In December, I visited Kingston and Hudson, NY for my anniversary and never wrote it up, thinking there’s no shortage of upstate weekend guides (the best of which led our trip) but also the visit had lacked a certain magic; both places felt slightly oversaturated by Brooklyn émigrés, with Kingston like a partially built soundstage on which select hipster productions are mounted and Hudson like a coolly expensive outdoor mall. For years I’d had the moody, splurgy, ‘in the library with the candlestick’ Maker Hotel bookmarked, and while its cavernous carriage house bar is worth a visit, the hotel’s seemingly personal touches—the morning coffee drop-off, for example—felt rote and corporate compared to the same gesture made by unseen hosts at the AirBnB-like Kingston Carriage House (where the unbranded thermos actually kept its contents hot, and came with locally baked pastries instead of KIND bars).

Scroll to the end for notes on Kingston and Hudson, but the bulk of this post recommends an alternative “upstate” based on 36 recent hours in Mystic, CT.

Only an hour from Providence and accessible via Amtrak, Mystic is one of the first day trips Kevin and I took two years ago. I took a picture of the Mystic Pizza sign, had some forgettable ice cream at Mystic Drawbridge and a too-potent ginger juice from Karma Kitchen. This time, wanting to maximize the last weekend of “spring break” and some soon expiring Booking.com credit, we landed at Eileen of Mystic, “an artist-run bed and breakfast” opened by Erin and Josh in, I think, 2021.

Is this Connecticut’s Casa Maria Luigia?

I was instantly reminded of the vibrant runner-up for our honeymoon, Mallorca’s (also artist couple-run) Hotel Corazón (note: our room, suite 4, seems to be the chalky respite from an otherwise color-drenched property; as they put it, “If the romance of candlelight was a room, this would be it.”). These are all places where the design is eclectic, playful, intelligent, dynamic; Eileen is way warmer and more personal than the grayscale single-taper-candle interiors of certain Scandi-inspired upstate properties, and the ongoing renovation from its prior life (as “The Brigadoon,” talk about transporting) strikes a delightful balance between celebrating the bones of the farmhouse without doing pastoral cosplay. I loved the brushed metal switch plates in our room and the softcover copy of Kierkegaard’s Works on Love sandwiched between enamel cat bookends. And the green radiators! And the black makeup towel, always thoughtful! And the lingering smell of wood fire at check-in, better than any incense cone! And the handwritten welcome note complete with Andes mints! I usually dislike when hotels don’t have TVs, but the deep tub in our cathedral-like bathroom more than made up for the omission (and it’s not a performative Luddite thing, for all the inn’s visual noise there’s a peaceful vibe in general—peep the vintage brass bedside dish holding individually wrapped earplugs).

Every intentional touch—our engraved keyring; the complimentary snacks, cold waters, even beer; the smooth glass sugar spoon and grooved, room-temp butter balls at breakfast—is a massage to the discerning brain, stimulating and pleasurable. On breakfast: Erin does a continental, European hotel-type spread of homemade bakes (soft sourdough with marmalade, a deliciously craggy cardamom muffin that was mostly demerara lid), thinly sliced meat and cheese, carefully labeled individual chia puddings, and an optional savory share plate that I imagine changes often: two halved medium-boiled eggs with a splash of balsamic and toasted breadcrumbs. This was plenty for us—optimal for those of us who skip hotel breakfast to maximize in-town spots—and the seating is arranged more like a restaurant than 1-2 extroverted communal tables, with a carafe of hot coffee, a smoldering fire, and Toni Braxton; I didn’t want to leave.

Given how special (and “aesthetic”) it is, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Eileen of Mystic catch on with the influencer set, but for now it was lovely sharing the breakfast room with a few 20-something women who, like me, could be overheard faintly gushing about every detail. I asked Josh about the butter balls and he produced the grooved wooden paddle that transforms ¾” cubes into perfect orbs for every table; similar on Etsy here.

The rest of our Mystic itinerary:

We had a bit of a crawl, starting with a Chef Renee Touponce bang-bang: happy hour at Oyster Club was floral gin and tonics with locally distilled Southwick’s gin and 16 ice-cold oysters, then next door to The Port of Call, a wood-clad cocktail-and-snack bar whose changing menu pays homage to different port cities (and comes with a map that handily charts each drink according to tasting note, i.e. sweet, bitter, etc.). Where the menu is themey, the rich interior is classic, like a vintage cruise ship cabin. They had a “buck-a-cluck” special on so we each got one (1) buffalo wing with homemade bleu dressing and two cocktails that drank like four (complimentary). This is a great place to come early and watch the horseshoe bar fill up (or else make a reservation).

Dinner at The Shipwright’s Daughter adjacent to the Whaler’s Inn. When we arrived for our res, we almost swapped our table for a pair of open bar seats, then yielded the seats to a couple we realized were already eyeing them, and they sent us a round of drinks in return: classy stuff!! The food here is as good as people say, including dessert: a delicate pastel spring pavlova with forced rhubarb. We asked our server where to go next and she recommended nearby (everything is nearby) Danger Bar, which was narrow, teeming, and serviceable for people-watching and a negroni.

Similarly cramped was Nana’s the next morning, where we each got an “L.A. latte” (Canyon espresso with miso caramel) that tasted only of oat milk and a takeaway hash brown and pork sausage patty (tasty but wept grease like Xenomorph blood through the box and bag). Though it was chilly, we took our coffees on a loop through the woods by the Denison Pequotsepos Nature Center (hot take: better than the aquarium) and made our second major discovery: Mystic’s Luxury Cinemas, whose iconic signage I’d photographed before, not realizing this is one of the nicest cinemas I’ve ever been to. Super clean, all recliner seating, with the rows super spaced apart so you feel truly secluded from the rows behind and ahead, and lecture hall-style tray tables, and lumbar heating. We saw Project Hail Mary. Everyone working there is like 16 and very polite. They serve canned cocktails and real butter on the popcorn.

Last stop was a late lunch at waterfront Red 36, blackened fish tacos and a $42 lobster roll: woof. Can’t fault the view but next time I’d save the seafood for Haring’s in neighboring Noank. A matinee, a hot buttered roll, a few happy hours, and a great night’s sleep at Eileen: this is my consummate Mystic visit, maybe even before the summer season kicks off, while it’s still cool enough to enjoy the heated seats.

In Kingston:

• Ship to Shore – Had a great stirred old-fashioned at the bar, wish I’d stayed for dinner.

• Eng’s Chinese – Saw longtime owner Tom Sit on a reel, then recognized the booths from Severance. Pupu platter for two and sesame tofu both okay, would come back for the room (maybe on one of their live jazz nights? Every third Thursday).

• Sorry, Charlie – The white pizza here with ricotta bloops had a Pizza Hut vibe: lacy, slightly oily crust.

• Le Canard Enchaîné – Festive, buzzy room; rude, imperious host. You can imagine which more directly impacted our experience. Probably nice for regulars but a hard pass for me.

• Rosie General – Had coffee and lunch here twice, prototypical fancyish sandwich place-slash-posh grocer, good people-watching at the winding counter.

• Stockade Tavern – Drinks had no business being this good!

• Thoroughbred Vintage – Now this is a destination: shopping by appointment (by DM) with Laird Mackintosh, a warm, eloquent Ralph Lauren collector and archivist who’ll fix you an espresso, take you through some history, and make an incredibly exclusive shopping experience feel accessible. He cut me a discount on a 1980s camel suede safari jacket, the same one advertised by one of the shop’s catalog prints. I like to think it’s because I wore my mom’s own vintage RL boatneck hand-knit pheasant sweater.

In Hudson:

• Mel the Bakery – Caught the smoked salmon focaccia, supplemented with persimmon shortcake, a buckwheat linzer cookie, and a box of fancy salt to give at Christmas. Staggeringly expensive but totally delivered.

• Klocke Estate – We had our anniversary dinner here at like 5:00 PM and it was still almost too dark to make out the winding dirt road in front of us. A gorgeous room, soaring ceilings, mainly geriatric, and we had to imagine the view but service and food were stellar: seafood tower, sausage and cabbage with plump spaetzle, a honeyed spiced pear sorbet. Would be nice to come back for a tasting on a clear summer afternoon.
  

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Last month I had the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam for a two-day conference, just long enough to extend into a quickie vacation with a day on either end. This was basically my first visit, excluding a European student tour when I was about 13, so here’s what the research turned up.

Stays

I was inclined for something other than a massive, anonymous albeit well-reviewed hotel. Villa Nicola is a 5-star-rated B&B with only two suites; the right vibe but fully booked for our dates. Similarly tasteful and cozy: the Lastage Inn and Villa360. We ended up booking at Spinoza Suites, another two-room AirBnB-style accommodation on a peaceful canal, conveniently two minutes from the Weesperplein metro stop.

Any worries that this location might feel in any sense “remote” vanished with our initial commute from Centraal station—the house is perfectly set apart yet accessible from the congested center, with a refined sensibility that felt more luxe than its price point. Heated marble floors in the bathroom, chilled wine on arrival, occasional (and importantly non-intrusive) greetings/check-ins at the door from Patrick and Erik, the owners who live downstairs.

They have a partnership with a nearby hotel for optional continental breakfast, gym access, etc., but this is the kind of property best experienced on its own terms: not as a hotel per se, but for the faux-immersive fantasy of actually living on a lovely street with friendly house cats. Note: Patrick and Erik sent a discount code to price-match as an incentive to book directly, and were available via text throughout our stay. We had the garden suite, lovely, and I’d look forward to booking the canal room (with its little balcony) next time.

Itinerary

After an ill-advised jetlag nap we went straight to 4850, a café-by-day-wine-bar-by-night, for cardamom buns and coffees that made me feel like I’d gone all the way to Amsterdam just to go to La Cabra (complimentary). Crossed the Amstel for Glouglou (on the way, passed a deli called Sjoerds that I hadn’t had on my map and didn’t make it back to, but smelled delicious from the street). Glouglou was a perfect landing pad: we sat outside facing the Christmas-lit corner, watching it densify as the evening darkened, chatting to the owner (as he came around with lap blankets) about his menu’s witty tasting notes and learning he was a writer before opening the bar.

Early dinner at Rijsel: Flemish-French, a buzzy warm white room with a quiet open kitchen, flickering candles, service that offers everything you don’t yet know you need. Champagne as you read the menu, creamy oysters from Normandy, buttery skin-on potatoes and a sharply acidic butterleaf salad with the mains. The room reminded me of St. John, but the warm chocolate sauce poured tableside over vanilla ice cream was like a runnier Keen’s sundae, more elegant but still nostalgic, like the tiny almond paste cookies served with French coffee.

Brief daytime intermission for a cheese-and-onion toastie and pear Magners at De Doelen across from the University. For dinner I’d booked something suited to post-conference brain-drain: cafe remouillage, a tiny operation where chef Jonathan Sparber cooks a menu of whatever small dishes he feels like making night to night. You order either less courses or more (4-6ish with possible add-ons), wine pairings or à la carte, but the sea of open bottles and glassware at the end of the small bar rightly suggests: let us choose for you.

On a dark, quiet street, the room is aglow, convivial—shoutout to our charismatic server, a kind, stylish art history student who said he’d stalk my Letterboxd. This is the kind of place that feels like a gamble because it’s so ostensibly promising but could be shallow and overrated, and it wasn’t. The dishes are technically small but powerfully faithful to their few ingredients (and not small in the ‘we’re getting fries after’ sense). I ate things I’ll actually remember, especially toward the end of our run: a smear of chestnut mousse with cranberry compote, or the added cheese course, a particularly old or rare (who knows at this point) semi-hard Italian cheese doused with brown butter and served with tender slices of pumpkin and an icy, apple-y dessert wine. Plenty of restaurants are likened to the experience of eating in someone’s home, but remouillage actually earns the comparison.

Saturday: a pleasantly briny house martini at upholstered hotel bar Freddy’s, then no-reservations [Bourdain voice] at Chinatown’s New King where my favorite was the crispy salt-and-pepper tofu.

With all of Sunday to ourselves, we went straight to the Rijksmuseum which wasn’t completely tourist-free at 9:00 AM but sparser than when we left. Brunch at nearby Little Collins: Turkish eggs, sweet gingery carrot juice, kind of that bog-standard flat white ambiance but delicious, which is maybe ideal for brunch. Crammed in among the bikes on the free ferry to the Eye Filmmuseum for the Tilda Swinton exhibit, the highlights of which were binder catalogs of her costumes and clothing (complete with flaw reports) and Joanna Hogg’s meticulous, lifesize-dollhouse-style reproduction of Swinton’s childhood flat (complete with UK outlets and a corridor of cracked doors projecting audio to eavesdrop against).

So much vintage around Haarlemmerdijk: Archive 1906, Tutto Bene! (Italian designers), J’adore vintage, which were impressively curated but lacked the aura of Ink Vintage in De Pijp. Skipped Winkel 43 for a seat at the communal table downstairs at the Papeneiland, where the apple tart with cream was hulking and photogenic but studded with raisins (scream). There’s an unavoidable mismatch between the wood-paneled canalside room and the shopping baggers flocking in; more genuinely cozy was Café ‘t Smalle, where I had a Galipette Brut (so good) upstairs overlooking the street before dinner at Char.d, a newer restaurant that grills everything, hence the clumsy punctuation.

This was a European case of us eating too early to get a valid read on the room. Not exactly regrettable—like the Seafood Bar I had lunch in the day before, which looked and ate like a Paris-themed mall restaurant—but not repeatable, and I’d say the same of our nightcap at Bar Mokum, a cocktail bar full of guys who look like they’ve Googled “cocktail bar.”

If these last stops were a relative disappointment, that hardly dampened my enthusiasm for Amsterdam’s kooky beauty and reserve. I loved that you can order fresh ginger tea everywhere, the chill of drinking outside under heat lamps or scratchy wool, the burgeoning Christmas decorations scattering light across the canals, the uncanny silence of a city run by bikes, fried bar snacks and tiled entries and stairs so steep I felt like a garden gnome.

Bookmarked for next time:

Restaurants:
d’Vijff Vlieghen
Esra
Tannay
Paindemie
Cafe Wilhelmina
Proper Indofood
Wijnbar Clos

Bars:
Hiding in Plain Sight
September
Café twee prinsen
Bar Oldenhof

Bakeries and cafés:
Grammes
Louf
Focacceria
Toki
Zero Zero
Patisserie Holtkamp

Credit to Steven for suggesting honeymooning somewhere neither of us had ever been. Pretty simple idea, but I can’t second it enough. There’s something aptly ceremonial about every single subsequent memory being tinted with discovery—the first time we arrived, saw, tasted, etc.—that lent an unexpected sense of white-wedding cosplay to the proceedings. The short list considered Mallorca, Todos Santos, Comporta, even a cozy Edinburgh-Isle of Skye-Cardiff situation, but we landed on Italy, land of a billion honeymoons, though not typically in January and not typically in the north.

Why northern Italy: Don’t Look Now, Summertime, The Comfort of Strangers, the De Sica episodes of Master of None, the Massimo Bottura inaugural episode of Chef’s Table, and (the clincher) a 2023 episode of How Long Gone where Jason Stewart describes spending a chunk of his honeymoon in Modena’s Casa Maria Luigia, the country house hotel Massimo runs with his restaurateur wife, Lara. On the pod, Stewart credited the luxury experience of CML to an elevated all-inclusive principle; where most hotels may offer a few hours of continental breakfast, CML brands itself an indulgent home away from home. Guests are invited to raid not only the complimentary minibar, but a stocked-daily fridge and a richly upholstered “spirit room.” For a vacation planner, testimonials like Jason’s are invaluable insofar as they represent a rare critical angle, the informed tourist: open to indulgence but mindful of value, generally skeptical but not automatically too cool for something popular, not immune to charm and beauty but also not susceptible to performative authenticity.

It wasn’t easy finding reviews of CML from this angle; there’s a handful on the braggy subreddit /FATTravel, but not much meatier than regurgitated ad copy (there’s only so much tagged photos captioned “slow food, fast cars” can convey). For us, five chilly days at Casa Maria Luigia was like an immersive murder mystery with no body. Part White Lotus, part L'Orangerie scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, part fretful Travelman slogan: we’re here, but should we have come? (Yes we should, and you should too.)

Getting there: we flew into Bologna and rented a car, which countless reels had predicted would be nightmarish but was actually...fine. Thanks, Europcar. Helps to be very confident with rotaries, but Kevin got his license in Lawrence, MA. Despite saving for this trip, we kept saying [Kristin Wiig voice] we’re poooor, like whenever we saw our Fiat Panda parked with the Porsches out front. We walked in just behind another couple, so our check-in and tour were an echo of what we’d heard while we were two feet away pretending not to listen. There’s a lot of that “live copy” throughout. The casa is a composite of several buildings with many doors. There’s contemporary art everywhere, but the ceilings are also painted with baroque trompe-l'œil: irreverent, but romantic. We spent a lot of our time on campus bundled up drinking mini splits of Lambrusco outside at a polite distance from the other guests. A thing you will learn at CML is just how socially anxious an adult you really are. Do you require silent pep talks to enter common spaces where other couples (all couples, always couples) are silently reading iPads? Can you relate to the moment in David Foster Wallace’s ethnography of the luxury cruise when he describes requiring “an hour of self-hypnosis and controlled breathing” to leave his cabin?

The other guests are simultaneously eccentric and homogenous. They may not technically be older, but they have that adult aura produced by children (not onsite—CML is 15 and up only) and diverse real estate portfolios. Kevin recognized certain brands of “upscale hoodie.” I overheard one guest say he’d come to write; every day he installed himself at a large round table in the living area, surrounded by handwritten pages he occasionally crumpled up. One morning he held a breakfast attendant hostage tableside, apologizing mid-monologue that he’d had some rum (breakfast ends at 10:30 AM).

Apart from drinking, one of the main things to do—at least in winter, when the not-heated outdoor pool is out of commission—is walk the misty grounds in a loop toward “Massimo’s Playground,” a nearby hangar filled with the chef’s collectibles: art, bikes, and cars, many of which bear ‘do not touch’ placards. This is one version of CML in a nutshell, to be surrounded by exquisite toys you’re compelled to admire but can’t quite play with. In the main building, a cozy record room houses Massimo’s formidable vinyl collection, mostly jazz, alphabetized and available to spin but only by a member of the staff. With the aesthetic of playfulness comes a mood of sobriety, like when my mom used to pinch my arm above the elbow and say we were in a ‘no-touch’ store.

In the evenings, the number of people roaming grows as taxis from Modena or even Bologna drop off that night’s dinner guests. People flock to CML for the Francescana experience: a nine-course curation of greatest hits from the actual Osteria’s (est. 1995) archive of dishes, presented at the same communal tables where the hotel serves breakfast. (Let me quickly say a few things about breakfast: the CML breakfast is famously inspired by Massimo’s vision of Christmas morning. There’s local delicacies and childhood treats, including a featherweight take on Emilian gnocco fritto and a cinnamon roll that nods to head chef Jessica Rosval growing up in Canada. What’s notable is the format: food is displayed between the partially open kitchen and the tables as if a buffet, but the only things you’re welcome to serve yourself are individual yogurts. Everything else is like model food that the staff describes to one or two couples at a time before explaining you can order anything you want, or have a bit of everything brought to you in several courses. There’s tableside additions, like aged balsamic vinegar dribbled over a caramelized onion frittata (very special), and a script that has the pourer echo “this is my favorite part!” from table to table. The first morning, the indulgence of the “king’s breakfast” makes sense, but the longer we stayed, the more we felt an invisible pressure to be selective or moderate; the morning after Francescana, we didn’t make it to breakfast at all.)

We booked the dinner for our third of four nights; the prior two, we drove into Modena, took a picture of our space number in Parcheggio Centrale, walked through foggy streets still twinkling with Christmas lights, and ate as much tortellini as possible. Of this I’d especially recommend:

• Ristretto – Though we were one of two tables (and the other was also American, always humbling) and the decor resembled a surgical suite (overhead lighting a problem everywhere), their chard flan was one of the best things I tasted, and our server brought shots of housemade nocino with the check. Almost every restaurant we tried in Modena did this, but Ristretto was first.

• Bars Slanzi and Cesare – Unpretentious classic cocktails in what felt like Modena’s warm and raucous Cheers. Had to steady my negroni every time two little boys hurtled into our table. Great dog watching indoors and out.

• Emilia Bistro – Had a long, perfect lunch here featuring the second-best bowl of tortellini en brodo of the trip. Our server confided they add a touch of mortadella to the filling. He brought extra bread, explained scarpetta, and said we were a beautiful couple(!), and it was on the buoyancy of that kindness that we floated into a bar crawl, inadvertently crashed the CML staff holiday karaoke party, drunkenly told Massimo how much we loved staying at “his place” and were adopted for the evening by a table of sweet, festive Italian twenty-somethings: the hospitality high point of our entire trip.

  
  

At Francescana, there were two other couples at our table, one from Chicago celebrating their ten-year wedding anniversary and one from Athens celebrating “life!” The Chicago couple are foodies, the husband actually went to CIA but left food for a more stable career. The Greek husband is rich rich. He tells a long, tasteless story about hiding in a restaurant in Naples from some locals who the owner overheard planning to cut off his hand for his Rolex. His wife is a disproportionately fabulous fashion journalist. She and I spot one of the chefs plating an off-menu tagliatelle al ragù, and I still wonder whether we might’ve gotten a lick from the bowl had her husband not asked the sommelier what happened to “that spaghetti.”

Dinner is theatrical but not overly formal, not quite The Menu. For an experience that consists of sitting still in your seat for four hours, there’s a naturally rising boisterousness co-produced by self-conscious energy and successive wine pairings, which multiply the faster you drink/more deftly your glass is refilled. I was prepped to expect a lot of “storytelling” given the significance and history of each dish, but thankfully the service captain gave only three speeches: one for the first three starter dishes, again for entrees, again for desserts. A thing I don’t love about chef’s counters is feeling cowed into reverence by lengthy dish explanations (or worse, dining instructions, though I’ll never forget when an adjoining table at Alinea got served a second helping of shaved Wagyu centerpiece because they’d helped themselves unbidden once it came to room temperature). It’s like a performance in which you’re implicated but have no lines, and I never know when to stop saying thank you.

Francescana does its best to cultivate a warmer, looser atmosphere, one that follows from the playfulness of the dishes themselves. “Riso Camouflage” is a tie-dye of three risottos, the best of which was the tart green apple and chlorophyll. Chef’s Table fans will recognize the elegant “Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano,” which ate like piped parmesan soft serve in a pool of melted parmesan ice cream soup. I wish I could say this was lifted by the parm foam and parm tuile, but at that volume it’s literally too much of a good thing. In taste and concept, “Oops! I Dropped the Lemon Tart” is more successful. Epicurious quotes Bottura, “this dessert pokes fun at our daily striving for perfection and pristine beauty”—in person, we got a more anecdotal account: once upon a time, Bottura’s sous chef Takahiko “Taka” Kondo dropped a lemon tart before service, and Bottura reassured him the mistake was far from fatal, an improvement. The plate’s references range from the reparative art of kintsugi to a panoply of southern Italy’s flavors, the most memorable of which was a single candied caper: a dot that expresses all the surprise and collision (between sweet and savory, classicism and experiment) the entire dish aims to express. As a dessert, “Oops” is delicious. The lemon curd is bright, the shattered crust buttery and delicate. As an ethos, you can’t help sensing something lost in translation—or domesticated?—from inciting accident to studied imperfection. Fitting that the dish is immortalized in the playground in the form of a custom “Oops” Lamborghini Huracán, a signature lemony splodge painted down the hood of a car that’s marketed as “taming” the road.

I can’t remember the jokey provenance of the second course, “If I’m Wrong I’m Right,” only that the tender roasted cod and Thai curry-inspired sauce was my favorite bite of the evening. When we discussed this as a table, the other couples voted the more patently Italian dish higher: “La Parte Croccante della Lasagna,” which layers globs of ragù and béchamel under a homemade tricolor noodle cooked and recooked to emulate the crunchy lid of a pasta bake. Like the spin-painted sous-vide veal—which Massimo himself surfaced to plate, Pollock-style—the lasagna ode was unnervingly rich, and by the time the final dish (“Surprise Surprise”) appeared, I was somehow drunk yet not in the mood for a bowl of saucy tortellini. What would normally be the best possible surprise (expertly made fresh pasta at midnight) was like a final test I struggled to pass.

Was it worth it?

Enthusiastically, yes. I went to Alinea for my 24th birthday (flex) and though the 25-course menu hangs in my kitchen, I don’t remember all that much, aside from the novelty of hoovering edible powders and the creeping anxiety that I didn’t belong there (evidently not a phase). Francescana at CML reminded me more of when Steven and I went to Le Bernadin for his 30th, in that the food was exquisite, and of visiting Berlin’s ernst before it closed, in that the night felt increasingly and agreeably insouciant as shoulders dropped and service slowed. I never thought I’d get up from my seat to have my picture taken with a celebrity chef, until I found myself behind the steel work table stretching both hands out to Massimo Bottura, who beamed as he took them. I felt ill-equipped to express a gratitude I wasn’t expecting to feel. I have to admit that what he, Lara, Chef Rosval, and all the staff at CML recreate every day retains the charge of their original intention, to welcome strangers into a home. It may not have felt like our home—and we may have been put off by the vibes of guests who make themselves more radically comfortable. But it’s a home, insofar as it’s an archive as well as an accommodation, with artifacts of personal taste, palate, memories, vices.

In the process of planning our wedding, I designed our graphics, save-the-dates and invitations, website, cocktail napkins, matchbooks, and fake film posters. I cut a 38-minute reel of favorite movie scenes to project throughout the party. I baked two layered sheet cakes (one ginger, yuzu, and pear, and one flavored with my late dad’s favorite, chocolate and Crème de Menthe buttercream), “Lucy’s Party” and “The Green Mist,” named after tracks from the score to Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I hid conceptual easter eggs on the menus and thrifted milk glass vessels and bud vases for a year. If this relationship had let me feel safe to be completely myself, I wanted this one evening, in every detail, to resemble the private world we’d made, to open a passing door onto that world and invite the ones we love inside.

As “elevated” and streamlined as the experience must inevitably be, there’s still a sense of that same invitation at Casa Maria Luigia. It’s a luxury derived from hospitality, which must be personal—otherwise it’s just manners. In a world of consumption overwhelmingly smoothed by algorithm, it was ultimately, surprisingly, a bit moving to be there.

From Modena we trained to Venice and flew back through Bologna; at the risk of overstaying my recap welcome, here are those bullet points. Only stuff I liked.

Venice

• Stay: Al Ponte Antico – Opulent!!! Another husband-and-wife op with only nine rooms, tucked just off the Rialto bridge with its own dock so you can rock up The Tourist-style. Service is expert to the point of suffocating (meant as complimentary as possible). Everyone will know your name and ask about your plans. Proprietor Matteo dons an apron to cook custom omelets every morning, addressing each guest in their home language like Mrs. Doubtfire meets James Bond. I’m still thinking about Matteo’s wife Barbara’s homemade heart-shaped sugar donuts and how it felt to have a Select spritz brought out to the hotel’s terrace (all to ourselves) the evening we arrived.

• All’Arco – Didn’t get here until our last full day, yes it’s featured in the Tucci show, but theirs really was the best cicchetti we sampled. They lightly toast the crostini for maximum textural contrast, and to support these heroic combinations: lightly ripe sliced persimmon under mortadella under a tiny quenelle of ricotta, poached chard stems and a Manchego wand over prosciutto. Couldn’t stop ordering.

• Osteria Al Squero – Favorite bite here was mascarpone, gorgonzola chunks, and jam. A little secluded with the perfect little stoop; we sat inside but I could imagine fending gulls from my paper plate at the canal’s edge in better weather.

• Irish Bar Venezia – I don’t care how me it is to beeline to an Irish bar in Italy, it was raining and sometimes you just want to hold a pint glass.

• Gelateria Suso – Thought I was going to sample a million gelato flavors but reordered stracciatella + citrus combos everywhere.

• Rosa Salva – Stopped in during a day-long cicchetti crawl for tiny cakes and coffee. “Forest fruits” layer slice and a cream puff (the cream everywhere was so lightly sweetened, addictive).

• Cà D’oro – After Modena, which was like being dropped into a city from space, Venice’s explicit panderings to its tourist economy felt discombobulating—like it’s that much harder to tell what looks good between the Venetian mask keychain kiosks. This was a charming antidote. I’d read about their city-wide famous polpette but didn’t realize this was that until we’d ordered (and I’m still not sure about the fried foods of Venice, something about lagoon scent mingling with oil). Pasta fagioli was unctuous.

• La Zucca – We asked our hotel to help us reserve here and when we arrived, there was a sign on the door: no additional seatings. A good sign and well deserved. Gorgeous vegetable-forward menu, more chic than rustic. Best artichokes of the trip. Surprised by the creamy tagliatelle with gorgonzola, pistachio, and tender pear, which ate rich at first but got more moreish as it went.

• Mercante – Good if you’re spritzed out and craving a craft cocktail.

• Harry’s Bar – When Tucci stops here it’s deserted, but you’ll compete for seating with sentient shopping bags, women who want only the dessert menu, and entire families seemingly celebrating a graduation/christening. It’s definitely humbling sipping a bone-dry 24 euro martini from a shot glass while teenagers scroll their phones.

• Vino Vero – So many places I’d bookmarked in Fondamenta della Misericordia were closed for the winter holiday: Al Timon, Sullaluna, La Sete. Aglow in the fog, Vino Vero was like a canalside mirage. Cool wines, music, vibe. They don’t do spritzes (or “blends” of several different wines, like one woman tried to order while we were there), pretty decent cicchetti as well (we loved the octopus and potato).

• Marco Polo – I started feeling sheepish about never asking our hoteliers for recommendations so we did and they sent us here. The seafood-centic food was good—grilled bay scallops, seafood tonarello, tagliatelle with lobster, and a very light one-bowl-style cream cake studded with fresh raspberries—but (due to location?) the room was solely tourists, making us wonder if they have a deal with nearby hotels.

• Osteria Anice Stellato – I’ll admit we had a big prix-fixe dinner booked for our last night and after three days of eating in Venice, I canceled. What were they going to do with Venetian cuisine that All’Arco wasn’t doing on sliced bread? Booked here instead, which was lovely albeit net rich; best dish was a bottle green paccheri with celeriac, preserved lemon, bottarga, and peanuts, which reminded me of adding chopped fridge nuts to leftovers. We were ordering caffè corretto (shoutout JD for the translation) everywhere, mostly with Sambuca, but here they recommended Varnelli.

Bologna

• NOI – Inside Mercato delle Erbe. The room is giving Eataly but the service was so friendly and food, irreproachable vibe. Could not believe how seasoned and delicious their lard pesto (pesto alla Modenese) with the english muffin-like fried tigelle was. Kevin called theirs the best of the many tagliatelle al ragù he put down.

• Caffè Terzi – We stayed in a lovely, private apartment around the corner and had coffee here every morning. Cappuccino with chocolate shaved over the foam and a small cream-filled croissant to dip. Obsessed with the little takeaway window they use to slide your stay tray out to the patio tables.

• Mò Mortadella Lab and Pizzeria Nettuno – Our first night, we hit a wall and did the (for me) unthinkable and got takeaway food for lunch and dinner. After being around other people so relentlessly it was kind of heaven to eat a whopping sandwich and a (heart-shaped!!) pizza in bed. I would never order pizza for pizza’s sake in the wrong city but the chef/owner is an absolute sweetheart, one pie was not enough.

• Trattoria di Via Serra – Big regional draw with a Bib Gourmand rec, up past the train station. Knew we weren’t going to get booked in here but the owner kindly explained that if we arrived right at opening, they might squeeze us in. We did and they did, though there wasn’t a line, and we ate at a narrow counter facing the front window beside a solo woman in weird but warm silence (no music but the phone’s constant ringing, the owner apologetically explaining they were booked, diners arriving, a kitchen bell). The reviews are right, there’s something extremely specific and special about their take on the dishes listed literally everywhere. Their tortellini’s more delicate, their broth clearer, like an almost spiritually pure celebration of Bolognese cuisine.

• Indegno – After walking the Portico di San Luca, we rewarded with fresh fried Crescentine filled with saucy meatballs (Kevin’s) and prosciutto, stracciatella, fig jam, and crushed hazelnut (mine). The excellence of all this ungreasy fried bread!

• Trattoria da Me – A fancier, more nouveau take on Bolognese cuisine that I think ultimately missed me with its creativity (could not bring myself to order savory ice creams, no matter how distinctive). Nothing wrong here and I get why it’s celebrated, but the food and service felt less personal and memorable than our more casual or traditional meals. Veal agnolotti was photogenic but lacked salt.

• Caffè Rubik – I loved hunkering down outside this little bar, like the hip Bolognese cousin of Amor y Amargo (1.0). Great people watching. One night a group of girl students sat next to us, sent a margarita back for not tasting strong enough, and agreed if the bill came to more than 25 euro they wouldn’t pay. Those girls are crazy, this bar is cool. Drink amari!

Places I’ve eaten my birthday: New York, a lot of New York. Table for six at Crown Shy, table for four at Carbone, mosquito bites through my tights on the back patio at Maison Premiere, midnight cheeseburger at J.G. Melon. Over COVID, fried chicken and frozen piña coladas on a sidewalk in Ithaca. Last fall, a long weekend in Nashville with many highlights: shot and a Coke straight off the plane at Dino’s, cold udon and a green melon float topped with a cherry at Kisser, tender baked apples wrapped in paper-thin streaky ham at Audrey, and an oozy tableside bananas foster at Sperry’s Belle Meade, which instantly made my steakhouse hall of fame (perfect combination of wood paneling, ample parking, 8 oz. martinis).

This year I turned 40. I wanted to celebrate somewhere I’ve never been, kind of a benediction for walking toward the unknown and hopefully finding…charcuterie. So we did a long weekend in Charleston (thank you Breeze Airways) and since nearly every guide I read when I was planning sight unseen is like, spon-con remixing the same five places for a hen do, I wanted to record a template for a downtown Charleston, no-rental-car weekend of eating, drinking, and karaoke.

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Day 1

Did you know you can fly domestically on an expired passport within the year of expiration? One month under the wire, having lost my wallet around 2:00 am in New York, I successfully got on and off my flight and checked into the Emeline, which was good enough to upgrade us to a fifth (highest) floor suite for the occasion. Two TVs! They have a coffee shop and restaurant downstairs which respectively offer $7 cold brew and decent Neapolitan-style pizza. Shoutout to the couple who ordered a “Beetza” but didn’t realize it would have beets on it. Better still, the Emeline has water/coffee/tea/fruit stations per floor so you can get a carafe of icy sparkling water for bedside.

We had a late res at Vern’s in Elliotborough, a residential neighborhood north of downtown. This is a basically perfect restaurant kind of hidden in the dark among houses but bumping at 9:00 pm. That weekend was also the Food & Wine Classic, a phrase I know only from Top Chef, so my eyes bugged when we got sat next to a four-top consisting of Stephanie Izard, Shota Nakajima, Maneet Chauhan, and two guys I didn’t recognize. I was too shy to say hi; if you know how to say hi to “famous” people without ruining their meal, let me know. Halfway through first course, the guys from Animal (RIP) walked in. Chefs, they’re just like us: they took selfies for posterity and flash photos of dessert, the normalcy of which really warmed my heart.

This place reminded me of share-plate places where I ate in London but with bigger portions and really zippy flavors: the charred sourdough with allium butter and dill comes like a damp green pillow, perfect to spread the raw yellowfin on (the calabrian chili here is hot and floral). Also the cucumber with avocado and crispy rice (a bright, wet scavenger hunt?) and a lamb special that Kevin didn’t realize was $85 but ultimately decided was worth it. I had the campanelli with rabbit and black pepper, because I love variations of dirty pasta/rabbit ragu and can’t not order something that features “black pepper” in the description, but this was a little one-note/salty compared to the rest—which isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy, only that it was good but less special.

Day 2

This being my real birthday I took myself to a couple of “treatments,” a blowout (“give me goth Barbie”) from Jesse at Salon Largo and a piercing at Studs. Then we walked to Leon’s, whose wait we waited out at Graft Wine Shop (which only starts serving at noon on weekends, 4:30 pm on weekdays). I’d read about the frozen gin and tonics at Leon’s and they are so, so good. Short, citrusy, addictive. Got a half-dozen oysters, fried chicken dribbled with hot honey, and some of the best (crisp, light) hush puppies I’ve ever had. We should’ve come here two days in a row.

The Peninsula Grill “ultimate” coconut cake™ is a local celebrity. I wanted to get an afternoon slice with an espresso martini fika-style but the Champagne Bar wasn’t yet open, so we ordered one of each from Benne's, the all-day cafe next door. Those slices come pre-sliced directly from the fridge and don’t re-meld once brought to room temp; the whole endeavor felt like Harry Potter world, where there’s like ten different shops (shoppes?) but they all sell the same stuff and it all kind of sucks. I get why people like this cake, especially those who wouldn’t make a tall layer cake from scratch, but you’d be better off tackling Zöe François’s coconut cream cake.

I read many, many Reddit threads on steakhouses-of-Charleston to compare Halls with Oak with newcomer Marbled & Fin. Went classic with Halls with no regrets, except walking to dinner in stilettos over Charleston’s cobblestones and narrow sidewalks. I still have ankle scabs. Everyone praises Halls’s service, which is as you’d expect: professional, personable, but theatrical. This is a place for graduation dinners and anniversaries, though we did see one guy eating alone at a corner table late Saturday night. Intimidatingly large and dry martini. Fried green tomatoes crisp even under a crab salad; I was sad they ran out of the lobster parsnip gnocchi. When I ordered the grass-fed filet au poivre, the server asked if I’d like it pepper crusted as well? Would I. Sides were loaded mash (tasted strongly of sour cream, delicious) and the recommended creamed corn skillet and while we got half orders of each, I feel like we could’ve put down even more. For dessert, the key lime pie came under a duvet of torched meringue and was about three times wider than expected, a wedge you could easily split amongst four.

Of course we wore our celebratory finery to Bangkok Lounge. I like when karaoke bars have you sing on the same footing as the crowd instead of onstage, like you’re giving a toast, but I don’t like when hosts don’t display the overall order and you’ve no idea when you’re up. Also the entrance is partitioned with plastic curtains like an abattoir and a High Noon (not for me) comes to $10.

Day 3

I was dead set on sampling the BBQ—last year the platter at Martin’s was one of the gastronomic peaks of that trip—and because I’m pork > brisket, we walked to Rodney Scott’s, where the vibe was unexpectedly and tragically cursed. I wish I could screenshot the look that passed between us when two trays of gray meat landed on our picnic table; ultimately, the burnt ends were inedibly gelatinous and Kevin resorted to pouring baked beans (best thing on the platter) directly onto the “whole hog” sandwich in a desperate play for seasoning. Not sure if I’ve ever had BBQ this insipid, and we wished like hell we’d stopped walking when we passed Leon’s.

At least twice when I told people we were having dinner at Chez Nous they asked, is that Asian? It’s...not, but neither is it strictly French, except in its conjuration of fantastically cozy ambiance: we sat at the bar facing a wall of wine bottles and felt like we were the only diners in the place. You get a beautifully, illegibly handwritten menu and if you eat with a companion, you’re basically ordering the entire six-dish spread: I had a warmish salad with chewy chorizo and tender shrimp, and fish in vanilla sauce which reminded me of a milk-poached cod I’ve had at the Winding Stair. This was the perfect “Sunday” dinner: less of a scene, patient coursing, simple yet special. Can’t say the same for Dalila's, the spot our server suggested for a nightcap, described as a tiki bar but felt more like a pop-up.

Day 4

This is more than 36 hours, but with an evening flight I wanted to maximize our time: started at Harken Cafe, the second-ever coffee shop I’ve stood in line to enter. We got biscuits—one with seasonal compote (was this apple? pear?) and honey butter, one with pimento cheese and chili—which were pleasant but unwieldy, you can definitely split one. Great coffee. Took a spin through the Gibbes Museum, which Kevin declared to be better than the Met, which I credit to the low tourist density and quick turnaround. For lunch, we put a name in at 167 Raw, a spot that came highly recommended but was hard to crack the code on: the cocktail list was promising but the margarita was mostly ice, and the lobster agnolotti was succulent but a tease at only three purse-like pieces. We started with a half-dozen local, and while Gift Horse has spoiled me on oyster temp and cleanliness, these were pretty good. We just couldn’t figure out how to order enough to feel fed without spending $200. So we made an unplanned pit stop at Bin 152, which was as profound a pleasant surprise as Rodney Scott was a disappointment. Huge wine list and charcuterie selection, the latter of which is arranged like neatly toppled dominos and accompanied by freshly baked bread—not creepy cracker shards, baguette. This felt like a prelude to the kind of aimless eating we’ll be doing in Venice this winter, pointing at stuff through glass and hoping for the best. And I choose to believe it’s the airport black bean burger and not Bin 152’s sizable mound of La Tur that finally gave me the birthday stomachache I deserved.

So: how to eat your birthday. Make the hard-to-get dinner reservations and improvise the rest. Or, commit to walking in at 5:00 or 10:00. Save everything in a Google map so you can see at a glance how far you are from all the things. An espresso martini can be a starter or a closer. Build in time for a siesta before changing into dinner clothes. Keep plenty of water in the hotel room. Bring band-aids. Over-order. You can have two breakfasts if one is pastries. Always try homemade ice cream. Make sure you know where your wallet is at all times.

I studied abroad at Trinity twenty whole years ago, and then I spent the summers of my thirties leading creative writing programs for high school students, mainly in Dublin with a one-time detour to Prague. When I was a student, I literally ran out of pocket money despite getting most of my daily intake from the five-euro slice-and-soda special at the now-defunct Lucky Coady on Dame Street. As a trip leader, I got intimately familiar with big group bookings, allergen menus, pre-ordering bibimbap for thirty (Kimchi Hophouse), sussing the nicest pre-theatre dinners (Mr. Fox) and most secluded private rooms (second floor of The Legal Eagle). I’ve mourned the disappearance or even evolution of places I loved, like the original Fish Shop with two employees and a kicking set menu (the fried plaice!) or more recently Dice Bar and P Mac’s, whose trademark red tapers I’ll miss.

If Cassie Stokes asked me (imagine) about the best restaurant in Dublin, I’d be tempted to call out the peppery ravioli del plin in subterranean Terra Madre, which I learned about from a random blog entry back when blogs could still be found via Google. My first time in, I ate alone alone: no book, no phone. Burrata before the burrata boom, served intact with anchovies on the side. Panna cotta for dessert, but dessert isn’t the point (and more recently they’ve had a jiggly salted caramel budino, way more memorable). The point is the intimacy, the patient pace of service. The server managed to write my entire first name in my coffee foam and didn’t even tease me for ordering cappuccino at 11:00 PM.

Although I don’t lead trips anymore, I still like to feel for a pulse of what’s “new” in Dublin’s food scene, to complement reruns of the greatest hits with experimental trials. This is a city I often hear people disparage, but I think it’s because they did the Guinness Factory and Temple Bar (the bar not the neighborhood) and got deterred by the considerable weekend detritus and umbrella-led group tours. Obviously, I love Dublin—it’s dirty, expensive, often overrun with tourists, commercial, detached from the tropes of “authentic” Irish culture, but it’s better known to me than cities I’ve spent whole adult years in. My great-great-great grandparents on my father’s side were born in the east of Ireland—Fitzpatricks, Keoughs, McKeons—but I don’t think my attachment is about historical longing the way a lot of US-Ireland exchange often is (which isn’t to say I don’t thrill to the occasional customs officer waving me through, welcome home). I think the pull is a specific impression I had as a student, less grounded in a notion of belonging than in feeling blissfully adrift. At nineteen I felt free, an autonomous, anonymous person in the wider world, and that is the texture every return conjures: the fantasy of adulthood as mobility, urbanity, rather than the too-situated monotony of actually being grown.

That it’s easy to miss Dublin’s magic doesn’t detract from its potency once discovered, and there’s always more to try and assess than my calendar/wallet/incipient gout can accommodate. When I gram food and drink, people ask how I decide where to go and how I can eat this much (without gaining weight? Which I do). My to-eat/drink lists, which I keep in a doc versus using an app, are an aggregate of food blogs, food critics, Google reviews, Yelp reviews, usually not Trip Advisor reviews, and unsponsored tagged photos (often the most telling). Clearly the joke that I’ve applied all my academic training toward restaurant research is missing its punchline. My health caveat is that a typical trip sees us walking ~10 miles/day; concerned parties may assume I’m pounding the cobblestones and drinking some modicum of water between rounds, but I intend to drive this thing until the wheels fall off.

Kevin and I actually stopped through Dublin together last November—his first time, just overnight flying home from Berlin, and at that time we did some tried-and-trues: fish and chips and oysters at the Fish Shop counter, Belfast coffees at Bar 1661, and a small veggie full Irish at Lovinspoon before the airport. This time we intentionally prioritized new spots, so here’s that, the most recent 36 hours in Dublin:

We got off the bus around 5:00 PM and checked into the Wren, which has been a godsend: a new hotel that’s central yet quiet, “cozy” (small footprint) yet intelligently designed (high ceilings, smart lighting, separate toilet/shower, huge common spaces). Tried to stop into fancy car park bar Amy Austin for a pre-dinner drink but were told they were entirely booked for dinner—this is early on a Monday evening. I wish hosts were nicer about relaying this information instead of doing cartoonish disbelief that one might want to come in for a drink when the entire place is lined with bar seating. We pivoted to La Cave instead, which is underground right off Grafton and very red inside: dinner with your mistress vibes. You can get a pretty great glass of bubbles in relative peace for 11 euros. The main event was dinner at Kicky’s: I’d been moved by some suave prep videos and recent accolades but harbored suspicions it might be overhyped, and after dining would say it’s more Best Socials than Best Service. The service was net weak: we sat for fifteen minutes before placing a drink order, and their bar (typically the chummiest seat?) is cordoned off with glass à la COVID, so the tender doesn’t serve or interact. Reviewers have balked at their minimum food order policy, which dictates diners order the equivalent of three dishes each, and I get it: you don’t want to order more than you can at least attempt to finish. Did we want to start with a grammably massive wedge of focaccia? No. We had a small portion of the seasonal gnocchi with peas (the first of several memorable pea-pearances this season) and the steak for two with creamy pepper sauce and compulsory sides of salad and spuds. I’m an au poivre freak and wished the sauce was spicier, less salty; the steak was cooked beautifully but the sides weren’t memorable, and the service was so indifferent, we didn’t even order dessert. Or we drank our dessert at Vintage Cocktail Club. I like when bars control their capacity with a doorbell but aren’t actual speakeasies with full-on passwords, and even though the candlelight and flocked wallpaper attracts more noisy Americans every year, the cocktails are so consistently elegant (contra to me explaining what’s in a Manhattan at Peruke & Periwig). Last stop: Caribou in the former P Mac’s space, from the portfolio that includes Bonobo in Stoneybatter. This was bittersweet: the mid-century woods vinyl-listening-bar style is so refined compared to P Mac’s dark snugs, but the vibe felt harmonious with the prior crowd (if a little younger). Service was friendly, cocktails were innovative but not annoying, I don’t drink weird beers but it’s still nice to have a bar with loads of seating at one of the most vibrant corners in city centre. Would return.

In the morning: trekked 40 minutes up to Elliot’s after much hand wringing over which bakery to try. Runners-up: No Messin’ (inside the new Proper Order location) and Russell Street. I associate Phibsborough on the northside with walking students up to Glasnevin; Kevin kept calling it Bushwick. It’s a neighborhood Tony Bourdain would’ve liked. In this case, it was a lot of walk for comparatively little reward: they didn’t have their seasonal choux out, the ham and butter sandwiches were being prepped (looked generous, delicious) but not available until noon, their outdoor seating was full, and I was so overwhelmed by the perverse abundance of the maritozzi I just defaulted to a cardamom knot. What is this, La Cabra? Kevin got the kimchi brioche (under a mountain of grated parm??) and we went across the street to Two Boys Brew for legit coffees but were too shy to eat our bootleg buns inside.

Bit of unsuccessful shopping in the jewelry annex of Powerscourt and unsuccessful makeup shopping at Space NK (went for the Lisa Eldridge stock but they carry very little in this location) before a late lunch at Daruma, a newish izakaya in Temple Bar: charming wooden interior, warm service, creamy wasabi, considerable sake list with clarifying tasting notes. Would definitely return here over Yamamori (mid) and even Ukiyo, which has been in the lunch rotation for years. A steamy little bowl of miso really hits after weeks of (happily) eating chips and mayonnaise out west. If you’re in Temple Bar you may as well stop into Photo Museum Ireland, tucked behind the also wonderful three-screener Irish Film Institute. The contemporary photography museum is free; we caught an exhibit of Japanese photographer Akihiko Okamura, who moved to Ireland in 1969 and photographed the Troubles—they even have his original Nikon on display.

If you’re into ice cream you have to sample Murphy’s. Literally, the staff will approach you in line to offer limitless samples of their Irish-inspired/sourced flavors (whiskey chocolate, brown bread, Dingle sea salt, etc.). I don’t know how they incentivize but Murphy’s has the chillest, nicest staff anywhere. I did a small cone of Dingle gin (boozy and floral as usual) and strawberry, which is only made seasonally a few months of the year but was sadly weak on berry flavor. Maybe too early!

We lucked into the pair of indoor window seats at Loose Canon for a glass of chilled sparkling red and Drury’s best people-watching. This is where you drink really curated wines by the glass then get drunk on the aroma of Irish cheese toasties being pressed behind the counter (the original with spring onion). But the thing about most Cool Dublin Places is there’s only so long I can balance on a backless wooden stool. We had more time to kill and wanted to stop into Fish Shop’s Spanish sister Bar Pez, or Row Wines (which I didn’t realize replaced Coppinger Row, where I had a wonderful dinner bellied up to the bar in 2018) but both were closed until later in the week, so we carried on to Note: austere Scandi interior, chillier service; all cocktails are batched and ungarnished which makes the price feel a bit emperor’s new clothes...but we liked watching women arrive to an evening yoga class at the Kubrickian-looking Space Between studio across the way. Afternoon drinking evolved into pre-dinner drinking: we moved to Portobello to check out the aptly named Sitting Room above Delahunt. It’s easy to imagine a version of the Sitting Room that’s corny and ineffective but I was totally sold on the drinks and the aura, the intricate Victorian plasters and chandeliers, the light through the big bay window onto Camden Street, the Joyce epigraph in the menu. We had an Irish whiskey Manhattan here before trundling next door to Pickle, lauded for exciting and exceedingly flavorful, Irish-inflected North Indian cuisine. Started with a game duo including a venison samosa with fiery raspberry chili chutney, then the requisite butter chicken and a pork chop, but the star was the 36-hour dal bukhara: black lentils “with buttered mint” that would’ve satisfied on its own with a tandoori bread basket (we ordered two with only a side portion of the dal, and wished we’d gotten all garlics instead of the medley). So rich, savory, totally greater than the sum of its ingredients. Some food is thrilling because of its provenance or rarity, but this dish lets you taste technique inseparable from time itself. I cannot wait to eat this again.

A parting glass at Bar 1661, which even between menus offers the smartest drinks in the city. The complimentary welcome punch in a votive holder-sized glass is a sweet touch; I love seeing parties light up as they hit the tables. The people next to us asked for gin and tonic but you’d be remiss not to get something with poitín—at least one round. The great thing about a 4:45 PM flight is knowing you have ample time for breakfast in the morning. We headed to Fumbally Cafe in the Liberties, which had an incredible buzz on for earlyish on a Wednesday morning. Photos of this hybrid café-restaurant-grocery don’t do the space justice: soaring ceilings and crooked paintings were a salve for the studied cool you see everywhere. Shiny focaccia slices on display, a plump sugared donut with blueberry pastry cream that I regret not sampling, all manner of Irish produce and specialty goods—blackcurrant jam, powdered kombu, a small bookcase of artisanal hot sauces. We sat in and I had the housemade ricotta on sourdough with minty peas plus an oil-fried egg (lacy edges) and fermented hot sauce on the side: divine. The peas were grassy and firm, the ricotta cool and velvety. Kevin had borlotti beans on toast in a caramelized onion and tomato sauce, also moreish. I didn’t get that blueberry donut because I was saving myself for one final sweet at The Morning bakery, and while it wasn’t last summer’s blackberry choux, the glazed peach donut was beautiful. The Morning does the softest, freshest donuts I’ve had anywhere but Greenpoint’s Peter Pan—you can be truly FULL and still put one down, and I would have done, had my donut reverie not been unceremoniously terminated by a pigeon shit to the head (a palpable hit). I did my best to rinse my bangs with hand soap, mourned the theft of my appetite, and ate a full bag of cheese and onion Taytos in the airport.

Other places I dig and didn’t visit this time: Bastible, Bread 41, Brother Hubbard, 147 Deli, Etto, Govinda’s, Grano, Grogan’s, Monty’s, L. Mulligan Grocer, The Ramen Bar, Shouk, The Winding Stair.

Other places that’ll have to wait for the next time: A Fianco, Allta, Assassination Custard, Forest Avenue, El Grito, Library Street, Mae, Nomo Ramen, Scéal Bakery.

Until next.

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