simon says french food blog

Your Favorite Restaurant’s Secret Ingredient

NEW YORK CITY
By Joe Ray 

Some of the nation’s top eateries are quietly embracing data mining to eke out profit in a tough economy. My new story profiles the business, pioneer Damian Mogavero, and checks in with chef Daniel Boulud - now on wired.com.

The Morgenthaler Method or The King of the Carbonated Cocktail

By Joe Ray
PORTLAND, OR

Before I visited Portland to meet bartender extraordinaire Jeffrey Morgenthaler, I visited his blog. One distracting post, now two years old, offered video of a man giving the health department all the reasons it needs to send an inspector. In the post, titled “How to Make a Daiquiri – The American Bartending School Way,” Morgenthaler recaps “the way” with a 10-point breakdown, including steps like: 1) Chill an 8-ounce cocktail glass; 2) Pick your nose, and wipe the resulting findings on the back of your hand; 5) Wipe nose on back of hand for four full seconds; and 10) Enjoy! Morgenthaler’s subtle jabs make a sharp point about his craft.

Along with descriptions of new products like Xanté Pear Liqueur — headline: “Not A Sex Toy!” — Morgenthaler uses his blog as a platform to announce what he’s doing at the bar in Clyde Common, a Portland restaurant. The drinks and styles he writes about tend to become cocktail-world trends.

... read the rest here in The Daily.

NEWS FLASH: EARLY CHRISTMAS IN COBBLE HILL

By Joe Ray
BROOKLYN

The Txikito gang has been doing some early Christmas shopping. Alex Raij and Eder Montero, the couple who made Chelsea a better place by opening both Txikito and El Quinto Pino, signed a lease on Monday for a new Brooklyn restaurant, La Vara, slated to open in early 2012.

Located in the spot recently vacated by the ill-fated Breuckelen restaurant at 268 Clinton St. - next to the lovely Ted & Honey Café - Raij says the cuisine will be “Spanish food seen through its Moorish and Jewish roots.”

The food will be a mix of small plates and shareable larger dishes.

“The basis will be home cooking, not the traditional ‘meat, starch, veg,’” says Raij.

Who’ll be running the line? “We will, for now,” she says.

Somewhere in there, Raij will also be having a baby.

“We did our last opening like that,” she jokes.

Why change now?

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @joe_diner. 

 

Le Charme Discret Du Cocktail

By Joe Ray
VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA 

Enfin! Quelque chose en VF! Et, d'ailleurs, "Le Charme Discret du Cocktail" est tellement plus seduisant que l'anglais: "Bitters adding spice to Canadian, US cocktails."

Et ben...

Voici l'article dans L'Express - bonne lecture!

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @joe_diner.

 

GHOST RESTAURANT

By Joe Ray
NYC

The boss is in town, looking to dine and wants to know where we should go. I almost panic. Where do you take the most-feared food critic in France? I call friends and comb over the list of places I’ve been until I remember the place I really want to try: M. Wells in Queens.

Something of a media darling, M. Wells is/was also a gastronomic UFO housed in a diner: they do what they wanted to, which is pretty admirable in my book. It received incredible raves and, since I’ve been there, one blazing, bizarre review whose subject matter I’m not touching with a ten-foot pole.

Since then, the restaurant has apparently been forced out of their Long Island City location by their landlord and, at this point, there are only rumors about it resurfacing.

When we arrive, François promises to share some of his Caesar salad with smoked herring but it disappears before I point my fork in his direction. I try ‘Bacalao Magasin’ a veritable bath of olive oil that poaches, heats or finishes carrots, shrimp, beans, peas and salt cod in a great terracotta bowl.

For our ‘Big Dish’ – menu choices here are divided into ‘big’ and ‘small’ – we try the ‘BibiM Wells,’ a seafood riff on the Korean dish, which is something of a bunt that could have been a home run with more thought given to the play of texture that make the original so good.

The night we’re there, I wish we were with a much larger group to try the big dishes, where much of the creativity appears to lie – BBQ short ribs, lamb saddle with za’atar, tahini and pomegranate molasses, chicken wonton pot-au-feu – but get a sense of the bigger game the chefs seem to be after with an escargot and bone marrow pasta dish with shallots and a red wine ‘purée’ – the mollusk cousin to octopus and bone marrow pasta. M. Wells’ snails are served right in the bone, two forms of slippery goodness bathing in the wine sauce, covered with crunchy, garlicky breadcrumbs.

What is (“What was”?) most interesting at M. Wells is the idea factory the place became. Francois and I get talking about it - in Paris, you’d wonder about the chef’s motives, what they want to accomplish and, often, what their next step will be. Here, creation seems to be the whole point – there is no next step.

Brouhaha aside (please) it’ll be interesting to see what happens next.

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @joe_diner. 

 

Chocolate - Distilled To A Science in Red Hook

By Joe Ray
Red Hook, BROOKLYN




The mysterious voicemail from a well-informed friend arrived at the last minute. “Dude, we’re meeting in Red Hook in an hour and going to this bar that’s never open to taste homemade chocolate and drink homemade hootch. Wanna come?”

I arched an eyebrow, checked on clearing my schedule and called back.

“The guy designed one of those James Bond-style jet packs. That’s all I know. This is New York — are you coming or not?”

How do you say no?

... read the rest here in The Daily.

NYC'S SWAN SONG OF THE ALABAMA SLAMMER

NYC
By Joe Ray

A bit out of sequence, but, this stuff isn't getting any younger. Above, a shot from the scene at the 'pop-up' Fatty Johnson's in the Village last night - barman/journalist/pal Toby Cecchini announced "sundry a selection of reviled cocktails from the 70s through the 90s" signing off on the invite saying "Join us if you dare, and feel free to bring anyone you don't particularly like."

Jello shot and a Blue Hawaiian, anyone?

Fatty Johnson's - MAP
50 Carmine Street
New York, NY 10014
+1.212.929.5050
www.fattyjohnsons.com

THE CREPE KING OF OYSTER CITY

CANCALE, France
By Joe Ray 

Dad, Jim and I leave the ladies to roam on their own for a bit and we head to the oyster stands to split a few plates, sitting on the sea wall and flipping the shells into the sea.

Later, we double back for lunch at the Breizh Café. With the mother ship here, and branches in Paris and Tokyo, this place is multiplying like, um, hotcakes and that’s not such a bad thing.

Bertrand Larcher serves classics with high-quality fillings or more creative combinations like my smoked herring, lumpfish roe and cream - smoky, salty and just a little sweet. Whatever you get, the buckwheat crepes are crispy on the outside, downy within.

Nobody at the table offers to share - a good sign - and we wash it down with a Fouesnant cider that has a wonderful, farmy funk.

I run out to feed the meter before the dessert crepes - chocolate and butter and apple compote, cider syrup and whipped cream - are ordered and return to two rather tiny wedges the gang has ‘saved’ for me. Not bad considering I had to push the idea of dessert on them.

After that, we go back out and have more oysters on the sea wall.

Not really. But we thought about it.

Count on 15-20€ with cider.

Breizh Café - MAP
7 quai Thomas
Cancale
+33 (0)2 99 89 61 76
www.breizhcafe.com

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @joe_diner.

FOLLOWING YOUR NOSE TO A MAN OF HIS CRAFT

By Joe Ray
GREENSBORO, Vermont

New story: Beer wunderkind Shaun Hill's new digs at Hill Farmstead Brewery in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. Cheers!

Bocuse the 1st

By François Simon

PARIS

Paul Bocuse's restaurant, in Collonges-en-Mont-d'Or - (+33) 4.72.42.90.90; count on 120 euros - has something reminiscent of a fading France: a land of milk and honey, mischievous, kind and good-natured. Last Saturday, while the country shivered with cold, the dining room softly shimmered with warmth. An inimitable atmosphere, like an old Gabin film in black and white with foie gras and a damsel wearing back seam stockings. That said, Bocuse's restaurant is bursting with color. It's like an obsessive incantation against ossification and gloom, a phobia of emptiness and of all things dreary. All the gaps must be filled with color, like children do in a coloring book. Even the ceiling has something of a circus dome. From all sides, objects seem to call out to you, the way TV audiences used to back in the days. Even the salt and pepper shakers are adorned with a statue of the Commandatore. Paul Bocuse, monsieur Paul, arms folded over his chest.

Bocuse is our General De Gaulle of gastronomy. Our pope. He's going on 84, and still runs a very tight ship. As for the food? Well, you don't go to Bocuse's to sample dishes with your little finger up in the air, you come to feast upon France's history and nothing less! Admittedly, the Maine lobster salad (not from France's Maine et Loire, but from North America, which surprising coming from this defender of French tradition, whose pajamas we imagine edged in the colors of the flag) is a bit static with its mixed vegetables à la parisienne (it was posing); however the roasted pigeon that evening was better than good. It was first class and as easy to cut as a paper figurine with scissors. If the wine you've chosen is up to standards - I was alone with a half bottle of Côte Rôtie - the restaurant takes on a whole different resonance. The cardoon gratin is benevolent and the four desert tables end it all on a high note: mind-blowing vanilla ice cream (creamy-smooth like your beloved's kiss), the chocolate cake was a bit stiff with not much to say for itself (too cold, I imagine), a magnificent île flottane.

But Paul Bocuse's restaurant is grand when the customers have gone. A lot of local names, the bourgeois and their ladies, but also Lyon natives with their unique accent, their unctuously cocky humor. They are in the room with the fireplace, though those who want to be seen prefer the rotunda. It matters little, actually, they have all come to film memories, hang up a canvas in the corner of their minds, and hurtle down the disarming stairs of the "grande tradition classique" menus. As we know, no one lives forever and with Paul Bocuse, we are lucky enough to have a living century of good humor, of French cuisine at its most irresistible, undeniably dated (that's a good thing), sauceboat dishes… So what? Face it, in a decade we'll be hitting our foreheads and pronouncing that pathetic refrain: if only we'd known... So, get a move on and go grab a bite of our heritage. Dine at Bocuse's. You won't leave unmoved. Deliciously dated service and kindness orchestrated by François Pipala, who sums up the bliss of the place in his smile.

L'Auberge du Pont de Collonges - 40 Rue de la Plage - 69660 Collonges au Mont d'Or - Tél. : (33) 04 72 42 90 90 Web

VICTOR - MANY HAPPY RETURNS

By François Simon

PARIS

 

It's funny, I've been here before ... have I told you about it? Victor is well done and warm, with a bistrot-style menu. My friends and I discovered a fantastic blood sausage pastry and a fine “onglet” steak. A delicious interlude with a few good bottles (a Croze-Hermitage from Graillot) and rather sexy clientele! If I lived in the neighborhood, I think I'd come on a regular basis. Victor has also just opened a similar place called Felix (99, rue Jouffroy d'Abbans, 75017 Paris; +33 1.42.27.26.16).

Victor MAP
101 bis, rue de Lauriston
 75017 Paris
+33 1.47.27.55.07

NEWS FLASH - SECRET SPRING

PARIS
By Joe Ray

Get there while you can.

We got a walk-in seat for dinner at Spring last night.

As in Spring, where you usually have to wait months for a table. We just sat at the downstairs bar and ordered à la carte.

We had walked by after being shut out at Chez Denise, which, we learned, is either closed on Saturdays or still enjoying summer vacation. Wandering aimlessly, I went in to say hello to chef Daniel Rose who opened Spring in its new location a few months back.

“Come check out the bar!” he said.

And while, at 9:30 at night, there were still people upstairs still kicking around from the lobster roll lunch he does every Saturday (no Saturday dinner), downstairs, the beautiful ‘cave’ is essentially functioning as a little restaurant with a bar.

“Spring Buvette!” he declared.

“When did you open?”

“Last night.”

As Rose tells it, he just didn’t tell anyone about it. At this point, he really doesn’t need to. 

No reservations, tiny, very reasonably-priced menu, order à la carte (as opposed to the prix fixe upstairs) beautiful space, killer wines.

Last night, we had little canned sardines with perfect bread and butter, wonderful Spanish charcuterie (including a chorizo, which, on that bread with a thin layer of that butter may have been my favorite bite of the meal), a veal and foie gras ‘tourte’ topped with little, ruby-colored radish sprouts and a lamb and cèpe stew with white beans.

Our meal was destined for a bunch of catch-up with an old friend, but we kept getting interrupted by the food that would make my friend moan.

“Some of this is better than bad sex,” I joke.

“Some of this is better than good sex,” she replies.

You’ve got about three days to get there before the word’s out and the line’s out the door.

Count on about 30 euros per person. Without wine. Most bottles start at 30 euros and go up from there.

Spring Buvette - MAP
6 Rue Bailleul
75001 Paris
+33.1.45.96.05.72

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Twitter: @joe_diner.

NEWS FLASH - NOMA SOUS CHEF TO TAKE REINS AT WILLOWS INN

I visited the Willows Inn on Washington state's little-known Lummi Island for an upcoming Boston Globe story a few weeks back - the restaurant is locavore heaven. Proprietor Riley Starks and his partner Joan Olsen catch the salmon in reef nets, grow much of their own produce and raise amazing mangalitsa pigs (above) at their Nettles Farm just up the road, buy incredible spot prawns caught in the water in front of the inn and wonderful lamb raised a few miles down the road. On some nights, even neighboring Bellingham's Boundary Bay Brewery's beautiful Reefnetter Pale Ale is on tap. The whole thing is done so well, they pull off the local thing without the twee thing that often goes with it.

It's about to get even more interesting. Starting August 23, Blaine Wetzel, a Washington native fresh from a stint in the kitchen at Copenhagen's noma - the number one restaurant in the world (if you buy that sort of thing) - will be taking over as executive chef at the inn's restaurant. Very curious to see what happens. noma's chef Rene Redzepi is a big proponent of the New Nordic movement - a group of chefs working to go local even at those higher latitudes, a philosophy that should dovetail very nicely with what Starks and Olsen have done.

The inn is a two-hour drive and five minute ferry ride from Seattle and I'd bet it's worth a trip to see what's cooking ... I'm planning on a visit.

The Willows Inn – MAP
2579 West shore Dr
Lummi Island, WA 98262
888-294-2620
www.willows-inn.com

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Twitter: @joe_diner.

NEW - M64 - NOT BAD... NOT BAD AT ALL

By François Simon

PARIS

Quickly making a name for oneself in the hotel/restaurant business isn't easy. Customers first tend use the restaurant as a hideaway to do business, rarely paying attention to the food. You're correct in thinking that the chef does everything he can to content moderate and finicky appetites while offering something memorable and innovative. This place is rather good. Not cheap, but they do have a 35 euro "Menu Passage" that's just perfect!

 

M64 - Map
Hôtel InterContinental
64, avenue Marceau
75008 Paris
+33.1.44.43.36.50). 

 

NEW FOUR YOU

BARCELONA
By Joe Ray

 

Hot off the press? Hot off the griddle? Who cares?

Located at the bottom of the culinary wasteland of Las Ramblas, Cuatro is new, very good and a solid value.

Reserve now - they may be working out the kinks, but it’s going to be full to the gills very soon.

Kinks? There’s a bit of a split personality - the sign on the door says “Bar Cuatro” giving the hurried and hungry every reason to walk past. There are noble G&Ts, good value wines, but it’s not a destination bar - it’s a destination restaurant.

The dining room is spread out, spacious and relaxed, making me wonder why they didn’t give themselves a little more room in the kitchen or if they’re planning on squeezing in a few more tables once they’ve hit stride.

Order à la carte if you will, but there’s a six-course degustation menu for two at 25€ a head and you get to choose which courses to try.

Our foursome, including my tipster, Barcelona food writer Carme Gasull, Edu and Meri, start with a duck crepe with red fruit chutney, which is like hot duck rillettes, minus some of the fat, rolled into a crepe, with a nice acidic bite from what’s really a drizzle of fruit reduction. It sets a nice tone for what’s to come. ‘Calamari strips with wasabi mayo’ are fried in a tempura-like batter, which would normally make me whine about needless poaching from other cultures if it wasn’t so good. 

My favorite main - which elicited bipolar responses from our group - is a poached egg over a cauliflower cream with a wiggle of truffle oil and a tiny slab of wonderfully fatty bacon, everything bathing in a spoonful of olive oil and (I think) meat jus. I’m also almost forgetting the side of vanilla-scented mashed potatoes that came with a braised veal cheek. Giving the spuds gentle sweet, savory and honey-like flavors, none of us could figure out the mystery ingredient, likely the fruit a clever collaboration between chef Aitor Bergaretxe and lauded pastry chef Vicente Carvalho.

The wines, sourced by sommelier Jaume Martorell are smart, unique and good values - we have a 2009 Tempestad, a Galician beauty made with the godello grape - and the peculiarly-named 2006 Squared Three (bzah! - the number on the label is three squared), a grenache, tempranillo and merlot blend from the Rioja that leaves us every bit as happy as the godello.

There’s a salty chocolate mousse for dessert, presented in a way only a Catalan could appreciate, but the superstar is a play on french toast with a Parmesan ‘cake’ and pear sorbet. This alone is worth the visit. 

Count on 25 euros, whether you order à la carte or the tasting menu, plus wine.

Cuatro
C/ Montserrat, 4 (a stone’s throw form the Drassanes Metro)
Barcelona
+34 93 301 43 24

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. Twitter: @joe_diner.

WORLD'S BEST? THAT'S UP TO YOU.

BARCELONA
By Joe Ray

 
 

I love the hype surrounding the announcement of The World’s 50 Best Restaurants* – it somehow points out how goofy and subjective it is to rank them (where are Pinotxo and the Agawam Diner?!?!) while reminding us how wonderful they are.

For anyone interested in a trip down memory lane to the places on the list where I’ve been lucky enough to eat, here we go…

noma – Rene Redzepi

El Bulli – Ferran Adria

El Celler de Can Roca – Joan Roca

WD-50 & Daniel

Le Chateaubriand

Pierre Gagnaire / Plaza Athenée - Pierre Gagnaire & Alain Ducasse

St. John

Finally, two conspicuously absent personal faves:

Restaurant Jean-Marie Amat (and here)

and

Les Cols

*Congrats to my pal Lexy Topping for breaking the 50 Best story for the Guardian – woop woop!

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the 2009 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year and author of the blog Eating The Motherland. 

NEWS FLASH - HOLLAND’S BEST CHEESE COMES TO AMSTERDAM

By Joe Ray

 

To taste Holland’s best cheese, you used to have to truck out to the tiny town of Santpoort to visit Betty and Martin Koster at L’Amuse. One taste could tell you it was worth the trip, but there was no other reason to head out there.

No more: L’Amuse Amsterdam opened last week and now that city’s got their own version of Randolph Hodgson or Marie Quatrehomme.

If they’ve got ‘em, try the Oude Remeker 18-Month or the Wilde Weide Kaas. They’ll knock your socks (wooden shoes?) off.

Doei!

L’Amuse
Stadionweg 147
Amsterdam
+31-20-6707559
www.lamuse.nl

Click here for a look at my story on Betty and Martin at their Santpoort store.

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting. 

FLYING CANNELLONI

Carles Gaig is a chef and a businessman. The combination can make you cringe – it's hard to pull off and, truthfully, fewer chefs should try. Gaig, a Catalan cuisine legend, can be found anywhere from his high-end eponymous Barcelona restaurant to the sides of Barcelona's bus systems where he's currently hawking a set of cheap-looking knives.

Another Gaig newborn is promising. PortaGaig is in the Barcelona airport's new Terminal 1, hidden off to the right before you head through security. It being the 26th – St. Stephen's day – where you traditionally eat cannelloni stuffed with Christmas leftovers. Gaig being known for the little tubes of joy, we stopped in.

There are some great ideas at work here – get to the airport early enough and you can have a full-out meal with great wine in a beautiful space with a swarm of smart-dressed waiters at your disposal. Sometimes you want to swat them away, there's so many, other times, they're standing around, looking good and waiting for the restaurant's reputation to grow.

There's also a special bar menu with reasonable prices featuring items that are quicker to prepare. That said, it's hard to get out of there for less than 15 euros – made more annoying by the 2.50€ 'cover charge' for disappointing bread.

Best cannelloni I've ever had? Who knows, but, paired with a glass of Cava, they beat the pants off the plastic-boxed sandwiches on the other side of security. It costs a bit more, but it's a better value. Best airport food? (A question I'm posing from a chair on another flight at 38,000 feet.) Without a doubt.


Plan on anywhere from 15€ for drinks, snacks and (ugh) bread at the bar to a couple times that for a sit-down meal.


PortaGaig MAP
Barcelona. Terminal 1 - P3.
Departures Public Zone
+34 932 596 210

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.

EGGING FOR MORE

RED HOOK, BROOKLYN

By Joe Ray

Now that I’m back home and typing up a bushel of NYC blogs, the one place I really want to go back to is Brooklyn’s Fort Defiance. Not only are the drinks top notch, chef Sam Filloramo wowed me while, thanks to some sort of new restaurant timing/shipping glitches, he was still working from a half-empty* kitchen.

His deviled eggs were so good, I went home and told my mom about them and if that wasn’t enough to get me to want to go back, the ever-changing menu they now post on their Web site does: rabbit and chorizo hash, oysters Rockefeller, pan-fried catfish … my word. Apparently, they even do breakfast and all I can do is imagine the possibilities.

I’m interested to see how the combination of a serious drinks bar combined with chef who’s making his mark pans out. It can only be good.

Fort Defiance - MAP

365 Van Brunt St

Brooklyn, NY

+1 347-453-6672

www.fortdefiancebrooklyn.com

*Apparently, in mid-September, after the equipment arrived, a health inspector stopped in to check the kitchen and found gas equipment without gas service - like a car with an empty gas tank - and decided the restaurant would be better off closed for the week until they got the pipes hooked up… go figure.

Click here to see my Boston Globe Travel story, “Small Wonders” - featuring an interview with Fort Defiance owner and drinks expert St. John Frizell.

Food and travel writer and photographer Joe Ray is the author of the blog Eating The Motherland and contributes to The Boston Globe's travel blog, Globe-trotting.

LOWELL THOMAS TRAVEL JOURNALIST OF THE YEAR

 

PARIS

By Joe Ray

Holy cow.

I won the Society of American Travel Writers’ “Grand Award” – The Lowell Thomas Travel Journalist of the Year.

“At least you did something,” quipped my Republican-leaning father referring to a certain recent Nobel Peace Prize winner.

I took it as a compliment.

In any case, it’s fantastic news and a huge honor. There is an incredible list of winners that reads like a Who’s Who of travel writing – including several for the Boston Globe’s Travel section. There’s also a video of the awards that includes a photo of me in a cheche and another where I’m slurping an oyster with my buddy Ethan - start at around 17:40.

Here are links to the stories in my entry – most with a serious food bent – broken down by where they were published.

BOSTON GLOBE - TRAVEL

Heart of The Hills - Valparaiso

Sampling the Motherland – Sicily

Loving Lisbon

Desert Rules – The Algerian Sahara

Some Tips to Help Make Your Dollars Stretch in Europe

CENTURION & PLATIUM MAGAZINES – Asia & Australia Editions

The Road goes Ever On – Patagonia’s Route 40

The Centurion Menu – Santi Santamaria & Carme Ruscalleda

THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION - TRAVEL

In Lyon, old food styles and new exist happily side by side - Photo gallery

Finally, my ‘simulcasted’ blogging trio rounded out my entry.

Eating The Motherland - My Food Writing & Photography blog

The Boston Globe’s Travel Blog, Globe-trotting

…and, of course, right here with Francois Simon on Simon Says!

 

More to come! Stay tuned…

Photo courtesy Joel Scheitler in Luxembourg.