Writing
Essays on place, culture and the spaces in between.
Look At The Plates
When travelling, there’s a long list of advice people give about how to find a good place to eat. But I’ve never seen anyone say what I am about to reveal…
Setting Sun
Each day, everywhere in the world, the sun will set (extreme solstice points notwithstanding). Sometimes it’s visible, other times it’s hidden behind a thick blanket of overcast sky. On the motorway, outside your home, or at the beach.
Unfamiliar Kitchens
Eating out is one of the great joys of travel. I love food and I love trying as broad a range of things as possible while away, ideally local and ideally seasonal. We spend a lot of time planning what and where to eat on our trips to make sure we experience the best and most authentic food a place has to offer.
Trattoria Aldo
We take a left from the busy streets of the market. Catania is as edgy as I recall - the dark grey buildings, narrow streets and looming Mount Etna giving it a totally different feel to the baroque hillside towns of the Val Di Noto, where we have just come from.
The Long Way to Scaccia
Some foods find you. Others you have to hunt for. Scaccia belonged firmly in the second camp. I first came across it years ago, in a newspaper article I read.
Pandas and Poly Tunnels
Departing town and dodging Fiat Pandas making illegal, yet excruciatingly slow, turns. A BMW fails to stop at a stop sign and I am grateful to be on high alert. Cars sit double parked along the pavement, blocking a lane of traffic. It is apparently fine because the hazard lights are on.
Eerie Erice
We’re driving through the outskirts of Trapani. A rain shower passes over as quickly as it came, a common theme for this part of the north western Sicilian coastline in late November. The windscreen wipers begin to slow and the sun shines bright, glistening off the road.
I mercati di Palermo
Anthony Bourdain once said that the real heart of a place is found in its markets and that if you want to understand a culture, you should go where people shop and eat every day. I have always agreed with him. Whenever I travel somewhere new, the market is my first stop.
Midnight in Sicily
Our plane begins its descent into Palermo. The curve of the bay glows on our left, a soft necklace of lights against the dark water, while the mountains stand brooding around the city.