Author: Mildred Bell

Every time someone mentions an oyster po’ boy they ordered at a hotel restaurant on Canal Street, you’ll hear a certain sigh in New Orleans kitchens. It’s compact and nearly private, but it has a lot of weight. Locals don’t want to act impolitely. They simply know what’s about to happen, and they are aware that it typically comes wrapped in the wrong bread. Most disputes begin at the bread, and most visitors become disinterested. Leidenheimer French bread, which has an airy interior that nearly vanishes against the tongue and a crust that splinters when pressed, is what a true…

You can hear the same sounds that people heard a century ago if you stand on a wharf in Stonington or Vinalhaven before sunrise. Coughing to life are diesel engines. The sound of rope hitting fiberglass. Somewhere, the weather is being played on a radio. In Maine, lobstering isn’t truly an industry in the sense that Wall Street defines industries. The men and women who work in this trade, which is passed down through families and frequently involves little paperwork, are skeptical of anyone in a suit telling them how to operate their boats. That’s precisely what they’re in right…

Lobster isn’t really a meal on the Maine coast, as anyone who has spent an August evening there will attest. It’s a sort of unwritten summertime custom. The corn is shucked on the porch, the pots are brought out, and there is constant debate about whether or not garlic should be added to melted butter. However, the ritual subtly changed during the past ten years. Charcoal grills and split tails shimmering under herb butter began to take the place of the boiling pots. If you ask quietly enough, practically every seasoned chef from Portland to Cape Cod will tell you…

A strange split-screen reality can be found if you walk into any mid-sized seafood distributor on the Gulf Coast right now. A printed shipping manifest with smudged ink from the damp of the cold room was on one wall. Conversely, a laptop was used to access a traceability portal that was unknown to half of the staff until last spring. The industry is moving at two very different speeds, and the ReposiTrak seafood traceability deadline is about six months away. The FDA officially gave everyone leeway. After Congress instructed the agency to postpone enforcement, the Food Traceability Rule’s initial January…

The fishmonger isn’t the first thing you see when you enter Market at 25th. It’s the mural by the entrance, the one with the neighborhood map of Richmond and the phrase “one team, one voice, one goal” taken from the nearby middle school. East End Fish Co. is tucked into a 400-square-foot corner as you pass the produce, the bakery, and a few neighbors chatting while leaning on their carts. It’s tiny. Surprisingly tiny. However, the fact that people continue to walk back to it—sometimes twice in one trip—indicates that something is going on here. The man behind the counter,…

Overcooking salmon can lead to a certain kind of disappointment. You are aware of the time. The fish goes opaque, the white albumin starts pushing through the surface like wax, and what was supposed to be the centerpiece of dinner turns into something dry and apologetic. Anyone who has cooked fish more than a few times has lived through this. It’s why so many home cooks quietly give up and order salmon only when they’re out. Which is part of why the slow-roasted method has been getting so much attention lately. It isn’t new, exactly. Cooks have been pulling fish…

What happens to people when they eat by the harbor in Nafplion is difficult to describe. Despite decades of effort, the majority of travel writers give up midway and turn to adjectives they would never normally use. Cinematic and magical. Silently devastating. The town is situated on the eastern edge of the Peloponnese and faces the Bourtzi, a small island fortress. The entire layout seems almost too calm, as if it was created especially for long lunches that stretch into the evening. The fishing port is not particularly impressive. That’s part of the ruse. On any given morning, there are…

On Tuesdays, friends who actually cook share a specific type of recipe in text messages. Those who pin and forget are not the kind. the type that, in less than a week, secures a permanent place in the rotation. Among them is Melissa Clark’s Vietnamese caramel salmon. A few years ago, it began to appear on weeknight tables, and for some reason, it hasn’t disappeared. Cá kho, the original dish from which it is derived, is a slow, methodical dish. Thick catfish steaks are cooked in a dark, peppery caramel in Vietnam for more than an hour, sometimes longer, until…

The food wasn’t the first thing that caught my attention. It was the smell of Hoi An’s harbor at five in the morning; it was briny, sharp, and slightly sweet, as if something living was being unpacked from the sea at my feet. Indeed, it was. Women wearing conical hats were hauling baskets of squid that were still twitching in the lamplight, while wooden boats with sun-bleached and chipped blue paint were pushing against the dock. Before tourists arrive, a fish market has a certain silence that is only broken by the wet slap of fish on plastic and fast,…

Your first reaction is to roll your eyes when someone tells you that a single dish at a small Logan Square restaurant has a two-month waiting list. Chicago has heard this tale before, usually in relation to a Copenhagen-trained chef or a tasting menu. The peculiar thing about Casa Tigre is how uncomplicated it is. There were twenty-six seats, mismatched chairs, and a hastily redrawn chalkboard above the pass. However, as of the last time I looked, the booking system was offering early July. After nearly ten years of cooking in other people’s kitchens throughout the city, Camila Rivero-Salazar opened…