Author Archives: paul

I had to drive five thousand miles from home to figure out what was sitting in my own front yard. It happened in 2011, at a bed and breakfast outside San Donato in the Tuscan countryside. A British cover band was playing American rock and roll in Italian. We sat at a communal table withContinue reading “The Forest and the Pine Trees”

There is a hamburger in Stone County better than 90% of the hamburgers being served in this country, and it is being cooked roughly 200 feet from the cattle that died to make it. On the back of my flagship restaurant, in letters 20 feet tall, are two words: EAT LOCAL. They have been upContinue reading “A Cow in Wiggins Is Better at Her Job Than I Am”

Bacon is one of the few things on earth that a man can use to measure whether he’s home or not. After eight weeks of European breakfasts, I needed three mornings in a row at table 19 in the Midtowner before the question got settled. The bacon here is cooked the way bacon was meantContinue reading “Table 19”

“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.” — Dalai Lama LISBON—Seven weeks ago, I stood in snow 200 miles above the Arctic Circle in Tromso, Norway watching the sky turn green. Tomorrow I will stand on a cliff in the Algarve 200 miles above Africa, looking at the last stretch of the AtlanticContinue reading “Between the Arctic and Africa”

The whole thing started with restaurants. In 1999, when this column was young, the job was simple — eat somewhere, write about it, help the reader find something worth finding. That was it. That’s still it. Though somewhere along the way, the restaurant became a Tuscan villa. The villa became hotels in Spain, then aContinue reading “The Yonderlust Twenty”

Before the restaurants, before the trips, before any of it — there was my grandmother’s table. She had two of them that mattered. The one in the breakfast room, where we’d share Saturday morning pancake breakfasts and casual fried chicken lunches — nothing fancy, just food and family. And then the dining room table, formalContinue reading “A Life at the Table”

A twelve-year-old with a push mower and six neighbors who needed their yards cut — that’s as close to a business plan as I’ve ever had. My father died when I was six. My mother was a public school art teacher. The math was simple: if any money was going to be in my pocket,Continue reading “Work Is Not a Four-Letter Word”

PETROGNANO, TUSCANY— Most of the people I pick up at the Florence airport have never met each other. By the end of the week, some of them will be friends for life. That part I didn’t plan. None of it was on the itinerary. Fifteen years ago, my family and I landed in Stockholm, boughtContinue reading “Nobody Plans For This”

MILAN—There’s a moment — right before the northern lights appear — when the sky looks like it’s deciding whether, or not, to show you something. Then it does, and you understand why you traveled 4,000 miles. Twenty-five Americans stood beside me in the snow. Nobody spoke. The northern lights don’t require commentary. The aurora borealisContinue reading “4,000 Miles from Home”