Chateau St. Jean is one of Sonoma’s most well-known and beautifully kept-up wineries. Last October, the fires that attacked wine country reached Chateau St. Jean. I was relieved, as were many wine lovers, when we learned that the estate’s main buildings had survived with only ash and smoke removal needed. As part of a Wine
Read more

I recently tried the Mac Daddy at Smoke’s Poutinerie in Berkeley (2518 Durant Ave). Little did I know beforehand that there was such a thing as a poutinerie or that this Canadian chain had an outpost in the Bay Area! As a fan of fries, and a bigger fan of tons of crap thrown on
Read more

Disclaimer: I have only been in Barcelona for five days of my life. There is no way I can determine the best bites in the city. None. But “Best Bites in Barcelona While I Was There” is not a catchy title. That said, these are guaranteed by the Gourmez to be good bites, some of
Read more

In case you missed it, my next post is now live at the Localwise community blog! This one is on cheese shops in the Elmwood, Temescal, and Rockridge neighborhoods, which just so happen to be the closest neighborhoods to me…okay, they are conveniently the closest neighborhoods to me. I am blessed with amazing cheese options
Read more

My friend Sean Timberlake, founder of the beautiful Punk Domestics canning and preservation blog, has been leading hands-on culinary tours to Italy since 2012.  He has two coming up, 10/8/15–10/14/15 and 1/14/16–1/20/16, based out of the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. These are can’t miss experiences for those of you who love diving deep into food
Read more

It’s only a few days until Mac & Cheese Night #4, and I’m just now getting the write-up done for Night #3—it’s been that sort of month, y’all. You’d think I’d be tiring of all that pasta, cheese, and sauce by now, but frankly, I want more comfort food bliss. Night #3 was our biggest
Read more

Poole’s Downtown Diner 426 McDowell Street Downtown Raleigh Website Entrees: $19-22 This highly praised foodie haven from Raleigh celebrity chef Ashley Christiansen was Number #1 on my must list for places to try before leaving the Triangle. And I am super glad I did. It’s a foodie haven for a reason. But I was surprised
Read more

The Sustainable Classroom: Wine and Cheese The trio of organizers for my final session at the Sustainable Classroom, a day of intensive discussion and tasting of sustainable foods at TerraVITA 2012, knew their crowd. They knew we were seasoned foodies; the concept of pairing cheese and wine was not revolutionary to us, though it will
Read more

The Meat House 1508 E. Franklin Street Chapel Hill Website Donna Coon, who owns the recently opened Meat House in Chapel Hill with her husband, Paul, took me on a tour of the facility a couple of weeks ago. I was excited to try out this chain butchery because they’ve opened three shops in the
Read more

For our third day in London, we had a theme: FOOD. I didn’t actually do much tasting of food, but I did smelling and looking galore. London has many markets, and one of the best is the Borough Market, located in Southwark on the south side of the Thames. It’s a blend of produce, meat,
Read more