Athens

CB Book Club: Marianna Leivaditaki’s “Aegean”

We recently spoke to Marianna Leivaditaki about her cookbook, “Aegean: Recipes from the Mountains to the Sea” (Kyle Books, September 2020), which delves into the cuisine of Crete, the largest island in Greece and one of its most distinct. Marianna grew up on Crete, where her father was a fisherman and her mother ran the family’s restaurant, before later settling in the UK – she’s now the head chef at Morito Hackney Road in London. A skilled storyteller, she weaves an enveloping portrait of life on the island, which is simple but simultaneously rich, and presents its cuisine through a personal lens. The end result is a transporting love letter to Crete, an island with so much to give.

City, Interrupted: Revisiting CB’s 2020 “Neighborhoods To Visit” Guide

Considering that the pandemic is still raging, the annual travel lists that come out at this time of year have taken on a new shape: Rather than promoting destinations, the focus is on the places that people want to visit when things open back up, visions buttressed by more personal recollections. Travel is still elusive for most, which is all the more reason to dream of trips past and future. Since we like to travel on a smaller scale – for us, the neighborhood is the ideal unit of exploration – we launched our own take on the annual travel list, a “Neighborhoods to Visit” guide, in 2018 as a way to feature areas off the main tourist trail that our correspondents were excited to explore.

Mexico City

CB Book Club: Mely Martínez’s “The Mexican Home Kitchen”

We recently spoke to Mely Martínez about her cookbook, “The Mexican Home Kitchen” (Rock Point, September 2020), which compiles the traditional home-style dishes that feed Mexican families day in and day out. These include comforting foods like caldo de pollo and carne con papas, celebratory recipes like mole poblano and pastel de cumpleaños, and classics like tamales and pozole, as well as basics like corn and flour tortillas, salsas, rice, and beans. Mely is best known for her popular blog, Mexico in My Kitchen, which she started in 2008 for her teenage son, hoping that someday he will use it to recreate the Mexican food his mom made for the family. Although born and raised in the city of Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mely has traveled to most states in Mexico and lived in several of them.

The CB Gift Guide 2020

When we published our first gift guide in 2017, our aim was simple: to share a highly-selective (and relatively short) list of products – some serious, others lighthearted – that our correspondents and guides eat and use, made by people they know. But in this unprecedented year, which has left so many of us grounded and brought travel almost to a halt, the ability to experience new places has been severely curtailed. Moreover, the various lockdowns and anti-Covid measures have hit the food industry particularly hard – the culinary masters that we celebrate on our tours and trips and in our coverage have by and large seen a precipitous drop in business.

Athens

CB Book Club: Sharon Brenner’s “Athena: Cooking from Athens, Greece”

We recently spoke to Sharon Brenner about her mini-cookbook, “Athena: Cooking from Athens, Greece,” which introduces readers to Athenian-inspired dishes – with a focus on everyday food – as well as the experience of cooking and eating in Athens. It’s a small volume that opens the door to the city’s food culture. Now based in Los Angeles, CA, Sharon previously lived in Athens from 2014-2017 and has been regularly visiting Greece since 2011. The creator of the website Records in the Den, she has also published work, including food writing, in a number of zines and digital publications. Her various other culinary ventures include teaching cooking classes, running a monthly cookie pop-up and founding the dining series Athena Dinners, to be held at Marta Gallery in LA.

Queens

Vendor Voices: Hnin “Snow” Wai’s Tea Leaf Salad

Hnin “Snow” Wai is on a mission to introduce Burmese food and culture to New York. Together with her husband, Snow (Hnin means “Snow” in Burmese, so she likes to be called “Snow” in English) is the co-founder of DeRangoon, a Burmese catering company based in East Elmhurst, Queens. The couple began vending at the Queens Night Market in 2017, and Snow’s tea leaf salad recipe was included in “The World Eats Here: Amazing Food and The Inspiring People Who Make It At Queens Night Market” (The Experiment, 2020). Earlier this year we spoke to co-authors John Wang, the Queens Night Market founder, and Storm Garner, a filmmaker and oral historian, about the cookbook, which showcases 88 diverse recipes directly from Queens Night Market’s vendor-chefs, many of whom are first- and second-generation immigrants.

Mexico City

CB Book Club: José R. Ralat’s “American Tacos: A History and Guide”

We recently spoke to José R. Ralat, the taco editor at Texas Monthly and an expert on local, regional and national taco scenes, about his new book, “American Tacos: A History and Guide” (University of Texas Press, April 2020), which is the first history of tacos developed in the United States. While we knew of Ralat’s work and his (enviable) position as the country’s first taco editor, we learned more about American Tacos in the fascinating conversation he had with Paco de Santiago, our lead guide in Mexico City, as part of Conde’s Chronicles on Instagram Live. So we were delighted to chat with Ralat about his book and the rise of the “American taco.”