As a boy in Morocco, Mourad Lahlou, the chef and owner of the restaurants Mourad and Aziza in San Francisco, was sometimes tasked with fetching a preserved lemon from a dark stairwell, where the big clay pots of fermenting citrus were stored. Frightened by the intimidating space, he would shove his arm into a pot,…
I’m from a lush land. Green abounds in the South. Our climate is so dewy, so thick, that we learn how to breathe through our skin down here. The nearly neon green kudzu, not just a romantic notion, climbs. The vines creep over our lives, over corners, around hills, down slopes, into gutters. We pulse…
In the wake of a testy interview with Elon Musk, the former television anchor Don Lemon’s deal for a new talk show on X combusted just days before it was scheduled to air. Mr. Musk called off Mr. Lemon’s partnership with X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, the day after filming an…
This week, Where to Eat columnist emeritus Pete Wells has an ode to the patty melt that will send you running to one of the six New York City restaurant versions he spotlights, or the nearest diner. Patty melts, after all, have long been the bread and butter (and caramelized onions) of the old-school diner,…
As winter set in this January, Sarah Kieffer recalled how it snowed for eight months last year in her hometown, Minneapolis. For weeks on end, the temperature dipped below minus 20. Surrounded by grayness, she baked blueberry muffins for the cheer of their bright pops of blue. “It’s like when the hobbits got to Mordor,…
