Delicious Reads for All Types of Travelers

Mexico: Land of one thousand bus rides.

By Mollie Chen
I just got back from a four-day trip to Mexico where I fell in love with corn fungus (more on that later) and the "first class" national bus system. Fung Wah and Greyhound, take note: Mexican buses offer complimentary snack packs and eclectic movie selections, ranging from director Yimou Zhang's soaring Chinese epic House of Flying Daggers to the low-budget 80s heartwarmer The Slugger's Wife. Between approximately twenty hours of flights and driving, I had ample time to catch up on my reading. For your own late summer jaunts, our latest issue has 86 must-reads; in addition, here are some of my most recent food-themed favorites.

The Nation That Ate Everything?

By Mollie Chen

Last night, while talking to my sister on the phone, she proceeded to make me completely jealous with stories about her birthday dinner at Toro (which is quickly becoming her second home). "The foie was amazing," she said rapturously. "And the chef sent me out sweetbreads!" This from the girl who used to subsist on a diet comprised exclusively of bagels, cream cheese, and French fries. Annie has lost some of her culinary inhibitions and it would seem as though the American diner has as well -at least to some extent.

Recently, while researching a feature for our September issue (the super duper special 20th Anniversary issue), I got to do two of my favorite things-read about food and then talk to smart people about it. One of the things that kept coming up was offal - meaning all the "other" parts of the animal besides bones and muscle: tongue, feet, stomach, brains etc. Andy Smith, editor of the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, says that this really isn’t anything new. "Up until 60 or 70 years ago, that is what Americans would be eating anyway. I don't know when we lost that. Historically, nothing was thrown out - look at old cookbooks, they have everything in there from cow tits to anything they could possibly eat."

This Little Piggy

By Mollie Chen

The pig is having quite the star turn - much to its dismay. The poor swine is finding itself the center of attention in foodie circles everywhere, thanks to a coterie of bold-faced chefs: Martin Picard, of Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon; New York's David Chang, who has been showered with praise for his perpetually mobbed Momofuku and Momofuku Ssam: and, the father of it all, London's Fergus Henderson whose St. John pioneered "nose to tail" eating. Now, for home chefs with a weakness for stuffed pig's ears, blood sausage, and other swine-full delights, Chef Stephane Reynaud's Pork and Sons is a must-have. Recently translated from French, the cookbook-cum-memoir recalls the chef's childhood in the small village of Saint-Agreve, where he participated in his first pig slaughter at age 7, as well as tales from his more experience as chef-owner of the popular Villa 9 Trois, in Montreuil, France. Here, Reynaud gives us some of his tips on where to go, what to eat, and what to bring back.

The Materialist Q&A: Fuchsia Dunlop

If you're ever unfortunate enough to be invited to the Materialist's hovel, you'll see that she has a vast collection of beautiful cookbooks, all nicely arranged on a high shelf, all of them unused.

The Materialist, like most people who enjoy food but are timid in the kitchen (at dinner parties, the Materialist is always only trusted with scullery-maid work, such as cleaning, washing, and emptying grease filters), enjoys pretending she might someday be a chef, and enjoys too looking at large glossy photos of lovingly styled food: slick rounds of water chestnuts, perfectly flaked fish flesh, slippery folds of wide flat noodles.

The Materialist's Favorite Magazine

Maybe it's because the Materialist is in an acquisitive sort of mood (more on that later), or maybe it's because she's preparing for her trip to India (much more on that later, and by the way, thanks for the great info, Globorati!), but she suddenly realized she hasn't yet mentioned one of her absolute favorite publications, Art It, a bilingual (Japanese-English) quarterly that's the single best resource to the contemporary Asian art scene the Materialist has encountered. Although they do the expected very well--Q&As, reviews, etc.--what the Materialist really values is the magazine's ability to authoritatively cover the continent's up-and-coming art scenes (China, Korea, and most recently, India), along with their dedication to exploring the work of young artists, not just the same established names recognizable from the auction circuits (although their interviews with Yoko Ono and Hiroshi Sugimoto, among others, have been some of the most interesting the Materialist's encountered).

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).

The Materialist's Last Buenos Aires Post (and not a second too soon, according to some)

Catalogue the magalog

We have the Japanese to thank for many things, some of them unqualifiedly good (e.g., sushi), some of them not (karaoke), and most of them arguably neither one nor the other (Hello Kitty, Dance Dance Revolution). Falling into this third category is the savior of print periodicals, the shopping magazine, also known as the magalog. The magalog (see: Lucky and the defunct Cargo, Shop Etc., and Vitals), for those of you too busy reading The New York Review of Books (and yet somehow faithful readers of the Materialist's), is exactly what it sounds like, a part-catalog hybrid with page after page of pictures of things to buy and slender but informative text on where to buy them. It is, really, the medium boiled down to its essence: a vehicle for unbridled capitalism. What could be more honest?

Tokyo 101

Worth the 16-hour flight Photo: Marumiya Tofu

In a few hours (two, actually), the Materialist is off for her annual November trip to Tokyo. November because, with its dramatic crimson leaves, the Materialist thinks of it as one of the country's signature seasons--the other being spring, with its pale, cottony pink blooms of cherry blossoms--and Tokyo because...well, so many reasons, which the Materialist will doubtless bloviate about endlessly upon her triumphant return. For now, she'll just say that it's impossible to be interested in architecture, and art, and design, and food, and not love, or at the very least admire, Japan, where such things have assumed a ritual and sort of worship befitting a secular religion.

However, for all this, Japan has relatively few tourists (in 2004, the country received only 6.7 million international visitors, a remarkably small figure when you consider that New York City alone welcomed 6.6 million in 2005), and the Materialist is always trying to get her friends who're designers and artists to go experience it for themselves.

The ultimate guidebook

Long ago, the Materialist worked at a magazine with a very talented and kind creative director who used to let her come into his office after hours and rifle through his collection of art books. Among them was a slim yellow bar of a book called Feedback (pictured at left), which remains, to this day, the best guidebook the Materialist has ever encountered.

Feedback is a publication by the uber-design firm Pentagram, who contacted everyone in their orbit--designers, artists, writers, photographers, stylists, illustrators, producers, and architects, from Stockholm, New York, Tehran, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, Budapest, Munich, London: really, anyone anywhere with an interest in design--and solicited their suggestions for their favorite restaurants, hotels, shops, parks, and sights in their favorite cities around the world. The volume, which is updated once every few years or so, is sent to the firm's friends and clients, and is filled with wonderful discoveries, lively, intimate writing, and (for design junkies, anyway) a thrilling peek into how the creative half lives and travels. Through it, you learn about famed product designer Constantin Boym's favorite Moscow restaurant, Apshu (an "enchanted space, a romantic ruin of an imaginary apartment") and artist Maira Kalman's favorite spot in Tel Aviv, the Bauhaus Center ("the best time to visit Tel Aviv is in the spring, before it gets too hot").