DISH tips

Sep 4, 2024 • 5 min read

Sep 5, 2024 • 6 min read

As the flagship carrier for Australia—one of the world’s hardest-to-reach, and well-traveled, countries—Qantas knows a thing or two about creating a comfortable long-haul experience. That’s a good thing for an airline with ambitions to fly the world’s longest route, Project Sunrise, which will connect Sydney to New York in 20 hours.

Sep 3, 2024 • 5 min read

Sep 2, 2024 • 5 min read

Once rather unknown to travelers, the Urla district in Turkey’s seaside Izmir province has recently been propelled into the limelight. That's thanks to a string of newly minted Michelin-starred restaurants (three with the famed stars, and three with sustainability recognition)—and trail of inventive and boutique wine producers called the Urla Wine Route. The area is a year-round reprieve that has managed to preserve and capitalize on its natural beauty; olive groves, fruit orchards, and vineyards here have become ground zero for the reinvention of modern Aegean cuisine and wine, inspired and sustained by the region’s fruitful lands. Today, Urla beckons with culinary delights, cultural treasures, and design-first hotels—here's how to experience the new nucleus of Turkey's fine-dining scene.

Hear the word “Rioja” and the first thing that comes to mind is wine — high-quality, fruit-forward red wine.

When newcomers to Canada, the Italian couple had discovered along Quebec’s country roads the joys of the casse-croûtes, the food shacks that lie dormant in the frozen landscape during winter and then burst to life during the all-too-short warm months.

On a damp morning in Istanbul, I pay a visit to Zeyrek Çinili Hamam, a recently unveiled museum in a 500-year-old public bathhouse that once echoed with the chatter of the Ottoman middle class. Getting there involves zigzagging through the winding cobbled streets of Zeyrek, one of four UNESCO World Heritage sites in Istanbul. It was a holy place 1,000 years ago, during the Byzantine Empire, but these days it's uncharted territory for most Istanbulites. Few people are out: only the odd chain-smoking vegetable vendor and some meandering octogenarians doing their grocery shopping. The fall air smells faintly of raw meat, thanks to the butchers who have long populated the neighborhood. Trying to make sense of Google Maps on my phone, I almost collide with several men haphazardly carrying a sheep carcass from a van. I am lost. Or at least I think I am, until I realize that I've passed the hammam four or five times without noticing its domed roof.

Aug 20, 2024 • 5 min read

For so many, Siem Reap, Cambodia, is synonymous with its famed UNESCO World Heritage Site Angkor Wat, one of Southeast Asia’s most significant archaeological grounds. But beyond these iconic ruins is a city brimming with riverside cafés, festive bar scenes, cultural experiences, and French-style colonial streets. Siem Reap is also a culinary hotspot, boasting everything from expertly crafted street food to contemporary cuisine, with several restaurants earning spots on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list. And outside the urban hustle lies exciting cultural experiences in the province’s rural villages and countryside.

I first tasted lavash in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia, at a restaurant named after the flatbread. Bakers rolled out huge ovals of thin dough, slapped them against the wall of a clay oven called a tonir, and, after leaving them inside for a minute, pulled out delightfully blistered bread. Pliable and paper-thin, lavash in Armenia is ubiquitous and versatile: For lunch, it can be stuffed with cheese and pickled vegetables; for dinner, it is often served with a barbecued meat called khorovats, the smell of which perfumes almost every street corner in Yerevan. Mine came with an omelet topped with blades of tarragon—an ideal summer brunch.

Aug 15, 2024 • 7 min read

“I’m So Happy You Are Here: Japanese Women Photographers from the 1950s to Now,” a new book published by Aperture, features wide-ranging portfolios by 25 photographers. As Pauline Vermare, a co-editor of the book, writes in her introductory essay, the primary focus of the women showcased in the book “has been, and remains, to find the means to be independent and represent their own experiences and views of the world.” Among the works included are those by the 77-year-old photographer Miyako Ishiuchi, who co-founded a photography magazine, main, in 1996. The book contains photos from “Yokosuka Story,” a 1970s series focusing on her hometown, the location of a major U.S. Navy base, and a still-life of a lipstick, part of her “Mother’s” (2000-2005) series, for which she photographed her deceased mother’s possessions. One of the youngest photographers in the book, Momo Okabe, 43, trains her lens on her own body and those of her friends, capturing both everyday experiences and life-changing events such as gender-affirming surgery and pregnancy. From photojournalism to works of collage, the book, as its introduction states, “lays the groundwork for understanding the enormity of what has been overlooked.” .

Aug 13, 2024 • 9 min read

Aug 13, 2024 • 12 min read

You could call it the perfect Philly afternoon. The weather at Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park one Saturday last spring was damp, drizzly, and gray, but no one at the Southeast Asian Market cared. There was too much fresh-pressed sugarcane juice, papaya salad, charcoal-grilled chicken hearts on a stick, crab fried rice, shave ice in countless flavors, and noodles upon noodles to be bothered by a little rain. Assorted languages flowed as groups of senior citizens and families with infants milled about the vendors. A quintuplet of teenage girls in black, white, and gray '90s-era hip-hop-meets-grunge outfits performed a choreographed dance to K-pop with age-appropriate enthusiasm on a covered stage. A vendor waited attentively as an elderly auntie adjusted her order from 15 to 17 to no, wait—she turned to consult with her friend and count heads—21 lumpia.

Aug 12, 2024 • 7 min read

Aug 9, 2024 • 8 min read

Aug 9, 2024 • 6 min read

Aug 8, 2024 • 9 min read