TRUTH IN TRAVEL OCTOBER 2016 EATING OUR WAY AROUND THE WORLD TOKYO • TEL AVIV JAMAICA • MIAMI • IRELAND AND OF COURSE ... ITALY 10.16 FEATURES 80 Tokyo Counter Culture Peter Jon Lindberg finds that, in the city’s best restaurants, the last place you want to sit is at a table. At Tokyo’s Bar BenFiddich, they mix a mean gimlet. The Cover Tortellini and 70 88 96 rigatoni at Taverna del Sette, in Trevi, Umbria; shot by Fish Forage Feast Jamaica A (More) Perfect Union Oddur Thorisson. David Prior heads to Ireland’s How an island known for its New York City restaurateur Danny wild Connemara region for a lunch jerk shacks became a food paradise. Meyer returns to Tuscany for a master that’s as hard-won as it is delicious. By Lucinda Scala Quinn. class in hospitality. By Matt Duckor. 4 Condé Nast Traveler photograph by BRIAN FINKE 10.16 WHERE + WEAR (15) WORD OF MOUTH (27) 16 30 47 What I Pack Checking In Hotel Breakfast Isabel Marant pretty Where the gypset At Australia’s Brae, much just needs her stays in Bali; two you’ll be reminded bikinis—and a deck of Miami hotels with at “brekkie” that tarot cards—in Ibiza. restaurants that this restaurant is on live up to the hype. a 30-acre farm. 18 The Upgrade 34 50 If you take just Road Trip Barhopping one piece of jewelry, Braking for startlingly Houston’s most 16 make it purple. good seafood along plugged-in barmen Sweden’s west coast. show us a good time. 22 On Location 39 54 Mod-inspired pieces Black Book Journey that channel London’s How to navigate Tel Novelist Fatima slickest hotel bar. 24 Aviv, Israel’s food and Bhutto remembers party capital. Damascus, her 24 adopted hometown. Plane Clothes 58 Café Henri’s Camille 27 Becerra hits a new Where in the World to Eat restaurant as soon as The dream list you’ve she lands—without been waiting for— changing clothes. our 147 favorite restos around the globe. 10 Editor’s Letter 106 Intel 108 Souvenir 39 30 Clockwise from top: Photographs by Andrew Hetherington; Weston Wells; Chip Riegel; Sivan Askayo; Linda Pugliese 6 Condé Nast Traveler 10.16 CONTRIBUTORS Fatima Bhutto Brian Finke Ashlea Halpern Novelist & memoirist Photographer Contributing Editor Losing Damascus, p. 54 Tokyo Counter Where in the World Culture, p. 80 to Eat, p. 58 The airplane of Favorite spot in Tokyo? What scent takes you your dreams comes Bar BenFiddich was back? Hibiscus always equipped with? A amazing for its atten- reminds me of Kauai printer. Planes are tion to detail. It takes and flying over the Follow Us Jamaica’s Food Moment good places to work. ten minutes to make Na Pali Coast’s jagged a single cocktail. emerald cliffs by @ cntraveler Get a behind-the- Best room service? In helicopter. scenes look at writer Toronto, years ago What taste brings Lucinda Scala Quinn’s while I was on a book you back? Old Bay Most memorable Food on Film tour, a waiter at the Seasoning reminds restaurant? Kagaya in trip to the island, this Fairmont noticed I me of Maryland Shimbashi, Tokyo. It’s At video.cntraveler month on Instagram. had a sore throat and steamed crabs and standard izakaya fare, .com, Philly chef brought me hot water, summer on the but the proprietor Michael Solomonov Where to Eat in the U.S. ginger, and tea. In beach with my family. surprises patrons with schools us on Tel Aviv my fever and flu haze, plush toys, sometimes For stateside Do you prefer to travel street food from I was very grateful. in a frog suit. recommendations by land, sea, or air? Air. inside his hummusiya, our pool of experts Best souvenir? I like being in a totally Favorite souvenir? Dizenghoff, in N.Y.C.’s swear you can’t A blue-and-white different place after A huge 48-star Chelsea Market. djellaba from a tiny a short amount of time. American flag from miss, go to cntraveler shop in Aswan, Santa Fe Vintage. .com/best-restaurants. because it reminds What city surprised you? me of my childhood Melbourne. It had in Syria, where great pop-up restau- everyone wore them rants and stylish — around the house. people like a cooler version of Brooklyn. Talk to Us Subscribe Leave It to the Where are you going this Visit cntraveler.com / Ombudsman year? Email your photos subscribe, email Need help solving a and tips to letters@ subscriptions @ travel problem? condenasttraveler. com. condenasttraveler Email ombudsman @ . com, or call cntraveler. com. 800-777-0700. From left: Photographs by Michael Turek; courtesy Brian Finke; Jimmy Fontaine; Mikkel Vang 8 Condé Nast Traveler EDITOR’S LETTER 10.16 The fruit that comes after a meal at Lo Scoglio is almost too beautiful to eat. seasonal restaurant in the hills shared by two elderly sisters. From a tiny kitchen with a doll-size four-burner stove, the mustachioed spinsters with identical heavy eyewear brought out course after course of homemade chestnut trofie, fresh anchovies drizzled with olive oil, local cheese and salumi, and panna cotta. It wasn’t until I tore off a corner of a misshapen thin-crusted bread that I understood what focaccia was supposed to taste like—this one, just out of the oven, was almost croissant-like in its ratio of crust to ethereal inside. Add to that a slathering of algae-green pesto made extra velvety, one of the sisters told me, by the addition of a tiny pat of butter. Two decades later, “the sisters’ pesto” serves for Laurence and me as shorthand for a certain culinary benchmark. The simple preparation of spaghetti with yel- low tomatoes and garlic at Lo Scoglio, a modest The Meals That Matter seaside family-run restaurant in Marina del Can- tone, on the Amalfi Coast, was another of these epiphanies. While in both instances it’s nearly “You can’t afford minimalism,” our Swedish architect pronounced in her impossible to separate the natural beauty of the characteristic Scandinavian deadpan. With limited funds, my husband and I surroundings from the meal, the common thread were renovating our first apartment—a nineteenth-century Victorian wreck remains the primacy of—and confidence in— within which we naively hoped to carve out a John Pawson–esque interior. restraint. (Not to mention in the peak ripeness She was, in fact, right. As with all things—architecture, design, fashion, and, and local cultivation of fresh produce.) It’s a lot yes, food—the simplest, most irreducible approach is often the hardest to easier to hide behind a mess of spices, sauces, or nail. Think about the first time you had a plain omelet in France and mar- even the visual drama of anything in squid ink. veled at the disconnect between the native custard-y consistency and that But as Danny Meyer attests in his inspiration tour of its American counterpart, a dry, overstuffed futon of eggs accompanied through Tuscany (p. 96), the most intangible part by a slice of melon and half an anemic strawberry. of any perfect meal is the cultural ethos of gener- There are a handful of transformative meals savored on foreign soil that osity that comes with every bite. you dream about forever after. Not because they are fancy or esoteric, quite the opposite. Because you finally get what, say, every upscale terra-cotta- tiled Italian restaurant in West L.A. has been going for since the ’80s, when Amer- icans first caught wind of (and subsequently abused) balsamic vinegar and angel hair pasta. Like the time when, traveling through Italy after college, I coaxed a best-kept-secret restaurant out of a reluctant desk clerk at a small hotel in Camogli. A complicated set of directions, requiring bus and boat transport and a considerable hike through a residential neighborhood, Pilar Guzmán, Editor in Chief landed my friend Laurence and me on the patio of a modest home turned @pilar_guzman 10 Condé Nast Traveler PILAR GUZMÁN EDITOR IN CHIEF CREATIVE DIRECTOR Yolanda Edwards EXECUTIVE EDITOR Candice Rainey DIGITAL DIRECTOR Brad Rickman DESIGN DIRECTOR Caleb Bennett MANAGING EDITOR Paulie Dibner DEPUTY EDITOR Lauren DeCarlo FEATURES DIRECTOR Alex Postman FASHION DIRECTOR Sarah Meikle VISUALS EDITOR AT LARGE Jennifer Miller NEWS AND FEATURES DESIGN DIGITAL CONTRIBUTORS LIFESTYLE EDITOR Rebecca Misner ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Christa Guerra DEPUTY DIGITAL DIRECTOR Laura D. 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