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PETROGNANO, TUSCANY— There is a line in the 1981 Talking Heads’ song “Once in A Lifetime,” in which David Byrne poses the question, “…well, how did I get here?” That song keeps coming up on a music playlist I made for this trip. I’m sitting in a small little apartment located under the terrace ofContinue reading “Tuscany 2018 (part III) The Accidental Tour Guide”

BARBERINO VAL D’ELSA, TUSCANY— There is something that attracted me to this place the first moment I set foot on Tuscan soil in 2011. It was a “familiar” feeling, and it was instant. Something about this part of the world speaks to me in a way no other town, city, or country— outside of myContinue reading “Tuscany 2018 (part II) It’s the People”

BARBERINO VAL D’ELSA, TUSCANY— In a lot of ways I feel like I’m “back home” in this region, and especially at Villa il Santo. I first discovered this area while on a lengthy tour of Europe with my wife and two children. I was also working on a collaborative book project at the time withContinue reading “Tuscany 2018 (part I) Home Away From Home”

Over the 19 years that this weekly column has been in existence, there have been thousands of column inches spent covering my early years in the restaurant business and how I got my start. Though in all of those columns, I don’t think I ever really focused on my very first restaurant job. As withContinue reading “In the Beginning”

Mississippi restaurateur, promoter, arts advocate, and my good friend, Malcolm White, has just released his second book. “The Artful Evolution of Hal & Mal’s” (University Press of Mississippi, 2017), is a thorough and creatively presented history of White’s iconic restaurant/bar— Hal & Mal’s— in Jackson. The book is filled with stories of the restaurant’s originsContinue reading “The Artful Evolution From Restaurateur to Author”

It’s 7:05 a.m. on a Friday morning and I’m sitting in the newly reopened Coney Island Café on Main Street in Hattiesburg waiting on an order of pancakes and eggs to arrive at my table. For several stressful and grief-filled weeks, I thought I might never be able to do this again. I worried thatContinue reading “The Return”

WATERCOLOR, FL— Sitting here in the early morning dark of a rental house’s front porch— while my son and his three friends sleep the guilt-free, deep sleep of 16-year old boys who have yet to worry about things like jobs and family responsibilities during Spring Break—  it occurs to me that I have a longContinue reading “Beach Music Through Time”

While walking through a gift shop I noticed a magnet attached to a refrigerator door that read, “Nothing tastes as good as being lean feels.” I would venture to say that the creator of that magnet has never tried Benton’s bacon. Granted, I haven’t been “lean” since the George H.W. Bush administration, but I stillContinue reading “The Most Memorable Meal”

On a lengthy, tour of Europe several years ago my wife and I made lifelong friends while traversing Italy. We have returned to Milan and Florence, often, and have spent a lot of time with those friends. Every return visit over the past few years has ended with the same sentence, “You must come visitContinue reading “The Visit (Part II) Annagloria and Enzo Do New Orleans”