Edible is best known as a champion of local foods, and rightly so. We’re farmers market addicts, altogether obsessed with meeting the people who catch our fish, pick our pears, churn our butter and boil our bagels. But in this issue, we take a literal departure from our DiY doctrine and break our hardcore locavore diet in favor of handmade, traditional and otherwise meaningful foods that are connected to New York—but not actually grown here. And I for one am now yearning to go on every trip described herein.
It happens to me with each issue—as I shepherd a story from concept to layout I inevitably fall in love with the subject, vowing to set up a rooftop beehive or track down the best tamales in East Harlem. But this time my resolutions involve getting out of town. Amy Zavatto’s profile of chef Alex Raij’s trip to the Basque Country had me looking up airfares late at night. Jessie Cacciola’s writeup of Lindblad Expeditions prompted me to suggest to my family that we spend Thanksgiving in the Galápagos islands. Robert Simonson’s piece on South African wineries prompted serious thoughts about wintering on one. And St. John Frizell’s must-read story on gathering inspiration and ingredients in Austria with native son chef Kurt Gutenbrunner made me so envious of the Viennese that I broke out the schnapps to ease the pain. At the next day’s editorial meeting, I was hungover.
But when the fog cleared I realized one needn’t leave New York to live out these tales, at least for an hour. Most flavors are here for the tasting: You can hit Fatty Crab uptown or down to savor Malaysia, get hooked on Basque pintxos at Txikito in Chelsea, slice into Wiener schnitzel at Blau Gans in TriBeCa, get steeped in real Darjeeling at the Harney salon in SoHo, enjoy Martinique’s rhum agricole in cocktail bars all over town, forage for purslane on your sidewalk and buy Goya guava syrup at the corner bodega. Or, if you don’t have an unlimited Metrocard, take a tastebud tour at our official
Travel issue “Edible Escape” bash on the Lower East Side on Wednesday, October 19. Tickets are just $40 at ediblemanhattan.com—no passport needed.
See you there, traveler.
