Featured Column
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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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
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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The Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me
There was a kid from my hometown who had it all figured out at twenty-one. Charm, dreams, a family who…
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Tea, Over Time
Iced tea has been called the house wine of the South. Rick Bragg once wrote that a glass of iced…
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Mardi Gras in the Hub City
Most people who aren’t from around here don’t realize how much Mardi Gras matters in my hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi.…
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RSJ’s Top 10 Meals of 2025
At the end of every year for the past 25+ years, I have listed my top ten dining experiences from…
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Showing Up for Christmas
For over three decades, Christmas never really meant a day off. That lesson came early. I was sixteen years old…
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The Meaning of Christmas
Author’s Note: This column started back in 1999. What began as a simple weekly commitment has carried on without missing…
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The Last Strand of Tinsel
Author’s Note: Robert St. John’s Mississippi Christmas hit the shelves a couple of weeks ago (click to purchase). It’s a collection…
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Making Mississippi Extra Full This Christmas
There are moments in life when you don’t realize you’re stepping into something bigger than yourself. Back in 2009, the…
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The Heart of Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving shifts on you as life goes on. But the earliest memories stay put. Our family used to drive to…
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Time Well Spent
There was a time, not long after our daughter was born, when it felt like the whole world could shrink…
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A Mississippi Christmas, Early
Christmas has a way of showing up early at my house—usually while the pumpkins are still on the porch. We…
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Where Are We Going Next?
LONDON—It shouldn’t work, but it does. Twenty-five Americans, most of them from the South, gathered around a breakfast table in…
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How One Thing Became Everything
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.” —…
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Onward Part III
PETROGNANO, TUSCANY — We were finishing dessert on the terrace last night when one of my Yonderlust Tours guests looked…
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So, I Guess This Is It
At six years old, I wanted to be Darrin Stephens from Bewitched. He worked in advertising, came up with ideas,…
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