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Issue 10 | FALL 2025

EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK

I will speak only for myself, because I know about the crushes and attractions many people have to famous fancy restaurants and their tasting menus and Michelin stars. I have worked in restaurants for most of my life; I have heard innumerable accounts of the winning of hard-fought reservations and over-the-top dining experiences. Though I know also that many will agree with me: the holes in the wall are the places more likely to send chills down our spines, a wave of sublimity through our consciousness, as we wonder about our mildly odd and unique present circumstances.

– Matt Straus –

Issue 10 | Excerpts

A SECOND CHANCE AT LUTÈCE

I watched a sommelier decant a bottle of red wine with an old, worn label, and saw magnificent plates presented at the next table. I noticed an older man with a much younger woman seated discreetly in the corner. The floor captain never smiled but never looked irritated, whispering orders to the servers, the weight of the dining room on his shoulders. Chef Soltner’s wife Simone greeted diners in the front foyer and led them to their tables, always keeping a watchful eye on the entire room. Looking back, I wish I had been able to speak with her, a woman with years of experience working in elite restaurants, which was such a rarity then.

- Emily Luchetti -

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MONTRÉAL POSTCARD: PAIN AU CHOCOLAT

On our last morning, we decided to climb Mount Royal, a feat neither new to us nor one that ever grew old. We stopped to collect fresh pain au chocolat and shots of espresso, tucking the pastries into our backpack. I sought slowness as we climbed—feeling as if my grieving mind was playing tricks on me, never quite sure whether the butterfly flitting around was a message from the departed or just a well-timed breeze pushing it into my path.

- Sarah Duignan -

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THE FARMERS MARKET IN CHANIA

I muscled through the crowds of dark puffer-jackets congregating around mounds of potatoes and oranges. So far, so mundane. I was not looking for mundane. I was scanning the stalls for rare jewels, like a magpie, when a curious, gnarly looking vegetable caught my eye. It looked like a dissected turnip: cored and twisted, with a prickly top it could only have developed in response to this torture.

- Alexia Haywood -

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WALKING IN HARLESDEN

I’ll next stop a few doors down, but in the short intervening seconds, I pass a fried chicken shop, small bones scattered around the doorway like a graveyard, young boys laughing, their fingers touching momentarily in the box of chips they share. I listen as I pass, thinking of the significance of the chicken shop and the love inherent in the high artificial light and garish leather booths; the opportunity for conversation that may not exist outside of the intimacy of a shared meal, and an establishment that serves indiscriminately and imposes no expectations on its customers. From the corner of my eye, I watch as the man behind the counter tosses some wings into a bag and works the till, his comrade frying a fresh batch behind him.

- Violet Smart -

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AN INTERVIEW WITH RUTH REICHL, PART I

“Every farmers market I know pretty much dictates that you have to be the person who grew it in order to be at that market. When you go to farmers markets in Paris, you’re not buying food from the farmers. You look, and some of the food has come from Morocco, and some if it comes from Spain, and I think our farmers markets are better than the ones in Europe.”

- with Matt Straus -

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CULINARY PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO

Our nightly dinners, when they finally made it to the table, were their own affair. What my little studio apartment lacks in atmosphere, I attempted to make up for by lighting taper candles in jewel-toned glass candle holders, and with dishware made by artist friends. In the summer, when the ivy had crept and bloomed fully over the dining room window that looked out onto the courtyard below, the last light of the day would make the room glow green. Paired with the candlelight, and a broadcast of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2, or—on one especially memorable evening–Ravel’s Bolero, crackling from the radio in the background, the dining room would take on a Fitzgeraldian character.

- Bianca Bova -

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EATING IN ST.-LEO

The first Harvey’s opened in Toronto in 1959, the same year my great-grandparents came to Canada with their three children, including my Nonna Lucia. By the time the Harvey’s franchise moved into Quebec, it was 1964 and my great-grandparents were growing their own business in Montreal. Their butcher shop, Boucherie Mario Maciocia, was established around 1961 on Bélair Street. By 1964, they had moved to their new location on Jean-Talon, a busy artery that cuts through Saint-Leonard, and continues both east and west across the city. They lived in the apartment upstairs.

- Cassandra Marsillo -

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FORAGING IN PHILADELPHIA

I’m outside a city hospital in the twilight gloaming, where Danny Childs has me collecting fallen trifoliate oranges, their powdery skins emitting a cloying scent and a dark wax. A family on their evening stroll asks me what I’m doing. Soon, their children are gathering golden orbs, slowly staining their sleeves. A couple stops to tell me there are two more trees near the train station. Gathering the oranges is a fall tradition, they say. The fruit scents their home.

- Kristina Linnea Garcia -

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TBLISI POSTCARD: GEORGIA ON MY MIND

I’d taught myself to read curly Georgian script the summer before by looking at food packaging, and trying to figure out what was inside. The smaller markets had unpredictable supplies. Some were stocked with Russian pantry staples, like pickled beets and dried dill, and standard condiments like mustard and mayonnaise. A selection of ready-to-eat Georgian foods were available as well, like the nigvziani badrijani (eggplant rolls stuffed with walnut paste), of which I was especially fond. Most stores also carried comically large jugs of beer, purchased and hauled out on the shoulders of tobacco-scented men at all hours of the day. Neither drinking to excess nor eating too much suffer any shame in Georgia.

- Emily Wiggins -

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THE CITY THAT EATS FROM A BASKET

Susy ties the basket of steaming-hot tacos to the back of her bicycle with rope. She hangs two large tupperware jars, one filled with salsa verde and the other with encurtidos (pickled cucumbers, red onions, pineapples and habaneros), from each handlebar. Finally, she tugs the rope taut and gently rocks the bicycle from side to side as a spill test before pushing off, joining the traffic on Tlalpan behind a ratchety diesel microbus that spews dense plumes of smoke into the cool morning air. Susy holds her breath and counts to ten before opening her mouth again.

- Shyal Bhandari -

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