Mexico: Corn Fungus and Cutting-Edge Design as Far as the Eye Can See

Chiles en nogada and mole poblano in Puebla
By Mollie Chen
By marvelous coincidence, the special Latino America-themed September issue of Gourmet arrived on my desk just hours before I was scheduled to fly to Mexico City. The charred tamales piled on a cheery azure plate seemed to promise four days of lively mariachi music and rustic and authentic food. I sped through the magazine on the plane, salivating over Robb Walsh's story of lesser known taco truck cities and flagging Junot Diaz's article about Dominican food in uptown Manhattan. By the time we touched down, I was primed for Mexican food and I wanted it right away, preferably prepared in front of me and subsequently gobbled while standing up.

In reality, my first Mexican meal was a packet of Primera Plus galletas (delightfully buttery, with a subtle sabor de naranja) on the bus. When we arrived in San Miguel de Allende three hours later, where we had come to attend the birthday party of an old family friend, my parents and I were grumpy with hunger and poised to attack the next unsuspecting tortilla maker. But because we were in San Miguel, which is charming and beautiful but dominated by expats, we met our friends in the lovely courtyard of the restaurant Bacco. In a setting reminiscent of a more modest Italian villa, we ate pizzas and drank copious amounts of red wine. For dessert: chocolate cake. I went to bed dreaming of poblano chiles.

Local Intelligence: Robertson Boulevard, Los Angeles

Jean Therapy: Paige Premium Denim is just
one of the celebrity haunts on Robertson
Boulevard in Los Angeles.

By Nandita Khanna

When I'm traveling it's not the guidebooks that I turn to, or even the area magazines (but I do buy them)-- it's the locals. Who knows where to eat, sleep, and hang out better than those who call the city home? Earlier this spring I headed to Los Angeles on assignment for the magazine's 20th anniversary issue. While I'd like to think I know the city well--I grew up there-- much like New York, things change in the blink of an eye. And while I insist that In and Out Burger is still the best place in town to grab a bite, I invited these three trend-setting women below--all of whom have taken up post on perpetually packed Robertson Boulevard--to share their favorite secrets and tips in the City of Angels.

From Runway to Room Key

Short Story: A sketch from Tadashi Shoji's outfits for the Ivy Hotel.

By Nandita Khanna

From the look of things, stylish hotel-goers aren't the only ones upping the ante these days with their ultraluxe Goyard luggage and effortless separates from YSL's new 24 Hour collection. Crimes of fashion are no longer de rigueur in the hotel industry as fashion designers like Michael Kors, Tadashi Shoji, and Jenni Kayne are reworking runway pieces and applying a pragmatic, day-to-day aesthetic to hotel uniforms. Black and white frilly maid uniforms? Let the underage collegiate set have 'em. In their place come jersey, wool, and lace fabics cut in modern, tailored styles--that are both surprisingly chic and, well frankly, long overdue.

When Only a $19 Cocktail Will Do

By Mollie Chen

Earlier this week I handed over four monstrously large checks - funds begged, borrowed, and parent-gifted - to secure my new apartment. Seeing that much cash flow out of my veins was disconcerting, to say the least. So what is one to do to console themselves in their newly bankrupt state? Pretend to be rich and fabulous, obviously.

Wednesday night, I tagged along with my roommate Allidah - the only person I know who can make 1950s school marm duds look chic - to the opening of the Whitney's "Summer of Love" exhibit. Allidah, who is equal parts domestic goddess, Southern loyalist, and art expert, works in the Whitney's Education department. We navigated the crowds of pewter-haired donors, glittering society madams, and consciously rumpled hipster/artists/groupies to get a glimpse of psychedelic album covers, Richard Avedon photographs, and Janis Joplin's wildly painted Porsche. After awhile the combination of multiple light shows and the flashing of diamonds and scarlet soles was enough to leave us dizzy and, frankly, in need of a cocktail. Thankfully, the Whitney is right by that bastion of Old New York - Bemelmans Bar, in the Carlyle Hotel. After the relentless hipness of the opening, it was refreshing to step into the cozy, dimly lit cavern.

Other people's good ideas

Like most people with no business sense, the Materialist has always thought she'd make a swell entrepreneur. And why not? She, too, has lolled in bed late on a Monday morning, watching the minutes tick by and dreaming of a more fabulous life. She, too, in a more youthful and exuberant life, semi-successfully sold Girl Scout cookies to her racist neighbors. She, too, has what she considers a side vocation in what might generously be called get-rich-quick schemes (though "grifting" is probably really the more accurate term).

Retreat in Buenos Aires

Costa Petit in Buenos Aires

One of the best things about travel is finding something you didn't expect, whether it's a church or a store or a park or a tiny alleyway or, in this case, a hotel (hey, this is the Materialist, not the Spiritualist, after all).

The Materialist is well aware that the above is hardly a revelation, but for some reason, it's easy to forget--it must be, or every surprise wouldn't awake a sense of such giddiness, such simple happiness, in its discoverer.

Over the course of her trips, the Materialist has been lucky enough to stay at a number of places she'd be too cheap to stay at otherwise, wholly because of the largesse of her colleague, Lisa Gill, who oversees the magazine's annual Hot List. The Hot List, which appears in the May issue, is a long, never-ending, and apparently hellish project that requires Lisa (or LG Electronics, as the Materialist calls her, in recognition of her Korean heritage) to dispatch some 25 stringers to, this year, several hundred hotels, resorts, B&Bs, and inns in 67 countries. That list is winnowed down once, then again, until what remains is a selection of the best hotels in every price bracket that have opened in this year. Because, as the Materialist has stated before, CNT doesn't accept any discounts or freebies--including media rates--it means that every single hotel that's checked out is paid for, in full, by the magazine. The Materialist doesn't know how much LG Electronic's budget is per year for Hot List, and nor is she quite brave enough to find out--the Materialist has a weak heart and is afraid of passing out in LG Electronics' office.

White Magic

Impressario Alan Faena surveys his domain
Photo:  Lisa Limer/Conde Nast Traveler

"So, tomorrow is your meeting with Alan Faena," said Astrid over dinner. "11 a.m. sharp. Meet me in front of the hotel and I'll take you over to the offices."

"Is there anything I should know?" asked the Materialist.

"Well," said Astrid, sounding doubtful. "You should try to appear...chic." The Materialist was wearing a black taffeta A-line skirt she'd gotten on sale at Banana Republic and a T-shirt whose neckhole she'd customized in an attempt to look louche and devil-may-care but which, when lifted from the context of her private fantasies, instead looked like what it was--an $18 American Apparel men's shirt that a sartorially presumptuous editor had taken to with a pair of scissors stolen from the supply closet at work.

In which the Materialist nearly has a nervous breakdown (Buenos Aires, part 1)

Photo: The Cocker

No matter how well and how far in advance the Materialist plans, something always seems to go wrong before she leaves on a trip. Sometimes it's something banal--a flutter of panic at work over a lost file that results in an "urgent" phone call, inevitably minutes before the Materialist goes to meet the car for the airport--but sometimes it's dramatic and queeny, with lots of weeping and emotional breakdowns (not the Materialist's, of course).

The Materialist's dozens of loyal readers may notice that she has a tendency towards rigidity. This is not true of the Materialist's friends, most of whom are big messes, given to tears and tantrums and, on the opposite end of the spectrum, exuberant generosity and exhibits of affectionate excess. Naturally, the Materialist, who is a rather dull and stolid sort, enjoys and even envies the exploits of her unstable and extravagant friends, and being the regal and infuriatingly calm voice on the other end of the wire.

The Escape Artist

Well, keeds, the Materialist is off again, this time to Buenos Aires.

A few of the Materialist's readers have somehow gotten the notion that the Materialist's life is "fun," that it involves frequent trips abroad, and that this blog is little more than a bragging rights platform.

This could not be further from the truth! The Materialist is here to say that the (admittedly wonderful) trips of the past three months have been little more than fluke and circumstance, and to assure everyone that 80 to 90 percent of her year is spent bitter and Manhattan-bound, only dreaming of more fabulous places and people.

Comfort level

Hyatt Regency Kyoto
Photo: Hyatt Corporation

Why, the Materialist has often wondered, are there no good Western-style hotels in Kyoto? Certainly one could argue it's because there don't need to be: Kyoto is, after all, known for its ryokan, traditional Japanese inns that promise (and deliver) a fantasy of Japan, where everything, from etiquette to meals, follows a code written many years ago and perfected over generations.

But what if all that etiquette is making you a little squirrelly? What if, after a long day of pilgrimage, walking from beautifully maintained  (and this being Japan, they inevitably are) ji (shrine) to ji, you want nothing more than to go back to your room, flop down on your bed, and have a nice big beer followed by a nice big burp? Then what do you do?

This was exactly the problem confronting the Materialist when her father, after only three temples--Daitoku-ji, Kinkaku-ji,and Ryoan-ji, which march along Kyoto's northwestern flank--sank down onto a stone bench outside a rice-cake stand, and announced he "had had enough of the jis." (His comment echoed one the Materialist's friend Maer had made last December, when, upon sitting down in yet another spectacularly tiled restaurant in Fez, he looked around and said, "You know, I've really had it with these tiles.")