From Athens to Tinos Island: A Greek Culinary Odyssey

The thriving urban foodways of cosmopolitan Athens and the deeply held culinary traditions of the island of Tinos provide for a striking and delicious contrast and one that’s even better experienced during certain seasonal moments. It’s at these times of the year when already delicious local dishes and flavors seem to be amplified: a true celebration of the Eastern Mediterranean’s culinary bounty. Join us for a movable feast that begins in the modern metropolis of Athens with its ancient backdrop and then sails on to Tinos, where we’ll explore this idyllic island and its unique cuisine.

From Athens to Tinos Island: A Greek Culinary Odyssey

The thriving urban foodways of cosmopolitan Athens and the deeply held culinary traditions of the island of Tinos provide for a striking and delicious contrast and one that’s even better experienced during certain seasonal moments. It’s at these times of the year when already delicious local dishes and flavors seem to be amplified: a true celebration of the Eastern Mediterranean’s culinary bounty. Join us for a movable feast that begins in the modern metropolis of Athens with its ancient backdrop and then sails on to Tinos, where we’ll explore this idyllic island and its unique cuisine.

From Athens to Tinos Island: A Greek Culinary Odyssey

The thriving urban foodways of cosmopolitan Athens and the deeply held culinary traditions of the island of Tinos provide for a striking and delicious contrast and one that’s even better experienced during certain seasonal moments. It’s at these times of the year when already delicious local dishes and flavors seem to be amplified: a true celebration of the Eastern Mediterranean’s culinary bounty. Join us for a movable feast that begins in the modern metropolis of Athens with its ancient backdrop and then sails on to Tinos, where we’ll explore this idyllic island and its unique cuisine.

Layer by Layer: A Mexico City Culinary Adventure

On this culinary adventure, we’ll be lucky enough to explore Mexico City during the Day of the Dead and immerse ourselves in the complexities of this megacity during one of its most famous and colorful celebrations. The images are iconic: Revellers painted in skeleton-like “Catrinas” makeup, the streets and tables across the city awash with orange and yellow marigolds. Together we’ll celebrate this holiday as the locals do, with parades and celebrations, but also with the soulful, spiritual aspects that make this such a meaningful occasion for locals. Over the next six days, we’ll also explore the breadth of Mexico City’s mouthwatering local gastronomy and experience those rare moments when the city’s eras of history and its different identities are in beautiful harmony and which are even more poignant and powerful during the Day of the Dead holiday.

Day of the Dead: A Mexico City Culinary Adventure

On this culinary adventure, we’ll be lucky enough to explore Mexico City during the Day of the Dead and immerse ourselves in the complexities of this megacity during one of its most famous and colorful celebrations. The images are iconic: Revellers painted in skeleton-like “Catrinas” makeup, the streets and tables across the city awash with orange and yellow marigolds. Together we’ll celebrate this holiday as the locals do, with parades and celebrations, but also with the soulful, spiritual aspects that make this such a meaningful occasion for locals. Over the next six days, we’ll also explore the breadth of Mexico City’s mouthwatering local gastronomy and experience those rare moments when the city’s eras of history and its different identities are in beautiful harmony and which are even more poignant and powerful during the Day of the Dead holiday.

A Journey Into the Heart & Soul of Mexican Cooking

We like to think of Oaxaca as the heartland of Mexican cooking. All the foods that seem so classically, elementally, Mexican – corn, chiles, moles, mezcal – can be traced back to the fertile area that surrounds this historic city. This is true not only of the ingredients, but the cooking techniques as well. The use of smoke and fire to flavor food, as well as the practice of cooking on a comal – the large circular griddle that is essential for making tortillas – are all deeply connected with the Oaxaca region and its indigenous people. But Oaxaca is not only a point of origin for these essential items of culinary heritage, it is also a place in which they are lovingly maintained and protected.

Exploring the Tastes of Two Continents

For millennia, Istanbul has been the connection point for a vast web of places with distinct cultural identities, landscapes, and, of course, cuisines. These disparate influences form the great mosaic that is modern-day Istanbul cuisine, which is so much more than simply “Turkish food.” Question the origin of any dish in a typical neighborhood restaurant and you’ll find yourself falling down a rabbit hole that may lead out to Albania or maybe over the peaks of the Caucasus to Chechnya. As they have for centuries, people come to this city with their own tastes from home; food in Istanbul these days often bears the fiery hallmark of the largely Kurdish southeast and the myriad of flavors of the Syrian kitchen, brought to the city by refugees who now call it home. Filter this through the older urban traditions of Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, and Greek cooking, and something very uniquely Istanbul — bewildering, fascinating, in perpetual motion — comes into focus.