Featured Column
The Real Work
The cooks didn't show up. Not one of them. Not the prep cook, not the dishwasher, not the line cook…
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King Cake
Cakes Fit For A King
It’s king cake season. Those four words don’t carry a lot of weight across 90% of this country. Though in…
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Neck Deep In King Cake Development
It looks like 2023 will go down as the year of the king cake— at least in my book. I…
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RSJ's New Orleans Favorites
RSJ’s New Orleans Restaurant Recommendations
NEW ORLEANS— In a poll of national food critics I believe New Orleans would be listed among the top three…
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RSJ’s Top 10 New Orleans Breakfasts
The following is the first in a summer-column series that will cover dining in New Orleans. Over the next four…
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An Engagement to Remember
This past weekend was a memorable one for our family. Our 26-year old daughter got engaged to her longtime boyfriend.…
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Recent Columns
FORTY-THREE
He was sticking needles in his arms at 19 because he couldn't get the cocaine into his system fast enough…
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Sunday Supper, a Thousand Miles North
CHICAGO—The first restaurant show I ever attended we still wrote guest checks by hand. You took the order on a…
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The Forest and the Pine Trees
I had to drive five thousand miles from home to figure out what was sitting in my own front yard.…
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A Cow in Wiggins Is Better at Her Job Than I Am
There is a hamburger in Stone County better than 90% of the hamburgers being served in this country, and it…
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Between the Arctic and Africa
“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” — Dalai Lama LISBON—Seven weeks ago, I stood in snow 200…
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The Yonderlust Twenty
The whole thing started with restaurants. In 1999, when this column was young, the job was simple — eat somewhere,…
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A Life at the Table
Before the restaurants, before the trips, before any of it — there was my grandmother's table. She had two of…
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Work Is Not a Four-Letter Word
A twelve-year-old with a push mower and six neighbors who needed their yards cut — that's as close to a…
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Nobody Plans For This
PETROGNANO, TUSCANY— Most of the people I pick up at the Florence airport have never met each other. By the…
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4,000 Miles from Home
MILAN—There's a moment — right before the northern lights appear — when the sky looks like it's deciding whether, or…
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The Bridge
BERGEN, NORWAY—Two years of planning a year-long trip collapsed in a single sentence at a Volvo dealership in Gothenburg, Sweden.…
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The Table Gets Bigger
STOCKHOLM—A restaurateur has no business leading tours through the frozen tundra of Scandinavia. Then again, a restaurateur has no business…
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Breakfast in Bed
I had breakfast in bed this morning. I'm 64 years old and I'm not sure that's ever happened. Maybe once,…
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28 Degrees and Warm All Day
There are many intelligent ways to sell king cakes. Standing on a frozen sidewalk in Gulfport while the wind removes…
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