Food & Travel

“I have the hard part, because I have to grow all the things she uses in the kitchen,” says Harvey Stephenson, referring to his wife Betty and their Grand Cayman Island agri-tourism enterprise, The Retreat at Lookout. “This keeps me healthy.”

You’d be healthy, too, if you grew all your own food—breadfruit, melons, lemons and limes, plantains, pumpkin, scallions, eggplant, passionfruit, coconuts, sugar cane—just an example of some of the farm-grown delights appearing on the menu at this hidden 20-acre retreat near Bodden Town, on the east side of Grand Cayman Island.

I am very wary of road-stop stalls, open-sided caravans and cafes, selling queasy, greasy food and unripe strawberries, dotted along the by-ways and lay-bys of ‘A’ roads all over the UK. But in Syria it is different. I was converted on the road from Palmyra to Damascus as we drove past acres of pistachio trees and on into endless desert. There we stopped for a simple Bedouin lunch at the Baghdad Café, 142 km from the Iraq border. A delicious meal of sautéed onions and cracked wheat cooked in oil, and served with olives and sheep’s yoghurt – and it was perfect.

Tacombi at Fonda Nolita, located in the heart of New York’s Nolita neighbourhood (i.e. North of Little Italy) is a cultural fusion of sorts; a Mexican beach party in the midst of hipster heaven. It was created by the dashing Dario Wolos, who is himself a cultural melange; born to a Mexican mother and a French father, his childhood was spent hopping from country to country.

There are 500 wineries in Napa Valley, America's foremost wine-producing region. Charter Oak Winery, in sleepy St. Helena, takes pride that it is the smallest. Oh, and by the way, it's also the most authentic, most traditional winery.

Two guys, and the son of one of them, pick the grapes by hand, turning them into award-winning wine.