You can read the full “travel” issue here. It also includes stories from Edible Brooklyn, Edible Long Island and Edible East End. Use this map to find a hard copy near you, or better yet, subscribe here.
“Travel” is not an obvious theme for a local food and drink magazine. Even though we’ve published this issue for over a decade, writers, photographers, illustrators and readers alike often quiz me on what this idea means for Edible. Thing is, though, travel theme or not, telling the story of how New York eats and drinks usually requires talking about somewhere else, too.
Take Rachel Nuwer’s profile of Smorgasburg newbie Ghost & Grits. Their 12-hour slow-smoked pulled pork sandwich is a cross-cultural hybrid uniquely born of chef Sonar Saikia’s Assam upbringing and his wife’s Tennessee roots. Similarly, across Williamsburg, our digital strategy editor Bridget Shirvell shares how Llama Inn’s staff plays with traditional Peruvian flavors in homage to chef Erik Ramirez’s heritage; only Brooklyn could outdo itself by turning a classic pisco punch into a signature “Llama del Rey” cocktail.
Then in the city, tea expert Rachel Safko spotlights how a handful of Chinese and Japanese teahouses carry on the age-old ritual of getting “tea drunk.” Without booking a round-the-world flight, you can practice “good old-fashioned therapy” in these places, as she writes—it just happens over oolong, say, rather than a couple beers.
Some of my favorite stories in this issue take the travel idea a bit more literally. Chef/farmer/poet George Weld ies to Japan to translate his iconic Egg restaurant into a Tokyo outpost, our associate editor Alicia Kennedy seeks to eat like the Spanish do while maintaining her vegetarianism, and a few Bushwick-based motorcycle enthusiasts go on far-flung excursions to find inspiration for their distilling side hustle. I take my own trip as well, heading to France in search of cider’s time-honored history that, thanks to Prohibition, we just don’t have in the same way here in the States.
I don’t know about your fall, though, but I likely won’t be headed on any big trips soon. Now’s the time when I settle back into the New York groove and relish in my chosen home. After all, as this issue reminds me every year, it gives us plenty of reasons to stay.
