Category — Markets + Shopping

There is great food to be had all over Syria, but the far northern Syrian city of Aleppo is the one that’s known throughout the Middle East for its refined cuisine and innovative use of flavors and spices. Kebab Karaz, an unusual and unexpectedly tasty combination of lamb meatballs with cherries, pomegranate, and pine nuts, is one of the signature dishes of the region. The flavor combination is unusual but wonderfully balances the richness of the lamb with the sweet and sour notes in the sauce.

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People ask me for travel advice all the time, and sometimes I just don’t get around to blogging about it in advance. Here’s your chance to ask me anything about anywhere! If I have any good intel–I’ll gladly share it with you.

The Question: I’m heading to Tokyo for a business trip, and I want to find some really cool and unique shops for gifts, food, and a taste of Japanese pop culture while I’m there. What are your favorite shops in Tokyo?

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People ask me for travel advice all the time, and sometimes I just don’t get around to blogging about it in advance. Here’s your chance to ask me anything about anywhere! If I have any good intel–I’ll gladly share it with you. This is the question that inspired the start of this new regular feature!

The Question: “Me, my wife, and my 2-year-old son are going to Europe for the month of May.  We fly into Berlin at the start of the month and we fly out of Rome at the end.  We will definitely make our way to Paris in between, but that’s all we have.  I’ve only been to London, Amsterdam and few cities in Spain, so I am completely overwhelmed with the many choices of where else we could go. So, I’m wondering if you know of any easy-to-get-to great locales in between Berlin, Paris and Rome. Also, any train advice you have would be helpful.  I know that flying between the cities would be cheapest, but I’m trying to avoid flying and airports as much as possible.

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A few months ago, I posted about some of my favorite things to do in Cholula, Mexico. This is the companion post, about Puebla. (If you go to Puebla, you will go to Cholula, and vice-versa–partly because they are both fabulously interesting places and mostly because they are only about a 15 minute drive from one another.)

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One of the most searched and clicked recipes on this site is Robert’s Chilaquiles. That means that a lot of people have had the benefit of my friend Robert’s wonderful recipe for chilaquiles, which makes me ¡muy feliz! Robert’s recipe for this Mexican breakfast treat involves layers of fried tortilla triangles, scrambled eggs, chorizo, cheese, and a spiced tomato sauce. However, after spending a long weekend in the neighboring Mexican towns of Puebla and Cholula, we kind of got hooked on chilaquiles verdes–made with a green tomatillo sauce in place of the red.

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I recently came across a recipe for a cake that called for putting chopped up Kraft caramel candies in the batter. My first thought: BRILLIANT idea. My second though: Needs better caramels and a better recipe.

And so it was born: the Million Dollar Caramel Apple Crumb Cake.

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Cholula is a town that’s just outside of Puebla, but there are actually two Cholulas, in more ways than one. The first way: literally. There are literally two Cholulas–San Andrés Cholula and San Pedro Cholula–that are connected to one another but that are absolutely different towns. I know this because they use the same numbers and addresses for their streets, so if you give an address in “Cholula” to a taxi driver and don’t specify which one, you might not get to where you think you want to go and you might have the driver running around asking every Tomas, Juan, and Pablo where the heck you’re going.

The second way: there are some very old things in Cholula and some very new things in Cholula, often separated by only a short walk.

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo tour through the magical, mysterious souqs of Syria and Egypt. One of the most captivating areas for me in every souq was the spice area. Some vendors have their spices in big bins, and others get more creative with their spices, building beautiful pyramids of fragrant powdered spices.

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A souq (sometimes spelled souk) is an Arabic name for a marketplace. The souqs of Syria are like none other, and thought to be the very best in the world. First, some scenes from Damascus (Dimashq in Arabic.)

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Some friends are heading to Bali for their honeymoon–and while I’m incredibly jealous, I had to share some of my very favorite recommendations for hotels, restaurants, and activities. Bali is one of my most beloved places in the whole world. There are many places that I visit and think, “this is great, but now that I’ve seen it, I don’t have to come back.” Bali is not one of those places.

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