Intelligent Travel

Up Close with the Chef from Down Under

Growing up in Australia, Curtis Stone always had good food at his fingertips. His mom and grandfather both grew vegetable gardens and fresh food from the ocean wasn’t far away. His passion for sustainable, seasonal foods comes not only from his upbringing, but also from years of working in some of the world’s best (and toughest) kitchens. I caught up with Stone before his cooking demonstration at the Charlotte Shout Festival in North Carolina. The busy celebrity chef sat down with me to discuss travel, his philosophy on good food, and his upcoming projects. 

CURTIS STONE ON SUSTAINABILITY:

Stone began working at the Savoy Hotel in his hometown of Melbourne when he was 18. He eventually made his way to London, where he worked in some of Europe’s finest restaurants, including The Grill Room at Café Royal, Mirabelle, and Quo Vadis.

“I think great chefs always have a passion for the ingredients,” says Stone. “When you’re buying food at a good quality restaurant, you have to use everything. That’s sort of drilled into you. We’d buy the whole side of beef or the whole baby pig, so you couldn’t waste anything. The cost was already high because you’re buying premium ingredients.”

Stone’s cooking philosophy – using naturally produced and seasonal ingredients – carried over into his television ventures, including TLC’s Take Home Chef. For the past two years on the program, Stone has helped to bring flavorful, sustainable meals to tables across the nation. After casually accosting people in the grocery aisle, Stone goes on to cook for people in their homes, where he’s learned a thing or two about the challenges ordinary people face in the kitchen.

He now thinks of America as “home” and is quick to defend the country’s international reputation of being wasteful with its resources, especially when it comes to food. 

“There’s a lot of talk about ‘green’ at the moment, and I think it’s amazing the direction we’re going," says Stone. He continues, "The more people learn about food and how it’s produced, the more they question whether or not they want to feed that to their kids.”

“The beautiful thing about America is once America says there is a better way of doing things, everyone gets on board. And sustainability and recycling are becoming more important in the States,” he says, and believes going "green" ultimately comes down to personal responsibility and making good choices.

Paris Skyline Aims For New Heights, Or Lows?

The view from atop the Eiffel Tower could change dramatically in the next five years, as plans for six skyscraper projects on the outskirts of Paris are currently in the works. Yet another project received the green light recently to begin construction inside Paris city limits – making it the first building taller than 121 feet built in Paris in the last three decades.

Respected Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron (whose past masterpieces include Beijing’s Bird’s Nest and the de Young Museum in San Francisco) will spearhead Le Projet Triangle, a massive 600-foot-tall ultra-modern pyramid structure in southwest Paris (about five miles from the Louvre) that is so thin from the side it hardly casts a shadow. The building will hold offices, a conference center, and a 400-room hotel.

Many people see the project as a throwback to 1972, when the Tour Montparnasse, a generally detested 689-foot-tall structure, was erected, and directly resulted in the city imposing building height limits in 1977. The largest business district of Paris, La Défense, showcases multiple skyscrapers in a compact area, but it's outside official city limits. In fact, only a handful of buildings inside Paris proper are more than 12 stories. And that’s how Parisians like it; 62 percent of residents polled say they dislike skyscrapers within the city limits, according to a poll on the World Architecture News website.

It’s a sentiment shared here in D.C., says Roger Lewis, professor emeritus of architecture at the University of Maryland and practicing urban planning consultant. Lewis has also written the Washington Post column "Shaping the City" since 1984, which focuses on urban design and planning issues. I talked to Professor Lewis about the impending growth spurt in Paris, and how it relates to L’Enfant’s original plan for Washington, D.C.

After the jump: Professor Lewis's thoughts on Parisian expansion.

Wallace J. Nichols on Turtles... and Tacos

Wallace J. Nichols (right) and Jeffrey Seminoff release an adult female hawksbill sea turtle with a satellite transmitter in El Salvador

While fact-checking an upcoming story on the pros and cons of development in Baja California, Senior Researcher Meg Weaver stumbled upon the story of Adelita, a loggerhead turtle who migrated nearly 7,500 miles from Baja, California to Japan in 1996. Conservationist, academic, and activist Dr. Wallace J. Nichols helped pin down the facts of Adelita's astonishing journey and took some time to tell IT about his current projects, what he's passionate about, and where to find Baja's legendary fish tacos.

Can you tell us a bit about the work you've done with the California Academy of Sciences?

I've been a research associate at the California Academy of Sciences [in San Francisco] since 1999. CAS just reopened Sept. 27 as the greenest museum in the world. It is spectacular. I can't imagine a better place to be associated with, as CAS has a great history of sea turtle research and is the center of natural history education for our coast.

How did your interest in and love of turtles begin?

It started when I was a kid, chasing animals in the creeks and hills. We used to catch snapping turtles and paint numbers on their shells and release them. When we recaptured turtles with numbers, we'd figure out the size of the population using simple algebra. Essentially that's what we do now with sea turtles in the Pacific!

What draws you to turtles and compels you to devote your life working to study and conserve them?

There's something core about turtles that's hard to explain. I just dig them. I guess it's a combination of their shape, their tenacity, their migrations, that they're ancient animals that were on Earth with the dinosaurs (I was a big dinosaur fan as a kid), and their endangered status. It doesn't hurt that they generally like warm, sunny, remote places, and so do I.

"Will the Simpsons Ever Become Eco-Tourists?"

The ever-popular Simpsons have won seven Environmental Media awards, and to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the show (which aired Sunday, Sept. 28), our brother blog Pop Omnivore wrangled an exclusive interview with the eco-savviest Simpson, know-it-all Lisa. 

Find out the surprising answers to hard-hitting questions like: Why did Homer dismantle his 80-foot “Beer-amid”? And will the Simpsons ever become eco-tourists? Read Pop Omnivore's interview to find out.

Okay, here's one excerpt from the interview. National Enquirer, eat your heart out!

What is your family doing to “go green?”

Well, my Dad said his bald spot is “a solar panel for a love machine.”  I don’t know what that means, but I’m looking into whether we can hook it into the grid and get carbon credits.

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Marco Polo Didn't Go There

Travel writer and National Geographic Traveler contributor Rolf Potts' new book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There, sums up his past ten years of travel writing and is in bookstores now. As part of his virtual book tour, we asked Potts to select some of his favorite travel photos that were taken during his experiences writing the book. He put together this terrific slide show to give readers a glimpse of what life on the road is really like. For a full-screen view with Rolf's comments about each picture, you can click here. (Select "Options" to turn on Rolf's comments.)

You can follow the rest of Rolf Potts' virtual book tour online, or see him in person at one of 20 cities nationwide as he celebrates the release of Marco Polo Didn't Go There (Travelers' Tales, 2008).  We encourage you to ask for the book at your favorite local bookstore and follow Rolf's tour diary at Gadling starting Sept 29th. Tomorrow's virtual book tour stop will be at Gadling. To read yesterday's tour stop, go to Jaunted.

Mexican Home Cooking

While researching Mexican food for Traveler's "Mexico: 50 Discoveries" supplement, IT blogger Kristen Gunderson not only developed massive enchilada cravings, but she also became smitten with the Mexican Home Cooking school, a place that allows vacationers a true taste of authentic Mexico. Visitors - of any culinary skill level - can spend a week in the home of a Mexican chef and learn to prepare local delicacies while exploring the Puebla region's most outstanding natural features. The school's owner, Chef Estela Silva, has been a kitchen employee from the age of 7 and was even featured in the New York Times for her gastronomic know-how. Recently she paused from her busy cooking schedule for a Q&A with Kristen about Mexican cuisine and what's it's like to stay at her school.

What is the most unique aspect of Mexican cooking?

The cuisine reflects the culture here, in that the simplicity of the ingredients are used to prepare wonderfully complex and sophisticated cuisine. Many times the ingredients of life are very poor here and miracles are produced in the cuisine, buildings, and artwork. Mexicans have produced wonders from what is available at hand for generations.

Take chiles, for example: The school’s first day begins with a lesson on chiles. Yes they are hot, but they are used more for flavor. It is a mistaken belief that Mexican food has to be hot. It has to be delicious and then you create the amount of heat that you want. We use chiles just like you use salt and pepper.

How does learning about the area’s cuisine give your students an authentic “taste” of the local culture?

In the area of Puebla, our cuisine is very important to getting a “sense of place.” We first began with our indigenous cuisine, then the Spanish invasion came, bringing 400 years of Arab influence, with cumin, whole cloves, cinnamon, sesame seeds and many more Arab spices, which merged and enhanced our original kitchen. Then came a special touch to the Puebla area: With the French invasion in the 1860s, our culture changed once more. The indigenous, Spanish (Arab), and French mixture is a unique culinary combination in Mexico and indeed the world.

This influence can be seen in the food “Pipian Verde con Bictec en Relleno” (Green Pipian with Beef Rolls). It is a dish from the area that is very typical and reflects these culinary traditions: The pipian sauce is pre-Hispanic; the addition of cumin is a nod to the Arabs; and along with the paupiette de boeuf from Paris, they produce a classic poblano dish known throughout Mexico.

Roughing It: Mongolia

A few months out of college, longtime friends Chris Rufo and Keith Ochwat decided that the workaday world wasn’t for them. So they picked up and headed to Mongolia to shoot a travel documentary, an eight-week journey that had the pair trying to track down a tribe of nomadic reindeer herders in the Siberian taiga, drinking bowls of yak vodka at a traditional Mongolian wedding ceremony and going head-to-head with an Olympic wrestler. After returning to the States, the pair spent the next year editing film and pitching their show to TV stations across the country. Their hard work paid off: “Roughing It: Mongolia” was picked up by PBS over the winter and is scheduled to air nationally this summer. (Click here for your local listings.)

The pair traveled light (just the two of them and a camera) and focused on finding off-the-beaten-path travel experiences and meeting “the most compelling characters in the most compelling contexts.” Though the program is less polished than more established travel shows, it succeeds in capturing honest scenes with unique personalities—from a traditional throat singer to a fortune-teller who sees into the future with the aid of sheep knuckles. Since producer-director Chris and host Keith market their show on their ability to find authentic experiences and meet interesting people wherever they go, IT decided to pick up some travel advice from these 23-year-old globe-trotters.

How did you discover your love for “roughing it”?

Keith: Our first “roughing it”-type trip was the summer after our sophomore year of college. We were going to teach English together in the southeastern part of China, but the day we were set to depart we got a phone call from the program director, who said the school had been closed due to a food poisoning outbreak. Chris and I already had our visas, so we bought plane tickets and left a few days later and we roughed it across China, and that got us hooked. We’re both happy at home in America doing our own things, but that adventure really instilled in us this desire to rough it. Not just travel, not just spend a summer in Rome, or Paris or something, but really get off the beaten path and explore.

Chris: And we had a good chemistry on the road. Things fell into our laps that were absurd and adventurous and one of a kind. We made a cameo appearance in a Chinese rap video, we hitchhiked all through the Himalayas in the back of a dump truck, we went through the Three Gorges Dam right before everything got flooded. And we met really interesting people.

Follow the jump to learn why Chris and Keith don't actually hope you go to Mongolia, and to read their tips for authentic and sustainable travel.

Talking with The Hotel Whisperer

Our intrepid contributing editor Andrew Nelson recently caught the ear of Andrew Freeman, aka the Hotel Whisperer.

Andrew Freeman is a hotel whisperer. His San Francisco-based public relations and marketing company helps hostelries and restaurants identify current trends in the hospitality industry and capitalize on them.  Like lobbies, for instance. You may have noticed that your check-in experience is becoming more like "check it out" as reception areas are transformed into cocktail lounge-like spaces and hotels cart off stuffy furniture in favor of a low-slung, modern pieces. Why? It's all about real estate, says Freeman. If a city's price-per-square-foot is steep "having a lovely entry lobby is getting the owner more bang for your buck," he says. "For guests it produces an arrival 'experience' – you can get in the action if you want to, or navigate away from it." Though Freeman's company typically advises deep-pocketed clients, he agreed to murmur in Traveler's ear about what's hot in hotel trends.

A Mixologist for your Marriott: Travelers know that hotels in Vegas and New York now have great restaurants, but there's still a lot of opportunity for mid-markets to have great restaurants as larger hotel chains have cottoned on to the fact they can keep guests on the property. Hotel brunches are going to get more creative, Freeman predicts. One example: The JW Marriott in San Francisco is introducing a "recovery" Sunday brunch featuring flights of Bloody Marys.

Value Now: During a recession you'll see hotels making more attempts to lure locals. "It's a 'staycation' in your own town. Look for happy hour programs and specials," Freeman says. In San Francisco, for example, Kimpton Hotels are doing complimentary evening wine hours. Also look for room rate add-ons, not price cuts. "Hotels are reluctant to cut prices, but may include a free room for the kids, a free meal or cooking classes for the price of a regular room."

Speaking with Stephen Schneider

While attending the Rothbury Music Festival earlier this month, IT editor Janelle Nanos sat down with Dr. Stephen Schneider, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning climatologist who was running the Think Tank sessions at the festival. Schneider has been talking about climate change since the '70s, he's won the MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship, and has served as an environmental consultant to six presidents. And now that seemingly everyone is (finally) talking "green," he was just as much a rock star at the festival as the actual rock stars on stage. Nanos spoke with Schneider about hybrid cars, celebrity compost, and how climate change can result in a cultural crisis.

I imagine you often speak at universities and other more formal situations, so this must be a different scene for you. Are you enjoying the concert to far?

I haven’t been to a music festival since I went to hear Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in the '60s, it’s a completely different scene. But they're uniting different groups who have never talked to each other. They’ve decided to add a think tank with serious scientists, business leaders, technologists, and media, to talk about stewardship. And then they're bringing musical acts up on stage to play a few songs, and then we interview them and we get their feelings on the issues.

By getting people together and bringing disparate crowds that wouldn’t normally talk to each other you allow the building of a coalition. And coalitions are what makes politics, and politics is what makes rules, and rules make it possible to solve problems like climate change. They don’t solve themselves.

How has the crowd been responding to the think tank sessions?

I’ve been thrilled at the response of the crowd. I don’t usually give talks where people whoop and holler and have a good time. I can see why these rock stars like to go up there and play. For me it's usually the nerds talking to the nerds. It was fun to follow up Michael Franti (of Spearhead), so I changed my line to get people engaged and then got back into some more serious stuff. That was really cool, I really enjoyed doing that, it was fun.

But what’s really important is the networking that’s been going on. Michael Kang—used to play with the String Cheese Incident—now plays with Pangea. He was on a panel with me, and I learned that he had taken courses at Berkeley at the Energy and Resources Group, so he really understands this stuff. Having him in the front of the room while we’re having a serious discussion about stewardship and ecological threats makes the audience say, "My god, this rock guy, he knows his stuff." It makes it more important in their brains. That’s what’s making a difference in the world. Sure it’s very nice to get us together, to change consciousness while we’re here. But what really matters is networking people who are connected. So now we’re getting people connected. I view that as my most important function.

Have you had a chance to actually see any of your rock star panelists perform? 

Yesterday I was in the tent with a bunch of rock stars who I’ve never heard of and I wouldn’t recognize if I tripped on them. I’m the worst gaper on the planet, I don’t know any of these guys. Give me Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, I know every phrase of every song they’ve ever written. But not this group. But it’s great to watch. And these guys, who are pretty self-inflated in some cases, they’re all sorting out their garbage into compost. And they’re doing it alone, they’re not having their underlings do it. That’s important. That says that nobody is above nature. And I thought that was a terrific symbol I was watching in that tent. There were no stars in there, it was everybody doing their thing. You sit there and watch Snoop Dogg compost and that’s pretty good.

The Undiscovered Country of the Nearby

The wild places Robert Macfarlane journeys to in his new book aren't in deepest Africa or far Asia—they're in England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In The Wild Places, featured in our Trip Lit book column this month, Macfarlane brings to life some of the last remaining storied wildnesses in Britain and Ireland, but also finds the wild just outside the busy city of Cambridge, where he lives and teaches at Cambridge University. He took the time to answer some emailed questions.

What was your first experience of the wild?

Storybook wolves, fairytale forests. We tend to meet the wild in print or on film before we meet it in person; or perhaps it's just we remember these encounters more clearly as adults. Wolves and wildwoods are everywhere in children's literature; dark, unknowable spaces filled with fierce, untameable creatures. But more literally, I spent my childhood holidays in the Highlands of Scotland—I remember the thrill of finding shed roe deer and even red-deer horns in the heather; and birthday picnics on mountaintops.

In the book, you journey to some of the most remote places in Britain—Ben Hope, the Coruisk valley—but one of the gifts of your book, as Don George writes in our review of it, is that you "illuminate the wild wonder of our everyday world." So what bit of wild have you encountered this week?

The book really is the story of beginning to explore—in John Hanson Mitchell's wonderful phrase—"the undiscovered country of the nearby." A recent bit of wild? I was told last Saturday about a new practice called allotment-forestry, which is where you plant ten-rod-plot allotments with hazels, with a view to coppicing them for wood. So in the middle of cities you get these miniature forests, only 20 yards by 30 yards, say. The woman who told me about this said her allotment-forest was now mature, and was loved and used by the children who lived nearby. She'd hung a sign saying "wildwood" on one of the edge-trees. I loved that story.

Any tips on how we can better experience the wild, without overwhelming it?

Refocus. Gary Nabhan tells a wonderful story about taking his young children to the rim of the Grand Canyon, to show them the view, only to find they're much more interested in grubbing about in the leaf litter and insects on the floor of the promontory. Children are micronauts, explorers of the tiny, disinterested in the grandstand visions of the wild that we're all conditioned to celebrate.