As editor of Edible Manhattan, I often pore over stories about experiences I haven’t personally had. While the writer I’m working with may have just toured Brooklyn’s Chinatown with Buddhakan Chef Yang Huang or hunted game birds in Scotland with Picholine’s Chef Terrance Brennan, I’m hunched over my desk gnawing on a pencil and polishing a piece about a trip I really really wish I could have tagged along on.
I recently endured such torture while working on a story in our just-out EatDrink Local issue. A lucky writer had gone on assignment up in the Adirondacks for one of the Lake Placid Lodge’s two annual Food & Wine Weekends—the next of which is this coming weekend. Co-hosted by the Union Square Hospitality Group, the three-day gastro getaways offer a culinary and viniculture-steeped vacation on which guests (who’ve paid $3,525 for the package, or $175 for dinner) rub elbows—and paddles, whisks and corkscrews—with some of the state’s more celebrated vintners and chefs (this weekend’s getaway features the crew from Maialino).
It’s hard to focus on word choice while squirming with jealousy. I had to squint at my screen, reading sentence after sentence about canoeing to a delectable breakfast cooked over an open fire, pasta classes led by Meyer’s masterminds, and lazy afternoon scotch tastings—all before a dinner as good as you can find in Manhattan, served overlooking the pristine shores of Lake Placid. At day’s end, guests fall into handmade feather mattresses, themselves tucked into frames with bark-on limbs under canopies of twigs.
The issue’s finally off my desk and on the streets. But there’s no rest for the weary—I’m now hard at work on the July-August issue, green with envy as I read a feature about the Vermont Cheese Festival.
