Umami Mart

Last month Johnny and I went on our honeymoon. We pride ourselves on being non-traditionalists, so we avoided taking the trip for a while. And once everything was planned, we didn’t like to call it our “honeymoon.” But it was our first major international vacation since we went to Vietnam in 2013, so it was […]

By Marta Bernal Valencia Last month, my English friend Elaine and I agreed to meet in Tarifa, a small town in Cadiz, Spain. It’s the southernmost point of continental Europe, very famous for its amazing beaches. If you are keen on wind and kitesurfing, this is your place! We drove from one beach to another, […]

By Marta Bernal Valencia After weeks of cold and rainy weather in Madrid, I headed to Huelva (in southwestern Spain) to meet up with my friend Lucía from London. We were both starving for some good weather and Andalusian food. We stayed in Ayamonte, a charming, small village in the edge of the Portugal border, […]

Tourists and tapas. Two things in this world which I am not a big fan of. Why then, would I go to Mallorca? The infamous Spanish tourist trap of an island, overrun by chubby European expats from the 1960’s and forward. Cardboard hotels, hoards of purple-haired 65 years old suburban working class wives smoking in […]

Barcelona was interesting. The Gaudi architecture was totally worthwhile, and we walked around everywhere. La Boqueria smelled like ham, and was a complete tourist trap. Saffron at the market was uber-pricey. Although I would have loved to get a leg of Jamon iberico, those were not cheap either (I bought a 100 gram pack at […]

Remember how I found the unopened package of jamon iberico on Friday in my parent’s fridge from 2007??? Well, the Akabori’s have no shame whatsoever, and we ate it tonight for dinner. All of it. And it was fucking glorious. This was Jamon Iberico de Bellota, which is the highest grade of jamon available because […]

On Friday we went to see El Bulli‘s one and only Ferran Adria, in conversation with Harold McGee (author of On Food and Cooking) and Atlantic Monthly food editor C0rby Kummer. It was an animated, fruitful discussion, giving the audience a taste of Adria’s brilliance. Adria spoke completely off-the-cuff, in random bits and pieces, with […]

Okay, it’s our last night here in Barcelona, and while we’ve had some great personal advice from Kayo and some old friends who have spent some time here, I must admit that much of my research on where to eat has taken the form of Googling Chowhound. It took about a half a day spent […]

Marta and I were lesbian lovers in a former life. We were probably the secret mistresses of Constantine during the glory years of Roma (he summoned for us from over the state line!), and hooked up after we had enough of him (we outed him. SCANDAL!). In this life, however, we have been downgraded to […]

On my way back to NY, I had a stop over in Madrid for a few hours. Marta and Jose whisked me from the airport to take me to a dream lunch of my favorite Madrileño dish- Bocadillo de Calamares. Basically, a sandwich filled with fried calamari. GENIUS!!! It truly is a priceless invention- nothing […]