Maharlika Part of the fun of New York is the sheer volume and diversity of dining options. This does mean that it can be hit and miss, but when you have as excellent a guide as the lovely Helen, chances are that more hits are likely to follow. On my first evening in town, we …

Bloom’s New York! Manhattan represented the first stop on my journey since Istanbul in a place I’d visited previously so I was interested to see how that felt. It had been a long while since my last time here, though, so there was much fresh ground to explore. I was staying on Lexington Avenue just …

Mediterra New Jersey! It was a flying visit to the Garden State to say hi to my friends Robyn and Al who were home visiting Robyn’s family over the Thanksgiving period. After a beautiful walk around the iconic Princeton University campus and a nose around a local bookshop, our attention turned to sustenance. We stopped …

Spago Wolfgang Puck is one of the defining voices of American cuisine. I wasn’t quite sure whether my time in LA should involve a trip to his restaurant or an examination of how the places I visited were influenced by his work, and the work of the likes of Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower, in …

Here’s Looking at You It seemed likely that at least one of my days in Los Angeles would be a lazy/hungover day given my late night arrival and strong programme of imbibing. Monday seemed as good a day as any for this occurrence so I committed to only one booking for the day which was …