The Tasty World of Food & Travel
with Shirley Fong-Torres

The Fresno Paradox:
Finding Fresh Food
In "America's Garden"
Whenever Wroburlto and I meet top chefs and restaurant critics, we ask them to confess their secret pleasures from what we call the "forbidden world."

Berea: A Tribute to Hope...and Greasy Beans
Wroburlto believes that “travel is the ultimate love song.” At least that was how my traveling companion defended the changes he made to Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics to a famous song from West Side Story...

Memphis Soul:
Which Came First, the Music or the Food?
When Wro and I visited Memphis in June 2007, the city was beginning an eerie 12-month celebration of tragic anniversaries and pilgrimages. May marked the 10th anniversary of the drowning of soulful pop icon Jeff Buckley, whose body washed up close to Beale Street, the legendary birth place of the blues...

Reef Break: Easy Riding in San Luis Obispo County, Where Great Wining & Dining Are Easy, Too
My traveling partner, Wroburlto the honey bear, had pestered me for a trip to San Luis Obispo County (SLO) for a long time. He finally convinced me by talking up the area's food and wine scene and by leaving brochures on my desk from some unique spas...

Pearls Before Swine: Goin’ Whole Hog for West Tennessee
I have never understood picky eaters. As a child of immigrants, I was taught to value all food. As a chef, nothing interests me more than transforming less popular foods into dishes fit for kings...

Yeast Rolls and Other Epiphanies: Eastern Kentucky’s Holy Kitchen, Hallowed Ham House and Sacred Lick
My granddaughters, Maggie and Stella, have rearranged my central nervous system. My senses still respond like those of a chef, but my brain is now all "pau pau," which is Chinese for a maternal grandmother...

Memphis Blues: Midnight in the Garden of Good & Even Better
My traveling companion is a drama queen. Wroburlto slurps grandiose settings and scene-stealing clothes like less-manic bears eat honey. He began pestering me to visit Memphis when he learned that Elvis Presley's personal tailor still keeps a shop there...

In Milwaukee Ethnic Food Scene Soars above Old Stereotypes
We began the next morning with Milwaukee's own Alterra coffee and high-altitude culture...

Milwaukee & the Rebirth of the Speakeasy (It's Not What You Think)
Milwaukee has long been known as "Brew City" of the Big Four Brewers. It used to be said there that "kitchen sinks come with three taps -- hot, cold and pilsner..."

San Antonio, Texas: The Ultimate Day of the Dead Feast
Like its most famous culinary treat, San Antonio is a trail-hardened contradiction, softened with water, wrapped in a corn husk and steamed to a lovely smoothness...

The Blue Grass Diet: It's Not Just for Horses Anymore
Wroburlto and I began our next day in Kentucky by returning to Winchell's for a state-of-the art southern breakfast. Owner-chef Graham Waller was as forthcoming with candor as he was with Kentucky country ham, grits, eggs and a special blue-and-white pancake concoction that celebrates the University of Kentucky colors...

Seeking the Magic of Horses in Lexington, Kentucky ... Plus Jockeys, BBQ and the Ultimate Sports Bar
What is this magic of horses that fills some of us with wonder from the first moment we lay eyes upon their grace? Lexington is the heart of the Kentucky Bluegrass and soon to be the first American city ever to host the World Equestrian Games. So it seemed like the right place to look for an answer...

Only In Detroit: Farmers' Market Tailgating,
Feather Bowling & the Ultimate Lark
The next morning, I didn't even attempt to find the hotel coffee shop. We took a connecting elevator to the street level lobby of the Marriott and then transferred to a taxi headed for Eastern Market...the nation's largest farmers market...

Long & Winding Road to Grand Rapids: Culinary Capitol of the Lake Woods

My honeybear, Wroburlto, wholeheartedly embraces the "Field & Stream" lifestyle...So, dressed appropriately, he began hunting for his own personal Hemingway experience -- by pestering me to visit Grand Rapids...

Detroit: Where Eating Is a Big, Wonderful World
When it comes to travel, my flirtatious bi-polor honeybear Wro and I are old-fashioned… Detroit is our kind of town, a broad-shouldered confederation of ethnic neighborhoods...

John Wayne and Paul Bunyan: Odd Kicks on Route 66
Having discovered "The Answer" to "The Question," my bipolar bear was carried off in a flash flood of New Mexican mysticism. After studying at the feet of Albuquerque's three green chile gurus, Mommy was ready to pursue less heated adventures in culinary travel...

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Green Chile and Balloon Rides Appeal to Taste and Adventure
Of all Wroburlto 's personalities, my bipolar bear is easiest to deal with when he thinks he's an American Indian holy man. At any rate, when he started telling me…about hot air balloon rides, river rafting and horseback excursions, I knew he was coaxing me into taking him on a "vision quest" to Albuquerque...

Nashville Beyond Honky Tonk: Old Hickory to the Best Old Chicken Ever
The next morning, as Wro flirted shamelessly through another decadent southern breakfast in the Hilton Hotel atrium, my resolve to broaden our cultural horizons increased...

The American Dream, Nashville-Style
My bipolar honeybear, Wroburlto, complains about my taste in music. So, imagine my surprise when Wro began dropping hints that we should visit Nashville...

The New Prague: Coffee, Tea and Free (Enterprise)
Our bellies full of "Soup from the Slaughterhouse Floor" and blood and guts "Don't-Call-It-Sausage," Wroburlto and I decided to take a break from historical traditions to go looking for the New Prague...

Old Prague: Pig Bones & Paradoxes
When an opportunity to visit Prague popped up this winter, we packed our bags immediately. For two millennia, the city's culture and cuisine were synthesized in a crucible that blended Czech, German, Jewish and Italian ingredients into the ever-changing pudding called Bohemia...

Year of the Rooster: Clean Thoughts, Honeyed Words
Lunar New Year Begins at the Threshold
Over a century ago, Oscar Wilde joked that America's only tradition was its youth.
This was a distinctly European joke; Asians could not have found it funny. In Chinese culture, tradition is not just the most important thing, it is the only thing...

How to Enjoy Feasting in North Carolina's East
Like wine fests in the 1990s, barbecue festivals are the "smoke and fire" of this decade's tourist industry from coast to coast….So when Gene Wiseman called to tell us about the first-ever Feast in the East barbecue festival in Goldsboro, North Carolina, Wro told me to start packing...

Groveland and Columbia: Gold Rush Ghost Towns Reborn
My bear and traveling companion Wro is a claim jumper of words.
Sometimes he misconstrues them in original fashion. So, when he told me that "tourists are always accidental," I laughed first and then thought about it. From the mouths of cubs…

"Mix 26 Boxes of Lemons with One Ton Olives"
The 21st Century Gold Rush to Jamestown and Sonora
Because my traveling companion is a precocious bi-polar bear, I sometimes forget that he is just four years old. So when Wroburlto first suggested that we drive to Tuolumne County, California, "for a lesson in Gold Rush history," I suspected some whimsical ulterior motive...

Legends of the Carolina Kitchen - Part II:
"Dump" Cooking and Real BBQ
After filling up at Big Ed's City Market Restaurant, where both the wisdom and the biscuits were treated generously with fig jam, I set out with my honeybear, Wroburlto, to look for the culinary soul of Carolina -- authentic barbecue. Cantonese chefs like me are instinctively drawn to cooking techniques that transform the cheapest cuts of meat, or the throw-away parts of a plant, into foods fit for emperors...

Tailgating and Century Hopping in Raleigh, North Carolina
Remember that quaint 19th-century concept called the picnic? If you do, I bet you probably also have a willow basket and a red-and-white checked tablecloth stored in your attic...

Hawaii: The Epicenter of Fusion-Cooking
Not too many years ago, the culinary highlight of a Hawaiian vacation was a boring version of the ubiquitous "surf and turf."…Those days are, thankfully, gone with the Pacific trade winds…

When Corn Cake WAS Dinner: Mountain Foods of Southern & Eastern Kentucky

Shirley Fong-Torres takes you on a personal journey, exploring the foods of Southern and Eastern Kentucky...