Stained glass dome of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chambers, Capitol Building
Harrisburg is still one of the major railroad transportation hubs of the Northeast connecting to the west and the south. Old steel mill buildings and warehouses have been repurposed for new specialized industries and institutes of higher education.
Lark Quartet, Harrisburg
Read more about Harrisburg’s new mayor – not a cookie cutter politician!
roast duck at Carley’s glazed with a not overly sweet orange plum sauce and topping wilted spinach and goat cheese infused polenta.
Farmers who created Pennsylvania’s moniker the “American breadbasket” in the late 18th century built Harrisburg.
Buddha Buddha’s cucumber martini
Young professionals flooding center city Harrisburg, PA, have a penchant for gathering with friends – that’s fueling a revitalization of hospitality businesses. Read the rest of the article at…
Theodora Tziamali & Chef George Katseas partners: Katogi Cafe
“We’re romantic,” says Chef George Katseas and that’s evident by both the decor and the manner in which George and partner Theodora Tziamali treat their customers like family.
Elia
“I want to marry the modern with tradition,” says Harris Boukas the young owner of Elia.
Nightlife on the Greek Island of Ios can certainly become lively during the summer season, but dining in the following seven tavernas and cafes put a smile on my face. Read more at…
Windmills tell stories of the drive for labor saving devices even in the pre-industrial age.
Harnessing the near steady breeze of both coast and hills was a technological breakthrough akin to present day electric wind generators.
Building a windmill was no easy task.
Windmill on the island of Alonissos
Mr. Ionnis Trinas has constructed what very well may be the first fully functioning windmill in the Greek islands for over a century. Read the rest at…
Mrs. Annezio Bouritis and her son Mixαlis Famelitis. Annezio Bakery
Mrs. Annezio Bouritis and her son Mixαlis Famelitis operate the traditional Annezio Bakery located in the port town of Merichas. Set in a typical white washed stone building with a view overlooking the harbor, the cars of customers are usually double parked on the narrow street.
cheese tarts
Greeks positively revel in sharing their food, especially with visitors. Mrs. Bouritis and Mixalis were equally enthusiastic to share recipes for cheese tarts and pastel. Read more at…
In the Tudor kitchen at Hampton Court Palace, London, UK
Robert Fitch answered my question, “porridge was the staff of life” for the common person until the 18th century. No wonder working the palace was a coveted job – even for a spit turner.
The Hampton Court Palace kitchen cooked two meals for approximately 600 people daily consuming in one 16th century year 1,240 oxen, 8,200 sheep, 2,330 deer, 760 calves, 1,870 pigs and 53 wild boar.
A pudding steaming in the hearth at the Thomas Massey House (c.1696) Broomall, PA
Puddings were a major component of the English and American table during these centuries and often served as the foundation of a one dish meal in this age of cooking on an open wood fired hearth.
Clarissa Dillon, one of the foremost authorities on 16th-18th century English and colonial American cooking, tackles the often confusing interpretations of our shared culinary past.
Dr. Clarissa Dillon
I believe both Fergus and Clarissa would agree that a 17th/18th century middle class diet was healthy only if the diner was physically very active, but it’s tasty. London’s Chef Fergus Henderson and Philadelphia’s Dr. Clarissa Dillon have never met yet share a no-nonsense and unsentimental approach towards the diet of their 17th and 18th century Anglo ancestors.
Marrow bones at St. John Bar & Restaurant, London, UK
When St. John Bar & Restaurant at 26 St. John Street, London, was a smokehouse in the 18th century, located a couple blocks from the centuries old Smithfield Market, Hampton Court Palace had a chocolate kitchen catering exclusively to the large royal household.
Sitting at a beach side café in Possidi on the Halkidiki peninsula of Kassandra, this North American was struck by an unfamiliar scene. People were reading.
Fingers of land jutting into the Aegean, Kassandra, Sithonia and sacred Athos have, like all of Macedonia, been at the center of turbulent times since the 4th century B.C.E. In the 21st century the only turbulence seemed to be the long lines of cars every summer weekend that bring holiday seekers from Thessaloniki and Eastern Europe.
water sports in Sithonia
Family owned since it opened in 1989, the rooms surround an opulent pool that is the focal point of the Flegra Palace Hotel including the Soleil Bar with its dramatic glass floor jutting over the water.
Fortunately mere mortals can dine at Ambrosia, the open-air dining room at the Flegra Palace Hotel in the Halkidiki seaside resort town of Pefkohori, Greece.
At a recent press lunch for journalists of the International Food, Wine & Travel Writers Association and New Jersey Press Association, Yang Chao Lu, owner of 88 Palace, presented a veritable banquet of dim sum dishes over several hours.
Gail Gerson-Whitte & 88 Palace manager Shi Fan Lu
But 88 Palace is more than a restaurant. It’s a microcosm of any Chinatown street, fun to explore and taste. Read more at…
Sitting stadium style looking out an entire glass walled side and half the ceiling of the specially outfitted bus, The Ride talks, in a deep resonating voice, not just to its customers but to people on the street as well.
The Ride, Chrysler Building ornament
The Ride deftly weaves Manhattan to give the audience a sense of the city’s energy and comedy. Read more at…
Mike’s Deli, David Grecodried tomatoes at Arthur Avenue Market
“I’m the mozzarella man,” says David Greco, and there’s a cigar man, cannoli women, a microbrewer and six other purveyors at the venerable Arthur Avenue Market in the Bronx.
Mario’s owner chef Joseph Migliuccis
New York still has neighborhoods such as Belmont in the Bronx and streets like Arthur Avenue that are pockets of an almost forgotten urban reality. Read more at…
Most state capitals were chosen for political reasons, frequently condemning them to regions of inconsequential and dubious economic value other than politics.
The candy bra at The Chocolate Bar, 805 W. Bannock, Boise, ID
But in Boise, Idaho, an entrepreneurial spirit is resulting in unique pockets of cultural activity.
The 25-mile Greenbelt along the Boise River in the Idaho capital is a haven for recreation, sustainable river ecology and a pollution free bike and pedestrian path connecting downtown with Boise State University as well as numerous hotels and cafes. This video highlights a spillway popular with surfers and kayakers. Video credit: Marc d’Entremont (travel with pen and palate)
“In Greece, food is an excuse to meet friends,” says Nikita Patiniotis
Taverna To Kati Allo, Athens
With half the national population, Athens is Greek cuisine in microcosm. Nikita weaves his Athens market tour through the narrow streets of Monastiraki to taste Greece, and during several hours Context Travel’s Beyond Feta Athens food tour introduces travelers to many future new friends.
We’ll wander through bustling Athinas Street into the vast Varvakios Agora and understand why Greece is still the ancient center of the culinary world. Context Travel’s Beyond Feta walking tour illuminates a civilization. Come walk with me.
The pleasant evening temperature, the lack of car horns and loud music coupled with the sounds of conversation and relaxed dining, Greek national pastimes, create a culture in contrast to the 21st century’s frenetic pace.
Grilled Sea Bream, To Kati Allo, Athens
This is not tradition triumphing over the modern era; it is the modern era.
More than one spoonful of this sweet at a time would most likely make your teeth ache. But if the quality of the spoon sweet was deemed worthy, the bride could take a deep sigh of relief.
Athens will introduce the visitor to a life that’s beyond the microwave and the modern world’s overly scheduled itinerary. If you give in to the experience, you just may change your own way of life.
Ruins of the ancient Roman Agora looking out onto markets in modern Athens
The 1910 Dentzel/Looff carouselDentzel/Looff carousel’s Wurlitzer organ
My wife and I were elated when we spied the Carousel Arcade on the Seaside Heights, New Jersey, boardwalk this past Monday, 9 September 2013. Having ridden and admired its magnificent century old Dentzel/Looff hand carved carousel with its powerful Wurlitzer organ, we were unsure it survived Superstorm Sandy. Fortunately it had, and although the arcade was closed on this post-Labor Day Monday, we peered through the window and wished we had come down earlier in the summer.
The Dentzell/Looff carousel Seaside Heights, NJ, as seen 3 days before the September 12, 2013 fire.Repairs being made to Seaside Heights boardwalk on September 9, 2013
We were pleased the boardwalk, one of only a few remaining early 20th century examples of pre-digital mass entertainment, was being restored. Many small cottages that once were the summer homes to working and middle class families – along what have increasingly become beach communities for the wealthy – had not survived. Yet repair and restoration efforts were ongoing and there was hope that the character of this town, made infamous by MTV’s Jersey Shore, would survive both Snookie and Sandy.
1910 Dentzel-Looff carousel, Seaside Heights, NJ
Tragically, a mere three days later on Thursday, we listened in horror to the reports as most of the historic boardwalk went up in flames. The loss to the community is devastating. Yet miraculously the carousel with its intricately hand carved and decorated animals and the Wurlitzer player organ survived! The fire was suppressed just yards from its pavilion.
Lower Manhattan as seen from Governors Island, NY
Ironically, we had just spent the previous day at the Fete Paradiso on New York’s Governors Island. On a pleasant sunny day in this military base turned park in the middle of New York harbor, we marveled along with hundreds of children, and other adults behaving like children, over more than a dozen restored late 19th and early 20th century French carnival rides and games. These treasures are part of the personal collection of Frenchmen Francis Staub and Regis Masclet, and the installation on Governors Island is their first venture to make a traveling living museum of what entertainment used to be.
Flying swings, early 20th century, at Fete Peradiso
The Vélocipèdes is the centerpiece of the collection. One of only two remaining, this 19th-century French carousel ran on pedal power. It was created in Paris to encourage the use of bicycles as a cleaner mode of personal urban transportation than horses. Although it’s pedal power that starts the carousel, they drive a motor invented by Nikola Tesla that adds surprising speed to the ride. The other Velocipedes is in a Paris museum and was featured in Woody Allen’s film Midnight in Paris.
Singer at Fete Paradiso
Other features include flying swings, a children’s carousel, a mechanical ball toss game of life-size caricatures of celebrities such as Charlie Chaplin and Josephine Baker and a magnificent mechanical pipe organ. Fete Paradiso recreates the feel of a summer carnival with entertainers from fire-eaters and sword swallowers to musicians crooning French love songs and an outdoor café created by New York’s bistro Le Gamin. For an afternoon the Fete Paradiso reminded me that people will restore and revel in a past that can still become the future.
Poke at Hilton Hawaiian Village opening reception. Poke is raw marinated fish with herbs.
pool at The Modern hotel Waikiki dessert reception
Pool at The Modern Hotel, Waikiki, next door to the Hilton. The Modern sponsored a dessert reception.
Maui Surfing goat cheese & Ho Farm Tomato Quiche at breakfast at the Moana Surfrider hotel (oldest in Waikiki)
Celebrating its 112 year of operation, the historic Moana Surfrider hotel sponsored a breakfast including Maui Surfing goat cheese & Ho Farm Tomato Quiche.
fine art at the Honolulu Museum of Art and
Fine art at the Honolulu Museum of Art with imaginative groupings and vibrant wall colors
mahi-mahi udon salad at lunch at the Honolulu Museum of Art Cafe
Equally fine at the Honolulu Museum of Art was the menu at the cafe. Pictured above is the mahi-mahi udon salad
pool with view of Diamond Head at Shangri La the Islamic art filled home of the late Doris Duke
Pool with view of Diamond Head at Shangri La the Islamic art filled home of the late Doris Duke
Hula and music from ancient to new social media sensation
IFWTWA president & 4th generation Hawaiian born Michelle Winner
IFWTWA president & 4th generation Hawaiian born Michelle Winner
weekly Friday evening fireworks at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Waikiki
Weekly Friday evening fireworks at the Hilton Hawaiian Village, Waikiki
IFWTWA 2013 Conference, Honolulu, HI – Sunday education sessions
IFWTWA 2013 Conference, Honolulu, HI – Sunday education sessions:
Clockwise: IFWTWA Board member and book publisher, Sherrie Wilkolaski and IFWTWA president Michelle Winner, Grame Kemlo, president IFWTWA Australasia, Native Hawaiian Hospitality Association respresentatives, Loni Rich, president Visitor Aloha Society, Manly Kanoa, Hawaiian cultural trainer, Kim Chapman (left) Alabama’s Orange Beach/Gulf Shores CVB and Jo Duncan (right) Benders Walker Group PR both associate members IFWTWA, Joe Recca, Hawaiian cultural trainer.
poke on edible spoon, Duke’s Waikiki, Honolulu
Poke on edible spoon, Duke’s Waikiki, Honolulu
Dinner at the Canoe Club Waikiki
Dinner at the Canoe Club Waikiki was sponsored by Shay Smith, (bottom center) CEO of the family owned Ocean Vodka, Maui. Robert Larsen of Sonoma County, CA, Rodney Strong Vineyards provided the wines.
Taro chips
Taro has been life sustaining since the beginning of Hawaiian time.
The Pacific coast at Punalu’u, Oahu, Hi, A Kamehameha Schools land asset.
The Pacific coast at Punalu’u, Oahu, Hi, a Kamehameha Schools land asset.
Lush green grass, the deep blue of the ocean, dry rock wall fences and plump black cattle are as much a part of Hawaiian tradition as spear fishing and canoe racing.
Nearing the Hilo Farmers Market, the scents and sights are a kaleidoscope of sensations. Food stalls, produce vendors, flower sellers, clothing, crafts, jewelry and a even a seamstress radiate out onto the surrounding sidewalks.
Travel with Pen and Palate 
You must be logged in to post a comment.