• A road trip that avoids soul-crushing highways and bad snacks

• Hotels that make you consider canceling the rest of your plans

• The kind of roadside stops that usually involve paper napkins and zero regrets

• Why you should join me on a trip to Japan this summer

I’ve traveled to Japan for decades, but never like this.

This summer, I’m taking a small group beyond tourism, from Tokyo street food to private dining with Kiyomi Mikuni, onsen culture in Beppu, and rare seafood market access.

This isn’t sightseeing. It’s real access.

Small group. Limited cabins. When it’s full, it’s done.

Call 1-866-338-9579 or click below to secure your spot.

Buy Your Ticket

Great Eastern Summer Road Trip: Nashville to Maine Without Losing Your Soul on I-95

Start Your East Coast Road Trip in Nashville, Tennessee

Last year we did the West so now let’s do the East. The move is not East Coast from Florida to Maine. That just becomes a logistical nightmare. The better trip is to start in Nashville and head to coastal Maine by way of Appalachia, the Chesapeake, old resort America and New England, with every stop good enough to become the vacation if you wanted it to.

Don’t know what to listen to on your trip? Here’s my road trip playlist.

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• A Tokyo ramen hit list you’ll want to guard with your life

• Slurp-worthy bowls that locals actually line up for

• A few spots that might ruin ramen everywhere else

• Why you should join me on a trip to Japan this summer

I’ve been traveling to Japan for decades. I’ve never put together a trip like this, and I may not do it again.

This summer, I’m taking a small group for something far beyond tourism.

What this trip looks like:

• Tokyo street food, guided with intention, not guesswork

• A private dining experience at Kiyomi Mikuni’s restaurant that most visitors can’t access

• Four days at sea with curated culinary experiences onboard

• Traditional onsen culture in Beppu

• Deep dives into one of the most dynamic seafood markets in the world

This isn’t sightseeing. It’s access.

What makes this different:

You’re not figuring it out as you go. You’re seeing it through decades of experience.

You’re not just eating great food. You’re understanding where it comes from and why it matters.

You’re not checking boxes. You’re stepping into a culture that changes how you think about cooking.

Why Now:

Small group. Limited cabins. Once it’s full, it’s over.

If you’ve been thinking about Japan, this is the moment to do it right.

Want to join me? Call 1-866-338-9579 or click below to secure your spot.

Buy Your Ticket

Last week we talked about ramen in America. So let’s talk Tokyo today.

This summer, when I get to Japan, here is the private list I’ll be choosing from. Now it’s yours.

You want to grab a Michelin bowl? Go for it. But these noodle houses have something special going on and I prefer them above all others.

Save this for your next trip to Tokyo. Hopefully it’s with me this July.

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• Why ramen’s origin story is a lot more layered than you think

• How a global staple evolved into one of the most demanding dishes in the world

• A short list of bowls across America that are worth rearranging your day for

• Why you should join me on a trip to Japan this summer

I’ve been traveling to Japan for decades. I’ve never put together a trip like this, and I may not do it again.

This summer, I’m taking a small group for something far beyond tourism.

What this trip looks like:

• Tokyo street food, guided with intention, not guesswork

• A private dining experience at Kiyomi Mikuni’s restaurant that most visitors can’t access

• Four days at sea with curated culinary experiences onboard

• Traditional onsen culture in Beppu

• Deep dives into one of the most dynamic seafood markets in the world

This isn’t sightseeing. It’s access.

What makes this different:

You’re not figuring it out as you go. You’re seeing it through decades of experience.

You’re not just eating great food. You’re understanding where it comes from and why it matters.

You’re not checking boxes. You’re stepping into a culture that changes how you think about cooking.

Why Now:

Small group. Limited cabins. Once it’s full, it’s over.

If you’ve been thinking about Japan, this is the moment to do it right.

Want to join me? Call 1-866-338-9579 or click below to secure your spot.

Buy Your Ticket

The Origins of Ramen: From Chinese Noodle Soup to Japanese Staple

Ramen didn’t begin in Japan. It arrived there the way so many foods do, carried in the hands of immigrants.

Chinese wheat noodle soups landed in port cities like Yokohama in the late 19th century, feeding dock workers and homesick students who wanted something a little different than what the local diet allowed.

Japan took one look and did what it does best. Refined it, regionalized it, obsessed over it. By 1910, Tokyo had its first dedicated ramen shop, and within a generation, the dish had fractured into dialects. Miso in Hokkaido. Tonkotsu in Kyushu. Shoyu everywhere else. What had been immigrant food became national identity, a working class bowl that could carry a country through war, rationing and rebuilding.

Instant Ramen and the Rise of Convenience Culture

Then came the industrial miracle. In 1958 Momofuku Ando invented instant ramen, compressing comfort into a small tidy brick that required nothing more than hot water and a mild sense of desperation. It spread globally, a stealthy pantry staple built on the marketing genius of a new word: convenience.

By the early 1970s, Nissin Cup Noodles landed in America, and suddenly ramen wasn’t exotic at all. It was the food of subsistence.

For decades, that’s where it lived. College dorms, sodium bombs and plastic forks. The American relationship with ramen began as a funny little joke we told ourselves while we boiled water.

The American Ramen Boom: From Instant Noodles to Culinary Craft

And then around the year 2000, the joke ended.

Japanese chefs arrived. American chefs got the religion. Diners who had grown up on instant packets discovered what ramen was supposed to taste like. Long simmered broth, handmade noodles, the quiet geometry of toppings placed with intent. What had been a cheap commodity revealed itself as one of the most technically demanding dishes in the world.

That pivot is the story of ramen in America, now completing the full arc from immigrant food to industrial shortcut to artisanal obsession. It’s one of the rare dishes that exists comfortably at every level of the economy. You can spend a dollar on it or 30 dollars, and both experiences make complete sense to me.

I think ramen’s power is in its elasticity. Literally. And noting my clever wordplay, it’s why ramen isn’t a trend anymore. It’s infrastructure.

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• A handful of places that haven’t started performing for your camera yet

• Where to eat like a local without being told where to go

• Why you might want to book the trip now, not later

I’ve been traveling to Japan for decades. I’ve never put together a trip like this, and I may not do it again.

This summer, I’m taking a small group for something far beyond tourism.

What this trip looks like:

• Tokyo street food, guided with intention, not guesswork

• A private dining experience at Kiyomi Mikuni’s restaurant that most visitors can’t access

• Four days at sea with curated culinary experiences onboard

• Traditional onsen culture in Beppu

• Deep dives into one of the most dynamic seafood markets in the world

This isn’t sightseeing. It’s access.

What makes this different:

You’re not figuring it out as you go. You’re seeing it through decades of experience.

You’re not just eating great food. You’re understanding where it comes from and why it matters.

You’re not checking boxes. You’re stepping into a culture that changes how you think about cooking.

Why Now:

Small group. Limited cabins. Once it’s full, it’s over.

If you’ve been thinking about Japan, this is the moment to do it right.

Want to join me? Call 1-866-338-9579 or click below to secure your spot.

Buy Your Ticket

The Places That Still Belong to Themselves

There’s still a narrow window where a place feels untouched by expectation. These are the destinations where culture leads, not tourism and where simply being there is the whole point.

Why Some Destinations Still Feel Authentic

There’s a narrow window when a place still feels like it belongs to itself. You know it when you land nobody is trying to impress you. The food hasn’t been adjusted for an audience. Price is still reflecting a local economy rather than a globalized one. You’re not being guided toward something. It feels like you’re simply there.

I think the window closes faster now than it did 25 or 30 years ago. A few well placed photos on social media, a spike in flights, a whisper campaign among people who commoditize discovery and suddenly the place is performing for you instead of letting you live with it.

These places, in many ways, haven’t crossed that line. None of these places are secrets. They are simply early enough that the culture still leads.

That’s the challenge, that’s the window. And it closes whether you go or not.

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• A roast chicken that might ruin all other roast chickens for you

• A pancake so good I had to rethink my entire stance on breakfast

• Proof that some of LA’s best food is hiding where you least expect it

I’ve been traveling to Japan for decades. I’ve never put together a trip like this, and I may not do it again.

This summer, I’m taking a small group for something far beyond tourism.

What this trip looks like:

• Tokyo street food, guided with intention, not guesswork

• A private dining experience at Kiyomi Mikuni’s restaurant that most visitors can’t access

• Four days at sea with curated culinary experiences onboard

• Traditional onsen culture in Beppu

• Deep dives into one of the most dynamic seafood markets in the world

This isn’t sightseeing. It’s access.

What makes this different:

You’re not figuring it out as you go. You’re seeing it through decades of experience.

You’re not just eating great food. You’re understanding where it comes from and why it matters.

You’re not checking boxes. You’re stepping into a culture that changes how you think about cooking.

Why Now:

Small group. Limited cabins. Once it’s full, it’s over.

If you’ve been thinking about Japan, this is the moment to do it right.

Want to join me? Call 1-866-338-9579 or click below to secure your spot.

Buy Your Ticket

Best New Restaurants in Los Angeles You Need to Know

Last summer, several friends of mine realized that I was going to be on book tour and spending time in Los Angeles, so they gave me a list of new restaurants that they thought I should check out. Over the last seven months or so I have been. This list is not made up of entirely “new” restaurants, but they were all new to me.

I’ve eaten in LA on and off for most of my adult life, and for a time I worked out there as well. Los Angeles doesn’t reward restaurants that are really loud anymore. And when I say that I am not talking about decibel levels. That’s kind of a new thing out there. These days, the places that stay with me are not the ones with a publicist, neon, slogans or a reservation grid that looks like a Taylor Swift ticket drop. They’re the rooms that you almost miss. The strip mall dining rooms with two cooks and a line out the door. The stubborn soulful restaurants that feel like they exist whether you show up or not. LA hides its best food in plain sight. That’s the point, and why I love to eat here. This is a city where a charcoal grill in a parking lot can outcook a $1 million kitchen, where the most interesting plates are coming from people who aren’t trying to impress anyone except their regulars. If you know how to look, the signals are everywhere. If you don’t, well, then it’s all just traffic and sunshine. Which is why I like to do the looking for you.

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Today’s newsletter includes:

• Why some of the best pizza on earth is hiding in Tokyo

• A handful of Tokyo pizzerias that take dough as seriously as religion

• A gentle nudge to come eat your way through Japan with me this summer

Why Tokyo Might Serve the Best Pizza in the World

In July I am helping to lead a trip to Japan aboard one of the great ships that Mitsui operates. A summer cruise through the islands of Japan is my idea of heaven. So is pizza.

Japanese culture is incredibly deep. The arts, the sports, the museums, the temples, the shops, the landscape, the gardens, the daily life. Japan is arguably the number one destination for travelers globally. Everyone tells me they want to go.

There are many reasons why, but the biggest may very well be the food scene there. We are making stops in several ports, including Busan, South Korea, one of my favorite places to eat anywhere. But according to a recent study, everyone wants to eat in Tokyo.

We will be spending four days there, so I thought as a way to gently twist your elbow to come with me this summer, I might throw a few food guides together for those that want to know what I will be eating when I get to that city. Let’s start with something you aren’t expecting.

Tokyo’s Culture of Culinary Obsession

Tokyo contains well over 160,000 restaurants, many of them run by obsessive craftsmen who dedicate their lives to perfecting a single dish. That culture of specialization is what makes the city one of the greatest places to visit for any traveler, not just the food obsessed.

From shoes to leather goods, from pens to watches to blue jeans and blankets, Japanese expertise is unrivaled. So it isn’t just food. But I am always focused on hunting for the noodle shop with steamed foggy windows, the eel counter with sauce stains older than most restaurants in this country, or the shaved ice stand where each bowl is built like a piece of sculpture.

Why Tokyo’s Neapolitan Pizza Is So Good

Pizza is one of those small miracles that shocks most visitors to Tokyo.

The city took Neapolitan pizza seriously a little over two decades ago and then, because Tokyo is Tokyo, pursued its perfection with monastic discipline. Many of the best pizzaioli trained in Naples, imported their own ovens brick by brick from Italy and obsessed over flour, tomatoes and mozzarella with the intense focus of a Swiss watchmaker.

The result is that Tokyo now quietly serves some of the best pizza you will taste on any continent. They do not have the depth or breadth of Naples or New York City, but their best is equal to or better than the best offered anywhere else.

It is food craziness.

Dine anywhere from the list below and tell me I am wrong.

Or better yet, come with me.

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Today’s newsletter includes:

• Bicycles, basket boats and why crab fishing is half theater half genius

• The crispest banh xeo I have eaten in years and a trick I am absolutely stealing

• Why a perfect day in Hoi An might convince you to pack a bag

In Vietnam with Modern Adventure

Six days ago I left for Vietnam, helping to lead my second trip with my friends at Modern Adventure. All of my trips I talk about here on my Substack before we tell the rest of the world. You all got that blast yesterday in your inbox.

Typically, today you get a recipe, a video and a little essay about what makes the food important. Because I am on the road we are hitting a quick pause on that for this week, but I wanted to give you an idea of what we did yesterday, something to wet your whistle and get you thinking about the trips I have coming up, beginning with my Japanese chef’s summer cruise with the legendary Kiyomi Mikuni through the Japanese islands.

Enjoy this snapshot of my current MoAd trip. Then coming soon, Italy and Thailand.

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• Why 9 million people and roughly 47 million motorbikes somehow make perfect sense

• A grandmother with a soup pot who could outlast any global fast food chain

• How a city can survive empire, war and still argue about where to get the best egg coffee

Hanoi Vietnam Travel Guide: History, Culture and Street Food in a City That Remembers

Hanoi does not choose between past and present. It stacks them on top of each other and keeps moving. That tension is the point.

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• Why I have willingly eaten stone crab 200 times and still show up like it’s my first rodeo

• A steakhouse courtyard that made me question every bad date I have ever had

• Proof that Miami can argue with itself all it wants, as long as it keeps feeding me like this

Joe’s Stone Crab in Miami Beach: A Historic Stone Crab Institution

Miami loves a shiny new thing, until it doesn’t. It loves the legend until the legend turns into a wax works. Here are two restaurants that pull off the trick every operator dreams about. They make you feel lucky to be there, even when you paid for the privilege. Sunny’s and Joe’s Stone Crab are two sides of the same coin, birthed in different centuries, spent with the same grin. In their own ways, both are practically perfect restaurants. One has aged like fine wine. The other arrived fully formed, a born natural, as if Miami coughed it up one humid evening and said, fine, here, take this.

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• Why quiet, local restaurants often serve the most memorable meals

• A thoughtful list of some of my standout hidden gem restaurants across the United States

• Signature dishes and must-try menu items at each destination

My Curated List of Hidden Gems Across the USA

Some restaurants shout for attention. They have PR handlers, concept lighting, and bartenders who introduce themselves like they’re presenting at Davos. They are fine. Some are great. They are also easy to find.

The places that matter most rarely raise their voices. They live in neighborhoods with working doorbells and unglamorous parking. They are beloved by regulars who didn’t stumble upon them because discovery implies novelty. These rooms have been quietly doing necessary work for years. They feed people who are hungry, not people performing hunger for the internet.

Across the United States, thousands of these restaurants exist—family run, stitched into their communities, often underlit, sometimes cash only, frequently perfect. They do not travel as well as headlines because they don’t need to. They are famously local, and that fame is earned nightly, table by table, by cooking what keeps people coming back with friends. These are the restaurants I seek out the minute I land in a city. They are part of a list I often think twice about before sharing. Do I really want to make it harder to get in? You deserve to know about them, and these restaurants deserve your business.

Consider what follows a small sampling off the top of my head, a handful of places I would send you to before pointing you at the “hot reservation” spot. If you were visiting these cities, make them your first stop. You will eat food served with an accent, a point of view, and a history. You will meet our country as it actually exists—plural, stubborn, joyful, and far better at dining than agreeing with itself. Hidden gems are not really hidden. They are simply not advertised to people who may not be their audience in the first place. I am grateful that I care so much about them.

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• A framework for choosing destinations that reward curiosity over checklists

• Seven global destinations gaining momentum without losing their soul

• Practical reasons why now is the moment to go

• A limited time Shun and Kai Housewares discount code for paid subscribers

Where to Travel in 2026 Before the Crowds Catch Up

Okay, over the last couple of weeks we’ve talked about a lot of travel issues, trends, and philosophies. We even talked a lot about what the future of travel looks like. So today I want to just tell you where to go.

These are places that reward curiosity over checklist. What do they all have in common? Cultural depth, sensory payoff, great cooking, and a sense of arrival that feels earned. I think of this as a map for travelers who want to get somewhere before the crowds do or return after the story has matured. Go now while the stories still belong to, and are still being written by, the people who live there.

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• How AI is remaking travel planning and reshaping desires

• The rise of wellness as a measurable travel priority

• Trends in overtourism and slow travel in 2026

Travel in 2026: The Year of Recalibration

Travel in 2026 is not about escape. It’s about recalibration. For years we treated travel as consumption: more passport stamps, more selfies, more velocity. I can feel the pendulum swinging. The forces shaping how we move through the world are not driven by novelty anymore, but by fatigue, by data, by crowd pressure, and by a radical desire for control over our own time. Here’s how I see it: luxury has become access. Wellness has become maintenance. Technology is no longer flashy, it’s invisible, always present. Cities are beginning to push back. Trains are once again desirable and a great place to sleep.

Today, we break down the forces reshaping travel and what to expect in 2026. Part two, including my number one travel trend, will appear on Friday. This week, we also have a special New Year’s Eve recipe that you will want to make all year long. Have a great end to 2025 everyone!

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• Why intention, not spectacle, defined the most important restaurant openings of 2025

• How smaller, personal restaurants outperformed glitzy, high budget concepts

• Five new restaurants that mattered this year and why they earned that distinction

Why 2025 Actually Mattered for New Restaurants

This was not a year of hype. It was a year of conviction. The restaurants that mattered in 2025 did not try to dazzle us. They tried to mean something, and that made all the difference.

Why This Year Was Different for Restaurant Openings

If there was a unifying theme to restaurant openings in 2025, it wasn’t luxury, novelty, or even technique. It was intention. This was the year that chefs stopped chasing spectacle and started opening places that felt necessary. Necessary to their cities. Necessary to their histories. Necessary to diners who want more than a clever sentence on the menu. Opening restaurants now is an act of faith, bordering on defiance, and the best new restaurants understand that their job is not to impress us, but to anchor us.

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• Why Puerto Rico is one of the smartest last-minute December escapes in the hemisphere

• A road-trip-driven way to experience the island—from San Juan to the mountains, rainforest, and west coast

• Where to eat and stay across Puerto Rico, from soulful local cooking to refined resorts that respect place

Why Puerto Rico Works as a Last-Minute December Escape

If the calendar says December and your bones say “sun now,” there are a handful of places that work beautifully at the last minute because they combine reliable weather, easy airlift, and the kind of atmosphere that doesn’t feel like a manufactured holiday escape.

Puerto Rico is one of them. It rewards motion. You land in San Juan for the history and the hum, then you start driving and the place keeps changing you.

San Juan Is the Prologue, Not the Whole Book

San Juan is the prologue, not the whole book. Five centuries of Spanish colonial muscle still stare down the Atlantic from El Morro, and the city is lived in rather than staged. Eat well, walk the blue cobblestones, then point the car west.

The coast softens, the crowds thin, and by the time you hit Rincón, Puerto Rico has turned feral in the best way. Surf breaks, sunsets, and roadside food stalls selling alcapurrias that drip excellence. This is the island exhaling.

West Coast Puerto Rico: Rincón to Cabo Rojo

Keep going and you reach Cabo Rojo, where the salt flats glow pink and the lighthouse feels like the edge of the map. The beaches here are wide, bright, and unrushed, the kind that make you forget what day it is.

Then the road pulls you inland, climbing toward the Cordillera Central. Coffee replaces cocktails. In towns like Adjuntas and Jayuya, you feel the agricultural backbone of the island: cooler air, mountains wrapped in clouds, and the reminder that Puerto Rico feeds itself as much as it entertains.

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• why I’m obsessed with Scotland right now

• four stops you must make when you travel there, from its major cities to its undisturbed wildness

• tons of restaurant recommendations for Edinburgh, Glasgow and the Isle of Skye

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Scotland feels like the world turned the saturation knob all the way up. The country is vibrating with confident wildness. The land there always had scenery that could make a poet weep into his whiskey, but right now it feels newly alive. Call it cultural momentum or the revenge of ruggedness in an age of digital fatigue. Scotland offers the corrective tonic of a place that doesn’t care about your screen time and will happily drown your notifications in a nearby loch.

The cities are having a moment too. Edinburgh has shaken off a summer festival hangover and is now thrumming with sharp young chefs and galleries run by people who are allergic to boredom. Glasgow remains the country’s perennial mischief-maker, a culture lab where music, design and food get tossed together like a punk ceilidh and comes out so gracefully. Then there are the Highlands, which feel like a cathedral built by geology. You go there to be reminded that nature still wins all the arguments.

Right now, I am craving places with soul instead of spectacle. Scotland has that in spades. You get myth and modernity happily skipping stones together. You get seafood that tastes like it vaulted straight from the sea onto your plate. Most of all, you get a country that rewards curiosity with generosity. Scotland is ready. Go there.

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• recommendations for three recent Scottish detective shows I’ve loved

• a nod to a Scottish staple show

• my thoughts about what these programs show and tell us about Scotland and why they should give us all the urge to travel

Scotland has gotten under my skin, the same way a good whiskey crawls up the back of your throat and sparks a little fire in your brain. I’ve traveled there often enough over my career, which led me to watch every Scottish detective show I could over the past few years.

That made me feel like I’d been adopted by a nation of people who treat weather as a personal affront and hospitality as an unspoken civic duty. These series give you Scotland as it is lived, not the tourist fantasy. They serve the rain cold, the humor dry and the moral clarity cloudy, usually because the killer is hiding somewhere between a damp hedgerow and the secrets of a family that hasn’t spoken the truth since William Wallace was alive.

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• the reasons I love to stay in a small hotel, where I can really meet a city and experience something curated

• my review of a stupendous small hotel, No Vacancy in Kansas City

• more intel on where to eat and visit during a stay at No Vacancy, in one of the city’s most interesting neighborhoods

Some people like a hotel that feels like an airport terminal with carpeting. They want the points, the predictable beige. They want a restaurant called something like “Urban Tavern,” or a name that uses that annoying ampersand: “Ball & Chain.” Fine.

But if you travel to meet the city rather than merely to pass through it, the smarter move is a boutique hotel. Small places have opinions. They are curated rather than standardized. They have art chosen by a human instead of a focus group. The staff knows where to send you for late-night noodles, not just how to print out your boarding pass. In a good boutique property, the building, the neighborhood and the guest rooms are all part of the same conversation. You wake up feeling like you live there, at least for a weekend, which I would insist is the entire point of travel in the first place.

The New York City equivalent: Think about a stay at the Hotel Chelsea instead of a chain, even a luxury one. See my point?

No Vacancy in Kansas City is exactly that sort of place. Tucked into a restored 1920s brick building at 1717 Wyandotte, it sits in the Crossroads Arts District, the creative heart of the city, where old warehouses were handed over to artists and never shifted back. Crossroads is dense with more than 30 galleries and studios, including spots like Belger Arts, the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center, Blue Gallery and Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art. On First Fridays, the streets turn into a rolling block party of open-doors food trucks and bands wedged between loading docks. Breweries cluster in what locals call Brewers Alley, and there are serious restaurants everywhere you point your fork: Michael Smith’s Extra Virgin, Lula, Farina, Green Dirt on Oak, La Bodega, Lidia’s in the historic Freight House and the German-leaning Affäre.

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Today’s newsletter includes:

• my argument for why Paris at Christmastime is an experience unlike any other

• some essential travel tips, including how to most efficiently and affordably book flights and where to stay if you’re looking for a great new hotel

• five restaurants where you must try the steak au poivre, the perfect December dish

Christmas in Paris is what happens when a city that already dresses up for dinner decides to dress up for midnight mass. The clichés are all true: The Champs-Élysées and the Avenue Montaigne drip with lights. The big stores, like the Galeries Lafayette, Fauchon and Printemps, compete in a kind of couture arms race of window displays, and every bakery seems to be engaged in a quiet civil war over which can create the most indecent Bûche de Noël. Paris in December feels less like a destination and more like a stage set for your best life, with the Eiffel Tower blinking on the hour to remind you that you chose correctly. The air smell smells of butter and roasting chestnuts … which is to say, in my estimation, civilization.

What makes Paris the best place to travel for the holidays is not snow globes and sentiment; it is rhythm. This is the city that does winter properly. The Christmas markets along the Tuileries and at Hôtel DeVille aren’t stalls that flog trinkets; they are temporary villages of tartiflette, raclette and spiced mulled wine. Locals actually go to these pop-ups, and the whole thing feels cheerfully lived-in rather than screaming “holiday activation.” Ice rinks appear, choirs echo through centuries at old churches, and even the most hard-boiled travelers find themselves loitering in front of a crèche scene thinking about time and grace.

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• A short discussion of sushi’s dissemination from Japan and its history in Austin.

• My review of Yoshi Okai’s Otoko, which might be Austin’s best restaurant.

• Thoughts about individual dishes and Okai’s overall presentation at Otoko, which is intimate, surprising and precise.

I walked into Otoko, and I felt as though someone had whispered the word “intimacy” into my ear and the restaurant decided to accommodate. This little jewel box is tucked behind the South Congress glamour parade up a flight of stairs, a restaurant that truly hides in plain sight while the city outside is busy reinventing itself every few days. Austin is a boom town that inhaled its own mythology and loved the feeling. It’s a place where new restaurants appear with the regularity of a garage band and disappear just as quickly. Yet in the middle of all that civic overconfidence sits chef Yoshi Okai, who has built something that feels unlike any other restaurant in town, an act of cultural diplomacy, disguised as dinner.

Okai is an electric presence at the counter. Well, to be honest, I’ve known him for many years, and he’s just an electric presence, period. There is the amazing haircut, the ear-to-ear grin, the sense that he sees everything and misses nothing. He has the easy authority of a man who knows exactly why you are here and how he will dismantle your expectations, course by course. Austin is no stranger to serious Japanese food, especially sushi, thanks to Tyson Cole’s Uchi and Uchiko, the godparents of Texas omakase culture that taught the city raw fish required more than soy sauce bravado. But Otoko plays in a different register entirely. This is not a temple of sushi. It is a speakeasy of precision, the culinary equivalent of a whispered conversation between old friends.

“The Blue Food Cookbook,” by Andrew Zimmern and Barton Seaver, in collaboration with Fed by Blue, is now available for purchase! Spilled Milkers, get your hands on a copy today. You can order it from a variety of online retailers, and it’s also available at independent bookstores across the country.

“The Blue Food Cookbook” is a celebration of fish and shellfish and will be your seafood bible.

Sushi as we know it is an evolutionary tale that begins with fish preserved in rice centuries ago, a trick for people who needed to carry dinner across time. Over generations, that preservation art became Edomae sushi and the roadside and bar snack of 19th-century Tokyo, where vinegar, rice and fresh fish conspired to make fast food into a minor miracle. The world adopted it the way teenagers adopt a trend: enthusiastically and at times incorrectly. Supermarket California rolls are to Edomae what karaoke is to opera. Both involve a stage and a voice, but that’s where the similarities end.

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• An explanation of mussels’ place in Paris cuisine.

• All the information you need to track down great mussels in Paris, where they can sometimes be hard to find.

• A list of 12 Parisian spots for great mussels, broken down into categories, so you’ll be able to find exactly the type of restaurant you’re looking for.

Paris does many things better than anyone. Mussels are not one of them. They’re Belgian by birthright and northern French simply by temperament, which means in Paris, you have to be selective. Otherwise, you’ll end up with a sad pot of overcooked bivalves slumped in a broth that tastes like melted streetlights.

The trick is simple. Follow the restaurants that live and die by their seafood sourcing. Not the postcard brasseries or the neon museums, but the kitchens where cooks obsess over the day’s deliveries and treat steam timing like a science. That’s where mussels in Paris stop being a compromise and start being a pleasure.

The 12 spots on this list are the ones that get it right. No chains, no gimmicks, no tourist bait … just clean, fresh, honest mussels that respect the shell, the broth and the eater.

“The Blue Food Cookbook,” by Andrew Zimmern and Barton Seaver, in collaboration with Fed by Blue, is now available for purchase! Spilled Milkers, get your hands on a copy today. You can order it from a variety of online retailers, and it’s also available at independent bookstores across the country.

“The Blue Food Cookbook” is a celebration of fish and shellfish and will be your seafood bible. If you want to catch the book tour, click here for more details.

REMEMBER: Paris doesn’t have a mussel culture like Brussels, Bruges or the north coast, so the places that shine tend to be seafood houses first, mussel houses second. That’s why these picks lean toward restaurants that live and die by sourcing seafood. If you want the best mussels in Paris, you follow the chefs who buy the best shellfish. Simple math. And if you love seafood, just follow these mussels.

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