Food & Travel

To the Welsh eating is a function rather than a love affair and Welsh food suffers from an image problem – it doesn’t really have an image. That’s the problem. For many years there was only one fantastic restaurant, and that was in Abergavenny called the Walnut Tree, which we all made a bee-line for – now run by the great chef Shaun Hill (of Ludlow fame). Elsewhere during the last few decades it was still depressingly easy to drive into a Welsh town and stumble across nothing better than the local café or burger bar.

Lebanon, well known for its religious and ethnic diversity, is an ancient country; there are towns and villages that date back to Biblical times – the Old Testament, that is. This fertile stretch of 10,400 square kilometers that runs along the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea is dotted with some of the finest Greco-Roman ruins still in existence. Its cup of history overfloweth.

The early-morning light cuts through the trees and crawls over the red-tiled rooftops, the shadows are long and cool, and bit-by-bit the warmth of the Provençal summer sun stirs the day. It is Wednesday, and on this day every week, vendors set up their stalls in the historic heart of the town of Saint Rémy de Provence.

Last weekend I went up to Guy Jones’ Blooming Hill Farm. I love Guy’s farm and think of it as the next best thing to having a country house. Located about 60 miles from New York City, the drive up is only a little over an hour. Though I planed to have brunch, get some gorgeous organic produce and leave, inevitably, I always end up spending most of the day.