikko through my husband Mohamed who worked with him in the kitchen of a different ramen restaurant before Ikko opened his own place.

I would see Ikko every month or so when we’d come to his restaurant and order the Abuli ramen, his signature dish finished with black pepper and a lick from the flame of a blow torch.

We always came up to the counter and made some pleasant small talk – usually along the along the lines of this:

– Ça va, Ikko?
All good, Ikko?

– Oui, ça va! Toujours ici. Il y’a beaucoup de monde aujourd’hui. 
Yep, all fine! Still here. There’s a lot of people today.

– Oui, c’est vrai. Parce qu’il fait froid. Bon courage! Yes, that’s true. Because it’s cold out. Good luck!

Merci! Thanks!

Then we’d sit and ask the server if we could get some miso in our ramen (because the chef knows us!), slurp down a bowl of delicious soup, and be on our way.

The summer of 2020 in France was weird. The mayor of Nice caused a small scandal when he organized a giant dance party in the street to celebrate the city’s reopening after three months of lockdown. Restaurants could only seat customers according to complex rules. Mohamed and I had just started working together in video but we didn’t have any clients. Ikko was selling his ramen to-go and things were a bit slower than usual. When we asked if we could interview him for a video, he agreed.

A week later, we showed up at 9 a.m. to watch him make noodles for the day – I learned that most ramen restaurants in Japan buy them pre-made – and start his soup base. He chopped spring onions and sliced his marinated chashu pork, and just before the lunch service, we sat down for a quick interview.

Another Japanese friend who spoke English came with us to interpret on the shoot day, but it wasn’t until I got a written translation of the interview a few weeks later that the language barrier was truly broken. Speaking in Japanese, Ikko’s full personality came into view. I learned that his parents were running from a business deal gone wrong when they fled from Kyoto to Yokohama, a port city near Tokyo. That’s where they opened a ramen restaurant and by helping them, Ikko found his passion in life.

“For the ordinary person, ramen is probably just ramen. But for me, a cup of ramen itself is a piece of art.” – Ikko Shikata

This video was never published and will likely reside on my Vimeo account forever, yet it holds a special place in my heart. It gave me a window into the life of someone I saw regularly but didn’t know at all and underscored the importance of letting someone tell their story in their own language.

This video was the catalyst that made me realize I love storytelling about good food and the people who make it, which has since become the cornerstone of my work for Eater, Insider, and BBC. This was also the first video Mohamed and I filmed together when we shared one camera and the work itself was the only payment for the time spent – well, that and a bowl of really good ramen.

If you’re ever in Nice, you can find Ikko Ramen at 5 Rue du Moulin.