You can read the full “drinks” issue here. It also includes stories from Edible East End, Edible Brooklyn, and Edible Manhattan. Use this map to find a hard copy near you, or better yet, subscribe here.
The world is a darker place today than it was when we first began working on this issue three months ago. Of course, even then, our globe often gravitated toward the abhorrent, but at least Anthony Bourdain was still alive, and the “greatest country in the world” had not yet separated migrant children from their families at the border and locked them up in cages.
“How can we create a meaningful travel issue in the middle of all this?” I said to my husband over the sounds of my favorite newsy podcast. By then, I had already received from our writers so many of the beautiful stories you’ll read on these pages: on where to find the best lobster rolls in Maine, why Mystic is quickly becoming a must-visit city for food lovers, what drew David Burke to the Garden City Hotel. I worried that, once laid beside the gorgeous photographs we had commissioned to illustrate them, these stories would look almost like something we had dug up from a time capsule filled during happier times, when a great meal could still be celebrated without the nagging guilt of “Yeah, but what about what’s happening everywhere else?”
“I hear you,” said my husband. “But think of it as an opportunity. You get to show people that the world still has good bones; that the chaos hasn’t rotted the foundation; that our collective house is something still worth fighting for and caring about.”
Skeptical? So was I—until I traveled vicariously to the destinations featured in this issue: to Boulder, Utah, where a James Beard Award–nominated chef and restaurant owner is working diligently alongside local female politicians to preserve the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, a 1.9-million-acre expanse of land so stunning it defies description, even as the Trump administration plans to shrink it in half; to Westport, Connecticut, where a new generation is bringing life—and lots of visitors—to a family’s historic, sustainable oyster farm; to Cuba, where families are welcoming visitors for flavorful homemade feasts, even as rations remain slim.
“The world still has good bones,” said my husband.
My hope is that these stories will prove to you, as they’ve proven to me, that that’s true.
Wishing you and your family a bountiful harvest this season and always,
Meghan
