In this issue:
Seriously Funny: Onstage and in his new documentary, Chris Rock says what you can't—and why we're glad he does.
Also: Taylor Swift: Our Q & A With Music's Girl Next Door
Thursday, November 12, 2009 by Rudy Maxa.
A great pastry shop is always a happy thing, and although Paris may have store windows filled with lemon tarts and chocolate croissants that make you forget how to spell the word C-A-L-O-R-I-E-S, primo bakeries are harder to find on this side of the Atlantic. Unless you happen to be in Santa Monica.
Thursday, October 01, 2009 by Rudy Maxa.
I promised last week a Los Angeles restaurant that thrilled me as well as one that I’m not too sure of yet. Let’s start with the good news.
Right across the street in Beverly Hills from Wolfgang Puck’s Spago is the new, very luxe hotel Montage. I can’t speak for the hotel experience, but my guess is that like most other high-end hotels in the country, Montage may be having a tough time keeping rooms full and room rates high. But it hasn’t let culinary standards suffer.
Friday, September 25, 2009 by Rudy Maxa.
I’m back from tying on the feedbag in Los Angeles and can report that Mason jars are all the rage on the best tabletops. Mason jars usually filled with duck pâté or duck confit. Big Mason jars, little Mason jars. I have no idea how or when this trend developed, but there it is.
Friday, September 11, 2009 by Rudy Maxa.
While my fellow blogger Jason Oliver Nixon jets between London and New York City, I’ve just returned from Stockholm. Wisconsin. You know, from the heirloom tomato festival?
Thursday, July 30, 2009 by Rudy Maxa.
“It’s like the Hamptons without the fancy restaurants and celebs,” I said on the phone.
“There’s a lot to be said for that,” answered Catherine, who has homes in Paris, San Francisco, Florida and Washington, D.C., and knows quite a bit about see-and-be-seen restaurants and celebrities. “Where is it again?”
“Northern Wisconsin, on Lake Superior. It’s called Madeline Island.”
“You know,” said Catherine, “that’s a whole part of this world I know nothing about.”
And, until I moved to Minnesota nearly six years ago, I didn’t know anything about these parts, either.
Friday, June 26, 2009 by Rudy Maxa.
Throughout the last couple of decades, one of the great joys of summer has been the explosion of farmers’ markets in urban areas. And if you’re a traveler, I’d strongly recommend you seek them out while on the road. Just as it’s great fun to visit markets (and even supermarkets) when traveling overseas, so, too, can a visitor to cities as disparate as Los Angeles and St. Paul, Minn., find markets where regional farmers ply the freshest of products.
Rudy Maxa is host and executive producer of the public television travel series, Rudy Maxa's World. The 78 episodes he has hosted have won numerous awards, including a 2008 regional Emmy for his episode "Rajasthan." He's a contributing editor with National Geographic Traveler magazine and has written for a host of national travel magazines and newspapers. For nearly 15 years he offered consumer travel commentary on public radio's business show Marketplace as "The Savvy Traveler," which was also the name of a one-hour, coast-to-coast weekend show on public radio that he co-created and hosted for four years. Prior to his career as a travel writer and broadcaster, Maxa was an award-winning Washington Post investigative reporter, magazine writer, and columnist for 13 years, during which time his reporting was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He was a senior writer at The Washingtonian magazine and Washington, D.C., bureau chief of Spy magazine. The author of two non-fiction books, Maxa lives in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota.
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