But London’s food scene success isn’t quite that cut-and-dried. Landlord greed has added steeply rising rents to restaurants’ costs of maintaining Michelin-star expectations. Successive governments have kept Value Added Tax at 20%. Brexit and the resulting immigration laws have squeezed out the global labour pool previously depended upon to staff front-of-house and kitchens, adding to the problems caused by rising food import costs and ever-increasing energy bills.

High-volume chains and mid-tier establishments struggle, and a number of good independents have had to close for lunch to stay afloat. Yet try and get a reservation in any restaurant - high end, ethnic, or neighbourhood – which has featured on Instagram, and unless you’re a free-loading, promo-promising influencer or a celeb with a ‘name’, you’ll have to book weeks if not months ahead. More often than not, you’ll be eating in a minimally but expensively designed room where you’ll have to shout to be heard above the shrieks of laughter from the tables on either side of you only inches from your elbow, and a carefully curated playlist loud enough for a nightclub dance floor.

The average age of most diners in any such on-trend restos is well under forty. It’s a sector of society that can’t ever expect to have a house or an apartment of their own unless funded by the bank of Mummy and Daddy, so instead spends its earnings in desirable public spaces because to save hard-earned money makes little sense. London property prices may trail Hong Kong and Zurich but they are more expensive by far than New York, Paris, and Amsterdam. London’s salaried young are eating out not less often but more, seeking to be part of the community, to make some kind of post-pandemic connection. Before Covid, a three-course dinner at an average mid-range London restaurant (not ethnic which are always cheaper) cost around £40 without drinks and service. Now it clocks in at between £50 and £90 before drinks and service (a standard 12%). But young diners willingly pay a premium for dishes they haven’t even chosen themselves but which have been curated for them on tasting menus that once were the province of high end restaurants only.

Despite closures continuing in the middle and lower-price market, dozens of new restaurants open in London each month, with between 220 and 250 each year since Covid. The bulk of successful fixtures have been at the upscale end, many of them in Mayfair. Luxury fine dining drives their success, despite the economic and staffing challenges. London holds 88.

Michelin stars. Renowned chef Jason Atherton of Soho’s Bocca di Lupo has opened Row on 5 on Savile Row. On St George Street, wood-fired Igni, helmed by Theo Clench previously of Shoreditch’s Michelin-starred Cycene (olde English for ‘kitchen’) serves up a seafood tasting menu. The former Gavroche site on Upper Brook Street has been taken over by Bonheur, where chef Matt Abé has already garnered two Michelin stars. Elite restaurants such as these can charge £150 or more a head at dinner.

At the affordable end of a night out, in the first quarter of 2026, two pubs a day across the UK closed, with the loss of 2,400 jobs. Since 2000, 16,000 have shut their doors. Yet across London (and in major UK cities) in neighbourhoods where rents are lower, success has come to those which have transformed themselves into gastropubs, with kitchens celebrated for high quality food at reasonably affordable prices whose lower checks to the diner are partly helped by ordering good draft beer instead of wine. In Soho, The Devonshire and Upstairs at the French House are notoriously hard to get into. The Harwood Arms in Fulham, southwest London, is Michelin-starred. Not all serve contemporary versions of traditional British comfort food. The Tamil Prince in Barnsbury, North London, is celebrated for its South Asian cooking; Richmond’s The Red Cow is revered for its authentic Cambodian menu. Eat at Hammersmith’s modest The Salutation and most of the unpretentious pub’s other dinners relishing its Thai dishes are South East Asian.

Despite the challenges, with diners still enthusiastic about eating out at the higher end of the cost spectrum, restaurateurs who focus on responsible sourcing of seasonal food and who provide chef-led innovative or immersive experiences are likely to survive the volatility of the London restaurant scene.

Subscribe now

Two years before the first Covid outbreak in 2019, I began volunteering at The Felix Project. Based in London, it collects high-quality surplus food from suppliers and farms, and also from supermarkets where, as it approaches its Best Before date, it is rejected by privileged shoppers. The still-nutritious food is then redistributed to charities, community organizations, primary schools, and vulnerable individuals.

Back then, for fund-raising purposes, we would quote the statistic that we were moving enough food to create 6 million meals a year, from ingredients that would otherwise go to landfills where it rots and releases methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas.

Just 9 years later, The Felix Project creates and redistributes the equivalent of 44 million meals a year, to more than 1200 organizations. Yet it only serves Greater London, an area with a population of just over 9 million. You do the math.

We should be ashamed of ourselves. Successive British governments have abandoned social services and those people, many of whom hold down more than one job in order to feed their families, to the care of the charity sector.

And the situation is about to get worse.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 20 to 45 percent of agricultural and food production depends on free access through the Strait of Hormuz sea passage. If the conflict in the Middle East lasts beyond June 2026, it calculates around 45 million people will be added to the 318 million individuals already suffering acute food insecurity. Include diminishing supplies and the effects of climate change on farmers’ yields, and soaring food prices globally are on their way. “The good old days are gone,” says Christopher Tang, a professor of global supply chain management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. “When the prices go up, they rarely come back down.”

Few would disagree that the world produces more than enough food to feed its entire population. The crisis of global hunger is not driven by agricultural output but by inequalities in its distribution, along with local conflicts and the extreme poverty caused by them, and by climate change.

Meanwhile, shoppers in my high-end supermarket complain when supplies of out-of-season strawberries, asparagus and other exotic produce have run out. They turn a blind eye to stories of fish farms contaminating the sea bed with faeces and the fish with the antibiotics necessary to keep healthy the hundreds of fish kept crammed into pens unable to swim. They quickly swipe left past photographs of cattle chained over metal troughs standing packed tightly together on concrete flooring in miles of feedlot.

Arguments that we should stop eating red meat not only don’t go down well, they are not necessary. Intensively farmed beef is inevitably significantly cheaper than pasture-fed beef, as is farmed fish cheaper than line-caught. But hormone- and antibiotic-free meat and fish would be so much less challenging to our own health. Treating a steak as a treat and expecting one less often would demonstrate we are a responsible and concerned part of a society that is global, not just a self-serving one existing in the space between our refrigerators and our front doors.

If we were to become more curious about how what we eat is produced for our benefit, we might decide to take effective steps to protect the welfare of those creatures we eat. We might fight against the use of fertilizers applied to produce to encourage abundant crops and which deplete the health of the soil and are so dangerous to our bodies. We might vote for policies that would spread the share and excess of what we grow broadly enough to reach those who desperately need it.

There will always be those who point out that relying on surplus food to feed the hungry is no more than a band-aid solution that distracts local governments from solving the structural causes of poverty and inequality. Meanwhile, in our own developed world, huge swathes of society struggling to put food on the table have no choice but to turn to the processed products that the industrial food complex sells cheaply to fill empty stomachs with empty calories and low nutrition. What an accumulation over years of such food will do to our health will be reflected in the soaring costs of medical services. But perhaps western governments are also unmoved by inequality and the plight of the poor in our own societies.

Legumes and pulses are excellent protein alternatives to meat and fish, providing fiber and less fat. In Southeast Asian cuisine, meat is used sparingly, only as a flavoring. In the Caribbean, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the wider Middle East, cultures that were successfully in existence long before modern processing techniques were invented, meals depend more on legumes and pulses than they do on meat and fish. If we adopted more of their cuisines, we might become healthier, our animals more content, and we could even succeed in feeding the whole world.

Subscribe now

Everywhere you turned in London this week, there were Americans. Not tourists. Americans who came and stayed — working in its restaurants, pouring its wine, redistributing its food, writing about its tables. A quiet migration that doesn’t make the wealth pages but says something true about where we are right now.

Marylebone. 8 am.

The high street before the city gets loud. Jammy eggs, espresso, a café that doesn’t try too hard. The morning happening through the window — deliveries, school runs, a woman walking a dog the size of a coffee table.

Back-to-back meetings from nine. Americans living in London. London money looking at Washington. People who move between both cities the way other people move between zip codes.

Somewhere in the night, Somerville — the film about the Grove family’s Virginia farm, four generations on the same land since 1914 — had been nominated for two Capitol Emmy Awards. Societal Concerns, Long Form Content. Audio Recording.

The news came at three in the morning—some things you carry quietly through the day.

St. Alban’s, Kensington. Before Lunch.

A candle lit in a quiet church before the afternoon began.

Not everything worth noting makes it into a newsletter. Some things are just between you and whatever you believe in. The Emmy news. The Groves. Bobby’s handshake after the private screening last fall. A film about people who stayed when leaving would have been easier.

Gratitude has to go somewhere. A candlelit church in Kensington is as good a place as any.

On The Felix Project

Before the trip, Julia Watson had been talking about this at length.

The Felix Project — London’s largest food redistribution charity, founded in 2016 by Justin Byam Shaw in memory of his teenage son Felix, who died suddenly from meningitis. The project rescues surplus food from supermarkets, restaurants, and farms and delivers it free to over 1,200 charities and schools across the city. Felix’s Kitchen in Poplar turns donated produce into roughly 4,000 ready meals a day. Last year: 38 million meals.

A father’s grief turned into something that feeds people. That’s the whole story.

Julia is doing work that matters in London. She won’t be the last one mentioned here.

The UK’s sugar tax — in place since 2018 — has cut sugar in beverages by 44 percent. Not by asking nicely. By making the industry reformulate or pay. The menus across this city have followed. What a society decides to pay attention to shows up eventually on the plate. London figured that out.

Lunch at The Ivy

Lunch with Alex, who runs Sotheby’s UK. Old friends, no agenda required.

The Ivy at noon is a civic event. Amber lights, arched windows, the bar occupied before most people have finished their coffee. Old money and new money and money you can’t quite place, all eating together with the ease of people who’ve decided this is where they belong.

The conversation covered the market, London, Washington. A lot of ground without arriving at any particular conclusion. That’s the best kind.

West Hampstead. Late Afternoon.

A friend named Cathy — her flat in West Hampstead, and one stop first.

Her favorite butcher in the neighborhood. The kind of shop that still knows its customers by name, still cuts to order, still treats the work as something worth doing carefully. Twenty minutes at the counter just talking about what was good this week. London runs on these places. The restaurants get the attention. The high streets do the actual work.

Then wine at Tannin and Oak. A wine bar on the high street, unhurried, the kind of room that rewards staying longer than you planned. The wine steward was from New York. She’d been in London long enough to know the list cold and recommend without hesitation. Another American who found something here worth staying for.

Evening. The Ned.

Back to the bar. Midland Bank once — Sir Edwin Lutyens, 1924. Arched windows two stories up, brass fittings, a hundred years of transactions in the walls.

Campari. Ice. Orange. Soda water on the side.

Through the window the Underground roundel glowing red. London telling you it’s still here. Still running.

A full day. Good meetings. A church in Kensington. Lunch with a friend. A butcher in West Hampstead. Wine poured by a New Yorker who stayed. Two Emmy nominations carried quietly since three in the morning.

The bartender didn’t ask questions. London lets you have your moment.

Dinner at St. John

Twenty years of coming back to this room.

Fergus Henderson opened it in 1994 with a philosophy that was radical then and obvious now — nose to tail, nothing wasted, the whole animal respected. The menu printed fresh every day. Wednesday 13th May 2026. The pig on the masthead never changes.

The server was Michael. From DC.

He brought the Roe and Radishes without ceremony and checked back once. That’s the St. John way — the room doesn’t perform, the food doesn’t explain itself, the service doesn’t intrude. Michael understood this perfectly. He’d learned it here, in this room, in this city, three thousand miles from home.

The Lancashire Cheese was on the menu. Ordered without hesitation.

It was late when the night ended. The city quiet in the way London gets quiet — not empty, just settled. The Groves on the mind. A film nominated for two Emmys while dinner was being eaten three thousand miles from Virginia. Michael clearing the next table. A long way from DC. Right where he needed to be.

Some things take twenty years. Some things happen overnight. Both are true at the same time.

Breakfast at The Wolseley. Friday Morning.

Josh Spero of the Financial Times is across the table.

The Wolseley is the right room for this conversation — grand, unhurried, the kind of place that takes breakfast seriously. Wealth migration was on the table. Journalism. Americans in London. Opera and the arts. The particular question of what brings people across the Atlantic and what keeps them here.

The answer, it turns out, isn’t simple. It never is.

Some come for the property. Some come for the work. Some come for a posting and discover they’ve stopped counting the years. Julia writing about food in a city she now knows better than the one she left. A New Yorker pouring wine in West Hampstead on a Wednesday afternoon. Michael from DC bringing the Roe and Radishes at St. John like he was born to it.

London in 2026 is absorbing a quiet but significant American presence. Not all of it shows up in the wealth migration numbers. Some of it shows up in who’s working the room, pouring the glass, redistributing the food.

The American Table has been watching this from both sides of the conversation for nearly a decade.

That’s why this trip matters. That’s why this letter exists.

The scrambled eggs and toast were the best on the planet. That’s not a throwaway line. That’s a fact about that room. The coffee was excellent. The company was better.

The American Table covers food, politics, and culture from Washington and beyond. This dispatch was filed from London.

• One Hyde Park

• The Felix Project

• Julia Watson — Tabled

• The Ivy

• Tannin and Oak

• The Ned

• St. John

• The Wolseley

  The American Table is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In August, chef Hamilton Johnson will mark the two-year anniversary of Mallard, his homey Southern restaurant with an unlikely Nordic twist. And he is just a teeny bit anxious.

After all, Honeysuckle, Johnson’s first Washington venture, lasted little more than two years before he reluctantly pulled the plug. “It was in a basement and there was not enough traffic. It was like a death, devastating, and you think, ‘this was my restaurant, and it wasn’t good enough for people.’”

Honeysuckle had replaced the long-running Vidalia, DC’s high-end temple of modern Southern cuisine, founded by Jeffrey Buben, who won the 1999 James Beard award for Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic, and Sallie Buben, his wife and business partner. Johnson’s first job in Washington was at Vidalia, starting as a line cook and rising to chef de cuisine over eight years

“Hamilton wanted to become a leader and be able to practice his craft,” says Buben. “I was a little bit of a mentor, a father figure to him.”

When the Bubens declined to renew their lease, Johnson, now 44, grabbed the chance to be his own boss. He had Honeysuckle’s walls painted a screaming sexy red, hung photos of rock stars, then waited in vain for enough patrons to keep the lights on.

“It was an odd time in Washington in terms of where the puck was moving the energy of the city,” says Buben, 67. “You had the expansion of some of the largest restaurants in DC history. Downtown business lunch was winding down, shifting to The Wharf and City Center. At that time, it was very difficult for an owner-operator downtown,” but easier for a neighborhood small-concept, like the Michelin-starred Dabney in Shaw’s Blagden Alley, and Ris, in West End.

A heartbroken Johnson went home to tiny Inman, S.C., where he says he stayed drunk for quite some time while trying to get his life in order. He returned to Washington and worked at several restaurants but in late 2021, went back to Inman to help his widowed father, a retired textile worker and gifted duck decoy carver, who was battling pancreatic cancer. Two days after Mick Johnson’s final treatment, he died of Covid.

Hamilton Johnson came north once again, this time cooking at several spots around town, including chef Matt Baker’s Michelin-starred Gravitas. In 2024, he became a Neighborhood Restaurant Group partner and chef at the old Birch and Barley, which he renamed Mallard, in honor of his father. Nearly everything on the walls and shelves came out of his childhood home, including nature paintings by his late mother, Carolyn Fowler Johnson, who fulfilled her wish to live long enough to attend his 2003 Johnson and Wales University graduation in Charleston.

In her honor, his first tattoo were her monogram. Today, the six-foot-three Johnson estimates that 80 percent of his 280-pound corpus is tattooed head to foot. “I just really enjoy them. They make me happy.” The largest, most elaborate, and doubtless most painful, is the multi-hued face of Jesus, which occupies the whole of his massive back. (Full disclosure: Johnson is the first interview subject I have ever asked to semi-strip, so I could inspect the waist-up artwork.) There might have been more ink had Johnson not dropped 160 pounds through rigorous workouts, healthy eating and nearly three years of sobriety.

“It’s hard to be a dieting chef because you have to taste everything, right?” he asks with a smile. When preparing a large duck breast for a TV show--first seared in its own grease, then in added butter—he explains simply, “The more fat, the more flavor.”

Over the past 21 months, Johnson has made Mallard his personal sanctuary, and like the body art, its cozy decor evokes memory, loss and hope. “It’s like having my Dad and my Mom here,” he says softly.

But once in the kitchen, Chef--aka Ham or Hambone--is pure beast, as befits a man who honed his craft at Vidalia, Michelin-starred Gravitas and Charleston’s Maverick Southern Kitchens.

In the heart of the eatery-laden Logan Circle neighborhood, Mallard patrons tuck into Sea Island pea dip with duck fat saltines; shrimp and grits laced with pork, ham, scallions and sweet, heat-less Piquillo peppers. Think Chesapeake fried oysters atop creamy deviled-egg aioli, and a chicken-fried confit duck leg encased in a crust so hard it shatters audibly to reveal tender rich dark meat. Dessert, y’all? The Coffee and Cigarettes is a decadent mélange of espresso ice cream, cocoa crusted espresso beans, tobacco caramel, chocolate mousse, macadamia praline, and smoked olive oil, served in a vintage glass ashtray. It’s a tossup whether first to call the dentist, cardiologist or Ozempic prescriber.

Johnson’s love of Nordic food began 13 years ago, when he entered the first of seven Friends and Fun competitions in Finland and Iceland. Last month, Mallard hosted a Taste of Iceland pop-up with Chef Daníel Cochran Jónsson of Reykjavik’s Sushi Social. Three sold-out dinners included arctic char crudo, poached cod loin, grilled lamb fillet and berries with skyr, a tangy Icelandic yogurt-y cheese.

The Southern and Low Country traditions, however, are in Johnson’s DNA. “I grew up in a household where everything was centered around food. My mom was the kind of cook who got recipes from the New York Times and out of books, and always tried new things, whereas my dad was very rustic. For him it was the recipes his mom taught him. I was always around both of those worlds.” To this day, Johnson’s favorite meals draw on the countless variations of his father’s “breakfast for dinner” specialties.

In August, perhaps to celebrate Mallard’s second anniversary, he and Buben will host a Mid-Atlantic Coastal seafood dinner. “Hamilton’s roots are cooking from Charleston and the Low Country, me from Eastern North Carolina and the Outer Banks,” says Buben, who last year joined his protege at Mallard to prepare Vidalia’s greatest hits. In 2024, he and Sallie closed Bistro Bis on Capitol Hill and moved south, where he now helps his son, CIA-trained chef Mac Buben, run a large, casual seafood restaurant in Nags Head, N.C.

But even amidst the sold-out pop-up events, crowded brunches and dinners, something still niggles. “It’s always going to be in the back of my head here. What if this fails? What if Mallard doesn’t make it?”

Annie Groer was a Washington Post staff writer and columnist whose work has also appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, New Republic, and other print, digital, and broadcast outlets. She twice represented DC in the National Chicken Cooking Contest.

Juleanna Glover stands at the nexus of social and political Washington. As one of the city’s best-known conveners, she’s been a fixture at events around the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which during her 33 years working in Washington has evolved from a dinner to a weeklong cavalcade of networking, influence and money-making leavened by the occasional toast to a free press.

But this year, with the annual festivities back to their familiar frenetic pace, amidst a degree of back-to-normal excitement beyond anything in years, Glover is experiencing a distinctly unfamiliar feeling: Dread.

It has nothing to do with the virus or the war in Ukraine or even the superficiality that critics of the dinner have long denounced. Over the last few months, Glover has actually thrown book parties, hosted events, and otherwise gathered with the Washington village. Instead, it’s about politics itself and the whole idea that official Washington can get together and pretend that nothing’s changed.

Continue reading at Politico →Michael Schaffer is a senior editor at POLITICO. His Capital City column runs weekly in POLITICO Magazine.

Subscribe now

As I walked into Tosca on a recent visit, I was seated next to a person who, in a political and moral sense, represented everything I opposed. This person was the antithesis of my views, but here we were, breaking bread together. That's what makes this place work.

Strategically located within a few blocks of the White House and just off K Street, Tosca occupies a unique position at the intersection of public policy, lobbyists, and law firms. It's a culinary home that transcends personal preferences, catering to the powerful in America. The decisions likely made in this dining room have the potential to shape American policy and even global policy. The roster of patrons is a testament to the restaurant's ability to bring together individuals from diverse political backgrounds. It includes former and current Presidents of the United States, Vice Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress, White House staff, cabinet members, Governors, Supreme Court Justices, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and Ambassadors, to name a few. While New York has The Grill and LA’s celebrity go-to’s Craigs and Dan Tana’s, DC is where true power presides, and Tosca is at the heart of it all.

Stepping into the kitchen to meet Chef Fortunato, I was greeted by a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie. Large stock pots simmered with bones and vegetables, preparing the 'liquid gold' for the evening's sauces. Chef Fortunato Nicotra's resume would make James Beard jealous. A culinary rock star, he earned Michelin stars at two restaurants in Sicily before his 30th birthday. Nicotra then made his mark in New York City, where he served as the Executive Chef of Lidia Bastianich’s award-winning Felidia for over two decades. The restaurant earned three stars from Ruth Reichl of the New York Times only three months after his arrival. In 2006, Frank Bruni wrote another raving review, awarding Felidia a three-star rating. Wine Spectator named Felidia one of the “Top Ten Italian Restaurants in the United States,” and USA Today ranked it number two in its year-round up of restaurants around the world. Nicotra has appeared on several television food segments, including Lidia’s Kitchen and Lidia’s Italy and the Food Network’s Iron Chef. He prepared meals for Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis I during their visits to New York.

Subscribe now

The team at Tosca serves everyone with precision and humility. Jonathan ten Hoopen, the genius-like, human Rolodex of the powerful and wealthy in Washington, also knows the first and last name of every cook, steward, waiter, and dishwasher in the restaurant. Here comes Johnathan with a canape or a small serving of fresh pasta with shaved black truffles, always complements of the chef. His constant warmth and welcome make the often-difficult discussions around the table just a bit easier to manage. John Neata, quiet and reserved, holds a wealth of knowledge as possibly the best sommelier in Washington. I am grateful for his friendship and advice about all things wine. Lisa Fotter, always with an eagle eye on the dining room, manages this sensitive group of patrons with the finesse of a seasoned conductor of a symphony.

I recently told managing member and owner Paulo Sacco, “You treat every single person who walks in the door like a head of state.” Paulo replied simply, “It's our hospitality; everyone is welcome here.” Tosca is more than just a restaurant; it is a testament to the power of food to bridge divides and foster connections. Whether it’s political adversaries sharing a meal or the meticulous hospitality that makes every guest feel like a head of state, Tosca embodies the true essence of dining. It’s not just about the food; it’s about the experience and the people who make it extraordinary. As I left, I couldn’t help but think that Tosca might just be the most powerful restaurant in America.

Subscribe now

On Saturday morning, as Americans woke to news of airstrikes on Venezuela and a sitting president in U.S. custody, young Europeans were already three hours into their weekend ritual: dancing stone sober in Parisian bakeries, surrounded by baguettes and pain au chocolat, DJ spinning against a backdrop of rising dough.

The juxtaposition isn’t subtle. It wasn’t meant to be.

The bakery rave phenomenon—which began in Paris in 2019 and has since spread to Brisbane, Mumbai, and Toronto—tells us something about what a generation is choosing when they can choose anything. They’re choosing bread over bottles. Dawn over midnight. Carbs over cocktails. And increasingly, they’re choosing Europe over here.

Alexis Duvivier didn’t set out to create a sobriety movement when he launched the first bakery rave at The French Bastards in Paris’s 11th arrondissement. The French DJ and producer, who performs as Aazar, was solving a simpler problem: homesickness. After years working clubs in Miami and Los Angeles, what he missed most wasn’t the nightlife—he had plenty of that. He missed the Boulangerie.

“It was such a big part of my culture in my everyday life here in France,” Duvivier said in a recent interview. “It was the first thing I wanted to do when I went back. I was always on the lookout for the best baguette or the best pain au chocolat.”

So in 2019, to celebrate releasing his single “Diva,” he did what made sense to him: he threw a free early evening party at a bakery, spinning tracks while trays of pastries circulated through the crowd. The visuals were odd enough to go viral—DJs Bob Sinclair and Peggy Gou later played sets there, cementing The French Bastards as one of Paris’s most unlikely hot spots.

But Duvivier insists the concept wasn’t gimmicky. “I didn’t choose a bakery because I was looking for an unusual location, but because for me it represents France and represents what I love.”

What he loved was the thing itself, not the Instagram version of it. The actual butter. The actual crust. The actual gathering place where neighbors see each other daily, not the performative authenticity that passes for culture in algorithm-optimized America.

That distinction matters more this weekend than it did last weekend.

The bakery rave movement has found its biggest following among Gen Z and younger Millennials who are drinking less and prioritizing what previous generations might have called boring: sleep, health, wellness, showing up clearheaded. From a certain angle, it looks like retreat. From another, it looks like the sanest response available to people who’ve watched the world they inherited catch fire in real time, and decided the least they can do is not pour alcohol on it.

The kids dancing in Paris bakeries at 8 a.m. on a Saturday aren’t protesting. They’re not marching. They’re not posting manifestos or arguing on Twitter about what just happened in Caracas. They’re doing something both smaller and larger: they’re building the world they want to live in, one baguette and one sober dance floor at a time.

They’re also doing it over there, not here.

Subscribe now

Europe has become aspirational to Americans in a way it hasn’t been since before 9/11. Not the Europe of backpacking tourists or study abroad semesters, but the Europe of people who take August off and eat lunch for two hours and don’t think healthcare is a luxury good. The Europe where a bakery is a daily democratic ritual, not a $8 artisanal experience you Instagram. The Europe where young people can imagine a future that doesn’t require them to explain away their government’s foreign policy at dinner parties for the rest of their lives.

You can hear it in how Americans talk about Europe now—not with the old defensive superiority (”they don’t have free speech/air conditioning/ambition”), but with something closer to longing. We sound like Duvivier in Los Angeles, homesick for a boulangerie.

The bakery rave works because it’s performing authenticity by actually being authentic. Duvivier didn’t focus-group the concept or hire a brand consultant. He missed bread. He liked music. He put them together. The fact that it became a movement says less about his marketing savvy than about how starved people are for experiences that aren’t optimized, monetized, or weaponized.

In Washington, where I write this, we’ve spent two decades watching policymakers perform concern about foreign interventions while authorizing them. We’ve watched both parties promise to end forever wars while finding new forevers to war in. We’ve normalized a level of military involvement around the globe that would have been unthinkable to the generation that actually fought World War II, and we’ve done it while telling ourselves we’re the reluctant hegemon, the force for good, the grown-ups in the room.

The kids aren’t buying it anymore. They’re not even shopping in the same store.

When American twenty-somethings look at Europe now, they’re not seeing a museum of old cathedrals and socialist policies. They’re seeing a place where it’s possible to be young and hopeful without being naive. Where you can dance at 8 a.m. with a croissant in your hand and not feel like you’re fiddling while Rome burns, because you’re not the one who lit the match.

The French Bastards, the bakery that started all this, distinguishes itself with what it calls an “irreverent and innovative menu.” But the real irreverence isn’t in the food. It’s in the premise that young people might gather for joy rather than to numb themselves to the news. That morning might be better than midnight. That the smell of baking bread might be more nourishing than another round of drinks you don’t want to pay for and won’t remember.

That watching the sun come up might be better than staying up to see what fresh hell tomorrow brings.

As Duvivier’s concept spread—he now hosts Bakery Sessions across Europe—it stayed true to its origins. No sponsorships. No bottle service. No VIP section where you pay more to stand closer to the baguettes. Just music, pastries, and people who chose to be there clearheaded.

Meanwhile, back in America, we’re conducting operations to secure another country’s oil reserves while a military official quotes a president saying we’ll “run it for them for a period of time.” We’re doing this on a Saturday. We’re doing this in January. We’re doing this while half the country argues it’s justified and the other half argues about whether they’re allowed to say it’s not.

The kids dancing in Paris aren’t having that argument. They opted out. Not in the cynical Gen X way of the 1990s, where opting out meant you were too cool to care. In a way that suggests they care deeply, but they’ve decided caring doesn’t require participating in a system that will grind up their caring and use it as fuel.

They’re building something else instead. It’s smaller. It’s quieter. It happens at bakeries.

And for those of us who stayed, who are still here in America trying to write sense into senselessness and reason into rage, there’s something almost unbearably poignant about watching a generation choose bread and music and sobriety while we chose empire and oil and the certainty that this time, finally, we’ll get it right.

Duvivier says his bakery raves were never meant to become a social media trend. He was just trying to recreate the thing he loved about home. But maybe that’s exactly why it worked. Maybe the only authentic thing left is to stop trying to solve the world’s problems and start trying to solve your own homesickness.

Maybe the revolution isn’t a march or a manifesto. Maybe it’s just deciding that at 8 a.m. on a Saturday, you’d rather be dancing in a bakery than doom-scrolling the news from Caracas.

Maybe the kids who are dancing—sober, joyful, surrounded by bread—have figured out something we spent fifty years of foreign policy missing: that the thing people actually want isn’t democracy at gunpoint or oil secured by airstrikes.

It’s a good baguette and a place to gather.

And it turns out, you can’t export that at the end of a cruise missile.

James Bell writes The American Table from Washington, D.C., where he watches what we eat and what it means.

Subscribe now

This Christmas wish list for The American Table is not really about things. It is about a way of living: the people at the table, the food on the plate, the stories that get told and retold, and the values that quietly run underneath all of it like a root system. HTSI, the Financial Times magazine, fills its pages with diamonds and watches, selling a fantasy of time and legacy and control. This year, after the deaths of two friends—Kent Knutson and Bobbie Grove—that fantasy feels thinner and the question beneath it feels sharper: if the time is not actually ours to hold, what does it mean to use it well?

For readers of The American Table, the answers almost always start in the same place: at the table. Picture a winter night when the city outside has blurred into a soft glow, and the rooms inside are a little too warm from the oven and the bodies and the candles burning down too quickly. The table is long, or at least it feels that way. The linens are not perfect, but they are real. The plates do not match, because life rarely does. The glasses might be a mix of inherited crystal and thrift‑store rescues, each one with a history you only half know. On that table sit one or two bottles that at some earlier point were deemed “too good” for an ordinary night. They were meant for a future special occasion. But this year has insisted, with a kind of brutal clarity, that “later” is an illusion. So the corks come up now, for this group in this room on this night, because this is the occasion.

At that table, in that light, Kent and Bobbie belong. Their chairs may be empty this year, but their stories are not. Kent, a Republican and a super‑lobbyist by Washington standards, somehow managed to be one of the city’s rarest breeds: a brilliant dreamer of a human being with a gentleness and kindness that cut through the usual noise. He stood on the opposite side of the aisle from a Democrat like me and yet occupied the same inner circle of friendship. That is not an accident. Kent had an anchor that predated and outlasted the Hill: his family’s black Angus heritage in South Dakota. The cattle, the land, the family history—they gave him a kind of balance and perspective that no committee hearing could touch. Karen and the kids, whom I adore, were part of that anchor too, tethering him to something solid whenever Washington tried to spin him off his axis.

Bobbie Grove, the black Angus genius of Somerville, carried a parallel story in a different key. The Grove family’s black Angus in Somerville were not just animals on pasture; they were the living expression of a way of life. Bobbie knew his cattle the way a watchmaker knows his movements, with an intimacy earned over years and seasons and setbacks. Like Kent, he staked his identity on something older and steadier than any headline. His pride, his wisdom, his sense of self were wrapped up in that herd and that land and that family name. Two men from different geographies and different daily worlds—one in the high‑pressure circuitry of K Street, one in the pastures of Somerville—both found their center in the same rural DNA.

That is the strange geometry of an American life. You can have a Washington lobbyist and a Somerville cattleman, and their lines still meet at the same table through a mutual love of black Angus cows, farming families, and one shared friend who straddles both worlds. Somewhere between South Dakota and Somerville, between the Grove pastures and the Knutson memories, a quiet braid was tied—through conversations, shared meals, and the understanding that who raises your food, and how, is not a minor detail but a moral one. A Christmas wish list that ignores their absence would feel thin. So this one does the opposite: it lets them in and lets them lead.

In practical terms, that means some of the “wishes” on this list are scenes rather than items. There is the wish for more nights when the good bottle gets opened not for prestige but for love. A grower Champagne someone drove across town to find, or a serious red with years on it, is uncorked after a simple grace and a mention of the people who taught us what good cattle, good land, and good friendship look like. The cork eases out, the room goes briefly quiet, glasses are raised, and for one moment everyone present understands that this is not a rehearsal. No tasting notes are necessary. The only important fact is that the wine is finally being used for what it was meant for: to mark a real moment with real people.

Another wish lives in the room where the books collect. On a side table or a chair by the window there is a stack: a new novel, a sharp book of essays, a serious history, a volume on food or farming, a bracing read on democracy or citizenship. They lean into one another like a group photo from different decades. For American Table readers, this stack is its own kind of luxury. It represents time claimed back from the endless scroll, attention directed toward something more demanding than a headline. In a year marked by loss, reading becomes an act of respect—for your own mind, and for the minds that have tried to leave us something sturdy and wise. A wish list that includes books is not making a token nod to “self‑improvement”; it is arguing that a life well lived asks you to go beyond your priors, to learn the stories of places like South Dakota and Somerville, to understand the systems and histories that brought food to your plate and neighbors to your street.

HTSI sells the romance of watches: tiny movements, perfect complications, polished cases that promise mastery over time. The American Table version of that romance is a plane ticket or a train ticket, a purposeful journey in which time is not conquered but savored. A trip to New Orleans in February, to Charleston before the heat, to a small Midwestern city quietly emerging as a food town, or to a hill town in Italy if you can stretch that far. The true “complication” is how vividly you can remember the first morning walk: the café you stumble into for coffee, the bakery where the door sticks, the exact way the light hits a side street you will almost certainly never see again. A dinner in a small, unassuming restaurant in a city where you barely know your way around can take on the weight of an heirloom when one of the people at that table is no longer alive to tell the story. So one wish on this list is simple: that you mark the coming year not by acquisitions but by meals and trips and conversations that etch themselves into your memory.

And then there is the kitchen, the American atelier. HTSI devotes spreads to workshops where a single ring or watch is brought into being by hand. The corresponding fantasy here is humbler and more accessible: a Sunday afternoon with no agenda but to cook. A heavy pot, a slow simmer, a wooden spoon stained by decades of sauces, a cutting board carved with knife marks like notches on a timeline. The wish is partly for the right tools: a knife that feels like an extension of your hand, a Dutch oven that can go from braise to bread to soup without protest, bowls and pans that have followed you from one life to the next. But more than that, it is for the courage to use them as often as you can, with the people you love, instead of waiting for some perfect, uncluttered ideal of domesticity. The meals you remember after someone dies are almost never the elaborate ones. They are the slightly chaotic Tuesday dinners, the over‑salted roasts, the breakfasts where the coffee was too strong and the conversation unexpectedly tender.

Because this is The American Table, the story does not stop at the edge of the countertop. Our tables are private spaces with public consequences. Just as HTSI eventually pivots from things to “foundations” and legacies, this wish list has to move outward into the civic square. One wish is for a country in which people like Kent and people like me—Republican and Democrat, lobbyist and critic—still sit down together in good faith, anchored in something older and sturdier than any party line. Another is for readers to support the ecosystems that make a real American table possible: local newspapers and nonprofit newsrooms that tell uncomfortable truths; food banks and community kitchens that keep neighbors from slipping through the cracks; legal clinics, arts organizations, and small farms hanging on at the edge of viability.

And then there is the specific inheritance of black Angus. To honor Kent and Bobbie is to recognize that the steak on your plate did not appear by magic. It came from land someone stewarded, from animals someone bred and tended, from a family that staked its identity on producing something excellent and honest. So the wish list includes a quiet directive: know your farmer. Learn who in your region is raising cattle, vegetables, grain, fruit with care and intelligence. Buy from them when you can. Tell their stories when you sit down to eat. Support the next generation who might otherwise decide that this work is too hard and too lonely to continue.

All of this adds up to a Christmas list that looks very little like a standard catalog and very much like a map. It points toward full tables, yes, and good bottles, and far‑flung meals when fortune allows. But it also points toward a life lived generously and awake. A life where a Republican and a Democrat can argue and still leave the table closer than when they sat down. A life where black Angus heritage in South Dakota and Somerville is not a quaint detail but a source of balance, wisdom, and pride. A life where we do not hoard the good wine, the blank pages in the passport, the sturdy books on the shelf, or the better angels of our nature for some future year when things are calmer.

So when you sit down to make your own list this season, imagine it less as a ledger of acquisitions and more as a set of promises. To open the bottle. To book the trip. To buy the book and actually read it. To cook the meal even if the kitchen is a mess. To support the journalist, the farmer, the neighbor doing unglamorous work. To raise a glass to Kent and Karen and the kids, to Bobbie and the Groves, to South Dakota and Somerville and every place in between that sends its labor and love to your plate. The American Table Christmas wish list, at its heart, is about this: using what we have—time, attention, resources, affection—fully and bravely now, because the people who taught us how to live that way have just reminded us, in the hardest way, that “someday” is not a plan

Subscribe now

We all begin in the same place: at that quiet moment before everyone arrives, when the house smells like butter and onions and something just starting to brown, and the question sneaks in—what, exactly, are we giving thanks for this year? But this time, imagine that table anchored by two very different loaves of bread: Margaret Carlson’s starter‑fed sourdough on one end, and a simple pan of cornbread or Parker House rolls on the other, the way a good Thanksgiving table holds both the elevated and the everyday, the storied and the humble.​

The American Table has always lived in that space between. Over the past year, the stories have ranged from the glittering world of private chefs—designing tasting menus in glass‑walled condos and embassy dining rooms—to the harsh arithmetic of food stamps and the looming expiration of expanded SNAP benefits that threatens to push millions of families deeper into hunger. There were stories about chocolate mousse and Champagne, and there were investigations into how a policy vote in Washington can mean the difference between a full pantry and an empty refrigerator in a town most decision‑makers will never visit.​

Threaded through it all were people. A farmer and a migrant worker, searching for hope beyond the nation’s capital while politicians traded talking points. Advocates warning that America is on the brink of the worst food insecurity crisis in generations if it allows SNAP expansions to quietly disappear. Chefs and sommeliers explaining why hospitality still matters when the headlines feel like a slow‑moving storm. And, of course, new voices at this publication—like Margaret Carlson, the trailblazing journalist who has turned her attention here, writing about baking bread in the midst of chaos and proving that a sourdough loaf can be as much a political act as a comfort.​

That sourdough is not just a recipe; it is a metaphor for what this year at The American Table has tried to be. Sourdough starts with something small and alive that you have to feed, day after day, when no one is watching, and there is nothing Instagrammable about it. Eventually, and only with care, it becomes a loaf that can anchor a table—a crust that crackles, a crumb that holds. In the same way, building a more just food system starts with quiet, unglamorous work: reading the farm bill fine print, listening to a migrant worker talk about wages, standing up in a church basement or a county meeting room to say, “This is not acceptable,” long before the cameras arrive.​

This year, the cameras did arrive in one very specific place: Somerville, Virginia. The film Somerville, released through this platform, told the story of White Ridge Farm and the Grove family’s fight against massive transmission towers that threatened to carve through their land and their sense of home. It was framed as a David and Goliath story because that is exactly what it was: a century‑old Black Angus farm, a family that had worked that soil for more than a hundred years, staring down a multibillion‑dollar energy company.​

Somerville is, at its core, a story about refusal—the refusal to accept that rural land, and the people rooted there, are expendable. It is also, now, a story marked by loss. This Thanksgiving, The American Table dedicates this essay, and this holiday, to the memory of Bobby Grove of Somerville, Virginia, whose life and courage are woven through every frame of that film and every acre of White Ridge Farm. Bobby’s battle with cancer, his determination to keep the farm going, and his quiet insistence that this land and this way of life were worth fighting for, gave the country a model of what rootedness looks like in an age obsessed with velocity and profit.​

In Bobby’s world, gratitude was not theoretical. It was sunrise over a pasture, calves dropping in a cold spring, neighbors showing up with casseroles when treatments were rough, and his sister—Donna—who kept telling their story even when it would have been easier to grant the interview, sign the papers, and disappear into private grief. To be thankful, for the Groves, was to wake up one more day on the land their family had held for generations and say, “We’re still here.” This piece is for Bobby, for that stubborn “still here,” and for every farm family in America wondering how long they will be able to say it.​

If the story stopped there—with lobster and polyester on one end of the holiday spectrum and a farm in a Dominion Energy right‑of‑way on the other—it would be a bleak kind of Thanksgiving. But America has always been a country of “and.” A 70s‑themed Thanksgiving survival guide on this site gave permission to laugh this year—to serve lobster instead of turkey, to cue up disco, to let people wear something outrageous and forget, for one night, about government shutdowns and flight delays. That wasn’t escapism for its own sake; it was a reminder that joy is fuel, not a distraction—that people fighting for land, for justice, for policy change also need to dance, to eat well, to relax into the arms of their own families without doomscrolIing every break in the conversation.​

So what is there to be thankful for in America on this Thanksgiving? Start with the obvious: the readers who have turned The American Table into a living, breathing community rather than a lonely website, pushing its audience into the thousands and proving that long‑form writing about food, politics, and rural life still has a home. Be thankful for the legendary journalists like Margaret Carlson and Annie Groer who have chosen to bring their voices and their recipes here, bridging the world of Washington panels and Sunday shows with the alchemy of flour, water, and salt. Be thankful for the chefs and private cooks who have opened up a new frontier of hospitality, showing that luxury can be about care and intention, not just price.​

Be thankful, too, for the advocates and policymakers who are still willing to be unpopular in defense of hungry families, who understand that SNAP is not charity but infrastructure, as critical as any bridge or highway. For every teacher who quietly keeps snacks in a desk drawer, every church basement pantry that stretches donations further than seems mathematically possible, every neighbor who drops off a pie or a loaf of bread on a doorstep simply because “it’s been a hard year.” That web of small, local, often invisible acts is the country at its best—messy, improvised, not nearly enough on its own, but undeniably good.​

And finally, be thankful for the possibility that runs, like a current, under all of this: the possibility that a story can still change something. Somerville exists because one family said yes to having cameras in their kitchen and their fields, trusting that if people could see what was at stake, they might care enough to act. The SNAP coverage exists because sources shared hard data and harder truths. The lobster-and-polyester piece exists because someone in your life once decided that Thanksgiving could be weird and wonderful and still count. Margaret Carlson’s sourdough exists because she kept feeding a starter when the wider world felt like it was coming apart.​

This morning, as ovens click on and someone in your house asks where the roasting pan went, an invitation is embedded in this holiday. Break bread—sourdough, cornbread, Parker House rolls, tortillas, injera, whatever your table looks like—and, in doing so, make a quiet promise: to notice who grew the wheat and who harvested the cranberries, who is being left out of the feast, which farms are being asked to sacrifice their horizons so someone far away can have cheaper power. Raise a glass to the memory of people like Bobby Grove, who showed this country what steadfast love of land and family looks like, and to the living communities still fighting in his name.​

And then, after the dishes are stacked and the candles burned low, let this be the year America decides that gratitude is not the end of the story but the beginning—that being thankful for abundance is inseparable from the work of making sure more people share in it. If this table, this newsletter, this little corner of the internet has any mission at all, it is to keep telling the stories that make that work feel not just necessary, but possible.

Thank You!

1. Châteauneuf-du-Pape Blanc

A rich, full-bodied white with orchard fruits, floral notes, and subtle spice, ideal for fall dishes like squash soup, roasted poultry, or creamy pastas.

2. Dry Riesling

 Its crisp acidity and citrusy brightness balance richer dishes like roasted duck, glazed vegetables, or sweet-and-savory sides.

3. Pinot Noir

 Elegant, versatile, and perfect for roasted turkey, chicken, or earthy mushroom dishes. Its red fruit and silky tannins make it a seasonal favorite.

 4. Petite Syrah

Petite Sirah is a great wine for colder months like November due to its rich flavor profile and ability to stand up to robust dishes.

Its bold red fruit flavors, spices, and moderate tannins make it perfect for hearty stews, roast pork, or spiced dishes.

5. Amarone Della Valpolicella

Amarone is a fantastic wine to enjoy during the colder months, especially when paired with hearty dishes. It’s also a great wine for special occasions or for those who enjoy bold, complex reds

Share The American Table

Follow us on Instagram!

So—following official Washington’s lead—I’ve decided to “reduce operations” in the stress department. My plan? Revive seventies food nostalgia and serve lobster for Thanksgiving. Yes, lobster: fun, glam, a tad rebellious, and just the distraction we need while Rome burns and relatives speculate about the fate of democracy (or worse, try to explain the latest Epstein documentary at the dinner table).cnn+2​

This isn’t a new idea. In 2023, my guests cracked shells and dunked hunks of sweet lobster in drawn butter, discovering that the only thing more satisfying than a win in November was licking the plate clean. The Financial Times assures me this is “very Seventies.” Back then, food was maximalist, presentation mattered, and rules weren’t just bent—they were flambéed. We can do better: serve flair, not despair.mainelobsterfestival+4​

Of course, if you’re reading this stuck at Dallas/Fort Worth with 700,000 fellow stranded travelers, don’t despair—airlines say operations will return to “normal soon,” which in TSA-ese means your mashed potatoes will arrive just in time for Lent. Delta’s CEO has taken to national television, reassuring all that by week’s end, everyone will be home and only mildly traumatized by the experience. Remember the good old days when Thanksgiving headaches involved overcooked turkey, not federal funding lapses?nytimes+4

Subscribe now

​

Most importantly—and this cannot be stressed enough—do not, under any circumstances, bring up Epstein at Thanksgiving. Some conversational water is too murky, even for lobster. Instead, lean hard into seventies food trends: devilled eggs, towering trifles, ginger-laced pumpkin soup, disco music, and polyester that repels both gravy and difficult subjects. If the national mood swings wildly, just match it with a punch bowl, a fondue set, and “Copacabana” on repeat.

Some “Very Seventies” (and Lobster) Recipes for Your Rebellion

• Classic 1970s Deviled Eggs
  What’s more vintage than a platter of these beauties perched proudly on the coffee table, right next to the shag carpet? Hard-boiled eggs, halved and filled with a luscious mix: mashed yolks, mayonnaise, a squirt of classic yellow or Dijon mustard, sweet pickle relish, vinegar, salt, pepper, and (if you’re feeling wild) a dash of Tabasco. Pipe or spoon into whites, sprinkle with plenty of paprika, and garnish with chives or dill. Bonus points for arranging them on a molded glass platter. Optional: go full 70s kitsch with a spoonful of curried yolk or a bacon crumble on top.​ https://nerdswithknives.com/classic-deviled-eggs/

• Pumpkin Soup With Creole Lobster
  Hearty, spicy, with a sweet undertone—fresh lobster meat, cinnamon, nutmeg, 1 sugar pumpkin (or butternut squash), a dash of cayenne, and finish with crème fraîche. Start the meal this way.
  mainelobsterfestival​

• Mini Brioche Lobster Rolls
  Maine-style, with chopped lobster, tarragon, and lemon zest on mini brioche buns. Serve as a passed appetizer, preferably with disco-era cocktails.
  capeporpoiselobster+1​​

• Lobster and Bacon Stuffing
  Lobster, cherrywood smoked bacon, sautéed onions, garlic and semolina bread. Bake hot until the table gathers in awe (and a little confusion).
  mainelobsterfestival​

• Retro Dessert: Towering Trifle
  Layers of chocolate pound cake, custard, tinned fruit, Jell-O if you dare, and clouds of whipped cream. The higher it tips, the bigger the laughs.
  epicurious​

This Thanksgiving, embrace the chaos—with claws, camp, and a refusal to talk politics (beyond mild jokes about federal shutdowns for dessert). When the kitchen fills with laughter, disco, and the insane optimism of the Seventies, remember: the best way to survive family and national crises is with joy, butter, and a refusal to let the headlines take the wheel.

So here’s to lobster, laughter, and pure culinary insurrection. May your stuffing be bacon-laced, your flights ungrounded, and your conversation blissfully Epstein-free.

Happy Thanksgiving, America. The only thing being shut down this year is boredom.

Subscribe now

​

The question I am asked most often by our subscribers is: “How do I watch the film Somerville or find your Emmy-winning content?” The answer is simple: it’s all just one click away!

Because we use Substack, every email you receive from us includes easy links. Click “The American Table” Blue logo at the top of any email, and you’ll be taken directly to our homepage.

Once there, you can watch Somerville, enjoy all our documentaries, and read our newest journalism features. Paid subscribers get full, instant access. Not sure where to start? Head to the homepage or main menu and dive in.

Thank you for supporting powerful storytelling and for being such a valued part of our community.

Warm regards,
The American Table Team

https://www.theamericantable.org/about

Subscribe now

So—following official Washington’s lead—I’ve decided to “reduce operations” in the stress department. My plan? Revive seventies food nostalgia and serve lobster for Thanksgiving. Yes, lobster: fun, glam, a tad rebellious, and just the distraction we need while Rome burns and relatives speculate about the fate of democracy (or worse, try to explain the latest Epstein documentary at the dinner table).cnn+2​

This isn’t a new idea. In 2023, my guests cracked shells and dunked hunks of sweet lobster in drawn butter, discovering that the only thing more satisfying than a win in November was licking the plate clean. The Financial Times assures me this is “very Seventies.” Back then, food was maximalist, presentation mattered, and rules weren’t just bent—they were flambéed. We can do better: serve flair, not despair.mainelobsterfestival+4​

Of course, if you’re reading this stuck at Dallas/Fort Worth with 700,000 fellow stranded travelers, don’t despair—airlines say operations will return to “normal soon,” which in TSA-ese means your mashed potatoes will arrive just in time for Lent. Delta’s CEO has taken to national television, reassuring all that by week’s end, everyone will be home and only mildly traumatized by the experience. Remember the good old days when Thanksgiving headaches involved overcooked turkey, not federal funding lapses?nytimes+4

Subscribe now

​

Most importantly—and this cannot be stressed enough—do not, under any circumstances, bring up Epstein at Thanksgiving. Some conversational water is too murky, even for lobster. Instead, lean hard into seventies food trends: devilled eggs, towering trifles, ginger-laced pumpkin soup, disco music, and polyester that repels both gravy and difficult subjects. If the national mood swings wildly, just match it with a punch bowl, a fondue set, and “Copacabana” on repeat.

Some “Very Seventies” (and Lobster) Recipes for Your Rebellion

• Classic 1970s Deviled Eggs
  What’s more vintage than a platter of these beauties perched proudly on the coffee table, right next to the shag carpet? Hard-boiled eggs, halved and filled with a luscious mix: mashed yolks, mayonnaise, a squirt of classic yellow or Dijon mustard, sweet pickle relish, vinegar, salt, pepper, and (if you’re feeling wild) a dash of Tabasco. Pipe or spoon into whites, sprinkle with plenty of paprika, and garnish with chives or dill. Bonus points for arranging them on a molded glass platter. Optional: go full 70s kitsch with a spoonful of curried yolk or a bacon crumble on top.​ https://nerdswithknives.com/classic-deviled-eggs/

• Pumpkin Soup With Creole Lobster
  Hearty, spicy, with a sweet undertone—fresh lobster meat, cinnamon, nutmeg, 1 sugar pumpkin (or butternut squash), a dash of cayenne, and finish with crème fraîche. Start the meal this way.
  mainelobsterfestival​

• Mini Brioche Lobster Rolls
  Maine-style, with chopped lobster, tarragon, and lemon zest on mini brioche buns. Serve as a passed appetizer, preferably with disco-era cocktails.
  capeporpoiselobster+1​​

• Lobster and Bacon Stuffing
  Lobster, cherrywood smoked bacon, sautéed onions, garlic and semolina bread. Bake hot until the table gathers in awe (and a little confusion).
  mainelobsterfestival​

• Retro Dessert: Towering Trifle
  Layers of chocolate pound cake, custard, tinned fruit, Jell-O if you dare, and clouds of whipped cream. The higher it tips, the bigger the laughs.
  epicurious​

This Thanksgiving, embrace the chaos—with claws, camp, and a refusal to talk politics (beyond mild jokes about federal shutdowns for dessert). When the kitchen fills with laughter, disco, and the insane optimism of the Seventies, remember: the best way to survive family and national crises is with joy, butter, and a refusal to let the headlines take the wheel.

So here’s to lobster, laughter, and pure culinary insurrection. May your stuffing be bacon-laced, your flights ungrounded, and your conversation blissfully Epstein-free.

Happy Thanksgiving, America. The only thing being shut down this year is boredom.

Subscribe now

​

Today, November 4th, millions of Americans will cast their votes to determine the future of the country. While headlines focus on hot-button issues and familiar candidates, there is an urgent, everyday matter that shapes our families, farms, and communities: the food system. Now more than ever, it’s time to “Vote With Your Fork”—to consider how food policy, from SNAP to global trade and farmer support, affects the health and well-being of all Americans. research.open+1​

SNAP, America’s foundational nutrition assistance program, supports over 40 million people at risk of hunger. Election-year proposals and debates have put SNAP and other food programs in the spotlight, with some candidates advocating for work requirements and tighter eligibility, while others push to expand access and modernize benefits. The stakes are immense—especially as the cost of living soars and more families rely on help to put food on the table. Experts stress, “Everyone must eat, but food must be accessible to all… These issues have all become part of the 2025 debate”.​

American farmers face unique challenges as trade tensions with China persist and new policies around beef imports from Argentina test market stability. Tariffs, subsidies, and regulatory changes impact the price of everything from soybeans to steak, ultimately shaping what ends up in grocery stores nationwide. Large-scale proposals in 2025, such as Project 2025, have sparked controversy by promising deregulation and shifting favor to industrial agribusiness, threatening support for family farms and local food production. theconversation+1​

Subscribe now

Food policy is much more than price tags and export numbers. It’s about healthy options in schools, dignity for all at the dinner table, climate resilience, and whether community farmers can compete against global corporations. Deregulation of dietary guidelines and food assistance could undermine years of progress, increasing reliance on ultra-processed foods (which now make up over 70% of the average American’s intake). As one food systems expert recently noted: “Politics will never divorce itself from food prices… the cost and availability of food are always on the front lines of public debate”. ft+2​

Quotes for Reflection​

• “There is nothing more political than food. The things that we eat are the direct reflection of our histories.” – Anthony Bourdain facebook+1​

• “Food is our common ground, a universal experience that brings us all together.” – James Beard restaurantmode​

• “Politics will never divorce itself from food prices. Whether it is US President dwelling on the price of eggs, or bread riots in Sudan, the cost and availability of food are always on the front lines of public debate.” – Financial Timesft​

• “The decisions that we make here will impact hungry people around the world.” – David Beckmann dtnpf

• “An empty stomach is not a good political advisor.” – Albert Einstein foodreference​

Recent Coverage and Global Perspective

For a deeper look at international food security and election impact, readers can explore: FT.com Food Security News.ft​

No matter your party or politics, the choices made this election will shape the food system for years to come. When you vote tomorrow, think about the farmers, families, and communities whose future is determined not just by policy, but by each of us at the ballot box.research.open+3​

Billy Shore, a longtime leader in America’s fight against childhood hunger, offers a dire warning. “SNAP isn’t just a program for the poor. It is one of America’s most powerful tools for fighting childhood hunger, and it feeds children and families, strengthens our schools, and supports the health care system. If we allow SNAP benefits to disappear, kids won’t just lose meals — they’ll lose the opportunity to grow, learn, and thrive. Ending childhood hunger is not just about compassion, it’s about our country’s future, security, and competitiveness. No child should have to worry where their next meal comes from in the richest nation on earth”.denver-frederick+1​

Subscribe now

In a conversation with Billy Shore, he described America’s hunger problem not as one of scarcity, but of inequity and access. Food exists in abundance, yet millions of children go to bed hungry simply because their parents can no longer afford what’s sitting on grocery shelves. The end of expanded SNAP — a pandemic-era lifeline — threatens to widen that gap at a time when food costs are soaring and rural food deserts are multiplying. heartsonfire+1​

The expiration of these benefits, experts warn, could become the worst food catastrophe since the Great Depression. In small towns and big cities alike, food pantries are already reporting record demand. Teachers are seeing more children arriving at school without breakfast. Across America, working-class families who once stood on solid ground now find themselves on the edge of hunger. denver-frederick​

Organizations like No Kid Hungry, local food banks, and community-based programs are stepping up, but private action can’t replace a strong federal commitment to food security. SNAP has long been one of the most effective programs in reducing childhood hunger. Letting those benefits fade away now would mean turning our backs on millions of families at precisely the moment they need help most. nokidhungry+1​

This is not a story about politics. It’s a story about children — and about the moral and economic cost of allowing hunger to grow unchecked in the wealthiest nation on earth. denver-frederick​

Sidebar: Billy Shore on SNAP and Childhood Hunger

“SNAP isn’t just a program for the poor. It is one of America’s most powerful tools for fighting childhood hunger, and it feeds children and families, strengthens our schools, and supports the health care system. If we allow SNAP benefits to disappear, kids won’t just lose meals — they’ll lose the opportunity to grow, learn, and thrive. Ending childhood hunger is not just about compassion, it’s about our country’s future, security, and competitiveness. No child should have to worry where their next meal comes from in the richest nation on earth.”heartsonfire+1​

I’m Irish. I’d say potatoes, but that’s a quibble. In case you’ve been on a low-carb diet, José Andrés is the chef who left the classroom at 15 to attend a renowned cooking school in Barcelona, and then apprenticed at a celebrated restaurant in Catalonia called El Bulli. A few years later, he boarded a ship to America with little more than a paellalero and a smile. It wasn’t long after working in several restaurants in Washington, D.C., that he opened Jaleo in 1993, a tapas bar that introduced small-plate dining. It rolls merrily along to this day with offshoots at Disney World in Florida and in the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas.

Andrés was soon creating something completely different. After he and his family traveled the Mediterranean, he returned with an irresistible mashup of Aegean, Turkish, and Lebanese dishes. Recently, by the authority vested in me to write this piece, I went to see how Zaytinya was doing. Back when Andrés chose it for his whitewashed Greek taverna with sun streaming down through soaring windows, the neighborhood was run-down with vacant buildings and boarded-up storefronts, the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery a dead spot closed for renovation.

But the rent was right. Its neighbors now include the Capital One Arena, along with Tatte, the hot casual food chain, and swank Chanel and Hermes boutiques. Zaytinia is almost near capacity from lunch through dinner, even with the government closed down. It also has a Michelin Bib Gourmand award recognizing that it is priced reasonably enough for families to celebrate birthdays and chic enough for the expense account crowd to take a meeting. In the kitchen are line cooks who have been rolling phyllo dough for decades (nothing frozen allowed) and a front of house where it’s not just the second bowl of tzatziki (hold the pita, bring a spoon) that makes it work, or the addictive Crispy Brussels Afelia, but the “always glad you came” ambience of Cheers. You may arrive alone, but you won’t feel that way for long

In between Jaleo and Zaytinya (there are six others from Palo Alto and LA to South Beach), Andrés created some three dozen additional restaurants. His newest foray is easing the misery that is now air travel with a lounge at Reagan National, and another opening any day in the renovated Terminal B at La Guardia, a massive 10,000 square foot bistro with a view of Manhattan from the skybridge. Henceforth, the word “Delayed” popping up next to your flight will no longer induce dread so much as an eager “I’ll have another.'“

It’s more efficient to talk about what Andrés doesn’t do: he doesn’t do discouragement. In “Change the Recipe,” he fires up a metaphor to make a point about The Three Stages of Brunch. It starts with eggs meant to be fixed fancy. “You’re cooking a Spanish omelette full steam ahead. You show off and flip it, it falls apart. Stage two: Now you have a deconstructed egg and tomato mess on your hands. What do you do?”

A mess like that? I’d run next door for eggs, or to the store for something frozen, but not our hero. “People freeze and governments freeze, because we are trained to follow the plan, to be perfect. ” In crises, André sees those in charge sitting around arguing over how to amend the plan rather than how to save a country. Still, I understand the impulse. At Good Shepherd School, if I hit a wrong note during a rehearsal, my irresistible urge was to start over, going back to the beginning in a quest for perfection, until Mother Marita Joseph was close to breaking the Sixth Commandment (Thou shalt not kill) or demoting me to the lowly bassoons. It’s why I miss deadlines.

Subscribe now

His book is not for those expecting the latest recipes, or who harbor the illusion that one day, because they like to cook, they too could open a restaurant. It’s about life, its own self, how to give it your best and give your best to others not so fortunate, and not to be a food snob in a toque who oozes ego. Think of “The Bear” streaming on Hulu or Gordon Ramsey in real life, or those annoying gourmands who spend $2,000 for a pound of hard-to-dig-up fungus to show off their refined taste for truffles.

I’ve watched Andrés over the years and joined an interview for his latest book, concluding that either he is normal, or he fakes it better than (fill in your least favorite egomaniac here). His next step, after Jaleo was up and running, was to figure out how to reduce the amount of food restaurants were wasting. To that end, he joined the board of D.C. Central Kitchen, a local charity that feeds the unhoused. It also trains men and women seeking jobs in the food industry, including his own restaurants Andrés had a mind meld with DCK’s founder Robert Egger who remembers telling Andres repeatedly how crazy whatever his latest idea was. But then, Egger noticed, “he always went and got it done.”

It’s a stretch to go from coping with a sloppy mash up of eggs in the morning to saving starving people. In that situation, if you make a plan, you’ll find a natural disaster has something else in mind. But Andrés believes that “leaving your comfort zone brings out your authentic self.” When Haiti suffered a 6.4 magnitude earthquake in 2010, he set off for the island nation, certain only that multitudes of hungry people had lost everything and he knew how to cook.

His experience scrambling to make meals at camps across Haiti –where about half a million plates of mashed beans next to fluffy rice as Haitians like it–led to the founding of the World Central Kitchen so there would be some infrastructure in place for the next catastrophe, knowing there would always be another.

The next time came during a 2017 family vacation in the Caymans with his two best friends: Anthony Bourdain, former chef at Brasserie Les Halles in New York and TV star, and Eric Ripert, the top toque at Manhattan’s Le Bernardin, who also owns a hotel and the restaurant Blue on the Caribbean island. Andrés reacted immediately to TV news reports of Hurricane Maria’s devastation in Puerto Rico. With little more than a fishing vest, one pocket stuffed with cash, the other cigars, and a habit of shouting “Boom” when things are going well and something saltier when they’re not, Andrés took off to cook for the survivors.

There would be the equivalent of omelettes falling apart, of having too few hours in the day, of switching from his way of making things for how the locals do, subbing Puerto Rican sancocho stew for the rice and beans of Haiti, to give those left with nothing, the hope that one day they would have dinner at home again.

To a man with a hammer, everything is a nail. To Andrés, a man with a whisk, every person is a mouth to be fed, whether it is a Dad wanting to celebrate a child’s graduation without a payday loan, or an entire country left homeless with nothing to eat but wrapped crackers. This time, Andrés mobilized the nascent World Central Kitchen network of local chefs and volunteers, generators, ovens and food in 18 kitchens. “I’ve learned that sometimes big problems have small solutions,” he said. “I fill a plate, then two, then four.” Before long, he’d fed a village with approximately four million meals, 100,000 meals per day at its peak, using the Coliseo de Puerto Rio arena as a central kitchen that deployed trucks of food across the island.

While Andrés was setting up dining halls built of scraps throughout the island, Donald Trump landed long enough to make a cameo appearance at a church and toss “beautiful” paper towels to a crowd as if he were shooting baskets. The president later defended his let-them-eat-cake moment by describing how joyful the natives were “screaming and loving everything” as they scrambled for the quicker picker-uppers. “I was having fun, they were having fun,” Trump insisted.

Subscribe now

For his efforts, and without any campaigning for one, Andrés was nominated twice for a Nobel Peace Prize, in 2019 and again in 2024. Donald Trump waited in vain for notice of his paper-towel heroism from the Nobel committee. Today, however, his more mature efforts in Gaza may well be recognized in time for next year’s balloting, if the hostage release is actually followed by 12 months of peace.

As the years went on, Andrés continued his double life–part chef, part Mother Teresa. By day, he built restaurants that introduced America to Iberico ham and fusion cuisines, while also jumping on planes to places destroyed by Mother Nature, by war, by COVID where his efforts landed him on the cover of Time magazine. By night, he’d tended to the problems in arenas both foreign and domestic, and tried to snatch a few hours of sleep.

Something had to go. In 2024, the humanitarian overtook the corporate. Andrés made the difficult choice to hire a CEO to oversee the restaurants. To make sure that change left him with no spare time, he devoted himself to a new organization called Longer Tables, named for the notion that if one has good fortune, it is better to build longer tables to fit more people than higher fences to separate them. Under that umbrella, he is working to provide prosthetic limbs for Ukrainians maimed by shells and mines buried across the country, and to acquire the delicate equipment for facial reconstruction.

Andrés isn’t icky sentimental, but he believes in the power of a meal as the first glimmer to the victims of a calamity that they will live to see another day and that each one will be better than the last. Food, he writes, says “Someone far away cares about you; that you are not on your own. It’s a beacon of hope. It allows those in despair to have a little bit more patience, for one more day. That is what a plate of food is.”

A bit dramatic for some, especially journalists, who exist to expose the sinners among us, not the saints who are notoriously hard to write about given their excessive virtue that shows the rest of us up. I tried in the course of this piece, even starting over, to answer the enduring question of what makes one person build his life gradually, and then more, and then completely around the needs of others, while many, like me, construct a life around themselves. I expected to find a human weakness if I looked hard enough. As close as I came was Andrés’ odd fondness for Chick-fil-A. He’s been spotted more than once in the drive-through lane in northeast D.C., a block from the Costco that many cooks frequent. It’s not exactly a flaw, but he is a chef, after all, and he doesn’t go a few more blocks to Popeye’s for a superior Spicy Chicken Sandwich with a side of wings?

In his spare time, Andrés still produces podcasts and newsletters and promotes his latest best-seller, which shows how a person can triumph in one field and move on to a less glamorous but more gratifying one. He also picked up a Daytime Emmy for “José Andrés and Family in Spain,” a TV special made with Tichi, his wife of 30 years (whom he calls “the most amazing giver a person could have next to him”), and their three daughters. The family travelled on their respective stomachs to discover dishes worthy of bringing home. Over his long career, Andres has also won a National Humanities Medal, several James Beard awards, two Michelin stars for his minibars, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. At this very moment, his 18th book may well be gestating inside his laptop.

Andrés is no stranger to grief, surrounded but not engulfed by it whenever he touches down in one of the hundred disaster sites he’s landed at. But in 2018, grief became intensely personal after the death of his close friend, Anthony Bourdain of the trio that also includes Eric Ripert, chef and part owner of three-star Le Bernardin. Bourdain had come to shoot an episode of “Parts Unknown” in Asturias, Spain, where Andrés grew up. The two went up a high mountain to a pristine lake, the closest, Andrés said, “you can come to the stars, or to God, if you are a believer.” After the cameras were turned off, the pair lingered at the table, eating what was left of the ripe blue cheese, two best friends, in no hurry to end the day, watching the sun go down.

A week later, Andrés got a call from Ripert, who had been filming an episode himself with their mutual friend when Bourdain didn’t show up for dinner. Ripert went up to his room but by then, Bourdain had given up on life and hung himself. Since then, Ripert and Andrés have pondered how they could have missed Bourdain’s despair.

There is no answer to what-might-have-been. To honor Bourdain, rather than remember their friend on June 8, the day he died, they celebrate him on June 25, the birthday of the man they call the “troubadour and poet and lover of life.” With great joy, Andrés and Ripert raise a pitcher to Bourdain every year on Instagram to wherever he is “on his journey.”

Andrés’ book encourages readers to “change the recipe,” advice that is well worth taking to heart, although I choose to flat-out ignore it. Instead, what rings in my ears when I turn on the oven is his counsel never to take for granted that you will wake in the morning to another breakfast, to upend with misplaced bravado. Recalling his last encounter with Bourdain in Asturias and what might have been, Andrés has this advice: Since none of us knows which meal will be our last with someone we treasure, the wise thing to do is to “treat every meal with someone you love, as if it could be your last .”

Today, it's worth allowing the stillness to speak. In McCullough’s words, “History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.”

Rain in Washington has a way of sharpening focus—slowing the city just enough to see what deserves attention. Some afternoons, that’s enough: let the rain do its work. Let the rain settle; let the world pause. Less noise, more meaning. Breath.

Subscribe now

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Subscribe now

There is a remedy for the times—a radical act, hidden in plain sight. It’s the kitchen table, spread with steaming bowls and stories.

It’s the invitation to neighbors, both those we nod to and those we avoid. Some of the most authentic conversations I’ve ever experienced didn’t happen in boardrooms, or on television, but with hands wrapped around coffee cups and voices growing louder and softer with each course

We are wounded people, living in a wounded hour. It’s natural, almost instinctive, to retreat into our corners, to let grief and anger seal us off. But history reminds us: what unites us far outweighs the things that threaten to divide. When three women launched The People’s Supper in the wake of a bitter election, they weren’t pushing “civility” as some bland ideal. They were insisting on something braver—a pledge to actually listen, to see each other as whole and living, not just as a political label or target.

Their dinners—now numbering hundreds in cities across America—prove something essential: if you can move past the initial hyperventilation, the instinct to judge, you can start to hear. Not just arguments, but memories. Fears. Hopes. By night’s end, there were fewer answers, but more humanity at the table.

I’ve spent decades in rooms where sharp debate was an art form. But no matter how passionate the exchange, what mattered most was always the handshake, the shared meal afterward. That moment when issues became stories and stories became people. If ever there was a time to restore this tradition—hosting dinner parties, inviting honest debate, letting our homes become “brave spaces” for America—it is now.

Is dinner together going to save democracy? Not in one night. But it can soften hearts, plant seeds, and restore the trust that our politics seem determined to stamp out. So set the table tonight. Send the invitation. Open the good bottle and let the conversation flow. The American Table is not just an idea—it’s an urgent call to remember, to repair, and to rebuild, one meal, one neighbor, one story at a time.

I first came to Penedès chasing bubbles. Cava bubbles, to be precise. This is where Spain’s iconic sparkling wine is born — bright, refreshing, festive. The vibe here is generous and accessible, like a long outdoor lunch under a pergola (of which we enjoyed many). This is where winemakers experiment boldly, where native grapes like Xarel·lo, Macabeo, and Parellada shine, and where international varietals like Chardonnay and Cabernet have found a Catalan accent. It is innovation grounded in tradition.

Then there’s Priorat, demanding a bit more of you. The drive alone tells you everything: steep, winding roads adjoining dramatic cliffs, terraces carved into slate hillsides, tiny stone villages perched as if holding on for dear life. The wines are equally intense. Powerful reds, mostly Garnacha and Cariñena, with a brooding edge, structured and age-worthy. You taste not just fruit, but minerals, herbs, the echo of heat and stone. Priorat doesn’t hand itself over easily — but when it does, it’s unforgettable. Wines from here don’t whisper; they command.

Food tells the same story. In Penedès, I lingered over pan con tomate glistening with local olive oil, grilled sardines, and paper-thin slices of jamón, fried whitefish and seafood paella, always with crisp whites keeping things light. In Priorat, meals were heartier: lamb braised with rosemary, earthy mushrooms gathered from the same hillsides as the vines, dishes that demanded the depth of a Garnacha or Cariñena to meet them halfway.

But to stop at the rustic would be to miss the other half of the story. Catalonia is also a place of remarkable modern cooking—chefs who take the traditions and spin them forward with creativity and precision. You’ll find dishes that honor the same roots as the simplest country meal, but reimagined with bold technique and unexpected combinations. It’s a reminder that while the soul of Catalan cuisine is humble and grounded, its expression is as inventive and exhilarating as anywhere in the world.

Subscribe now

I love vermouth, so I was in my element in Catalonia. But I’d somehow never set foot in a distillery before. At Padró & Co. I finally did, and it opened my eyes—the layers of botanicals, the patience, the choices behind each style. I walked out with a deeper respect for something I’ve been drinking for years, and a little surprised I hadn’t done it sooner.

I’ve had some gloriously memorable moments here. A sunlit lunch under the pergola at Oriol Rossell vineyard, where crisp, citrus-tinged wines cut through the warmth of the day and the food — simple, fresh, perfectly matched — fostering a camaraderie that continued to resonate days later. An evening in the cellars of Familia Ferrer, where the owner poured not just wines but family history, stories woven between glasses.

At Clos de l’Obac, a tasting led by owner Carles Pastrana himself, pioneer and patriarch of modern Priorat. His wines spoke of slate and sun, but his presence — animated, generous, mischievous — was the real gift. Lastly and by no means least, a final night dinner at Pere Ventura, hosted by the vineyard’s co-owner Mireia Juve. The elegance of its historic estate — vaulted cellars, candlelit halls, the hush of heritage all around — provided the backdrop to an extraordinary meal and stunning wines.

When to visit? Take your pick. Spring in Penedès means green hills and blossoms, perfect for hikes or wine festivals. Summer brings long, hot afternoons cooled with a cold glass of Cava and a heaping plates of local seafood. Priorat in fall is a different kind of magic: harvest time, crisp air, the smell of fermenting grapes drifting from village cellars. Winter, with its fireside stews and bold reds, may be when Priorat feels most itself. You’re not really going to go wrong here.

Don’t choose between them. Taste both. Sip your way through Penedès, enjoy the ease and sparkle, then climb into Priorat for wines that demand your attention. Together, they show the full spectrum of Catalan’s offerings — and the best kind of wine travel contrast.

During my time in Catalonia I met wonderful people, some of whom have become cherished friends. I’m proud of my own heritage, but there is a bond here unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. Separate from the wines, but in truth, inseparable from them, it isn’t just pride or history or passion—it’s the sheer joy they take in being Catalan. To raise a glass here is to taste something more than fruit and soil. It’s to taste that spirit. We are Catalans, and we created this from our very souls. It is what we are.

All I can say is—go. From Barcelona, and even Madrid, you are so close. Spend time here. You’ll understand.

Additionally:

I’m putting together a 2026 small group tour to Catalonia—just good wine, good food, and good company. If that sounds like you, reach me at gian@TASTEtourandtravel.com.